Charles Sanders Peirce:

PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS

Taken from: some sources

Charles S. Peirce (1839

1914)
C.S.

Peirce
(pronounced Purse)
An American philosopher and
logician writing at about the
same time as Saussure was
teaching his course.
Was fired from a University
job early in his career, and
eked out a living writing
articles for newspapers

Peircean Semiotics
Unlike

Saussure, Peirce didnt focus on

language. He was interested in all kinds of
signs, and his system applies equally to
bacteria as to humans.
Peirce believed that all thinking and
interpretation was the work of signs. (eg:
I is the sign through which people
represent themselves to the world.)
As a logician he wanted to find out not
only how signs happen to behave, but the
rules to govern how they must behave.

Peircean Semiotics ii
For

Peirce logic and semiotics are

exactly the same thing.
Like Saussure, Peirce believed
that signs allow coded access to
an object, but in Peircean
semiotics signs can be material
as well as well as
mental/psychological.

Peirces Sign
Peirce

defined the sign as

something which stands to
somebody for something in some
respect or capacity.
The Peircean sign has 3 parts:
Sign/Representamen(S/R)
Object (O)
Interpretant (I)

Peirces Sign ii
The

Sign/Representamen is very much

like Saussures signifier. It stands for
something and is interpreted.
This produces the Interpretant, which
is close to Saussures signified. It is
what is represented or meant by a
sign.
Both the Sign/Representamen and the
interpretant together stand for
something else: the Object.

Triadic Model
(Peirce)

Object in the real world or

speakers mind
Signified is psychological

Signifier is physical, sensual

Triadic Model
The

Representamen: the form

which the sign takes (not
necessarily material);
An Interpretant: not an
interpreter but rather the
sense made of the sign;
An Object: to which the sign
refers.

Triadic Model
(Peirce)

Object in the real world or

speakers mind
Interpretant is meaning from
decoding representamen
Representamen is physical,
sensual

Variants
Variants of Peirce's triad are often
presented as 'the semiotic triangle' (as
if there were only one version).
Sign vehicle: the
form of
the sign;
Sense: the sense
made
of the sign;
Referent: what the
sign

Three ways signs represent

objectsSymbol
Arbitrary or purely conventional
100% needs to be learned
language in general, alphabet, punctuation
marks, numbers, Morse code, traffic lights

Icon
Resembling or imitating the signified
similar in some quality
portrait, cartoon, onomatopoeia,
metaphors, sound effects imitative
gestures
cartoon, onomatopoeia, metaphors, sound
effects imitative gestures

Index
Index

existential connection to the signified

evidence, smoke, footprints, pain,

Three ways signs represent

objects
(Peirce) Symbol

Icon

Index

Signs can be
one, two or all
three of these
at once.

Unlimited Semiosis
The

meaning of a sign is always

another sign.
The Interpretant of any Sign can become
the Sign for another Interpretant and so
on and so on. (eg: 2 people and another
comes along to witness the fight.)
This is Unlimited Semiosis.
The Peircean sign is open, dynamic, and
no meaning is ever final.

Gambar

telepon pd rambu lalu

lintas (representamen/signifier)
Interpretant : ada telepon umum
telepon - representamen
Interpretant/makna dr telepon:
Komunikasi jarak jauh
representamen
Interpretant/makna komunikasi
jarak jauh

Icon, Index, Symbol

ICON:

relation of reason

An iconic sign resembles its object

(eg: a photograph)
INDEX:

relation of fact

An indexical sign has some

natural/causal connection with its
object. (eg: smoke & fire)
SYMBOL:

relation of cognition

A symbolic sign relates to its object in

a conventional and arbitrary manner
only (eg: language)

'Semiosis', a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, is

expanded by Eco to designate the process by which a
culture produces signs and/or attributes meaning to signs.
Although for Eco meaning production or semiosis is a social
activity, he allows that subjective factors are involved in
each individual act of semiosis. The notion then might be
pertinent to the two main emphases of current, or
poststructuralist, semiotic theory. One is a semiotics
focused on the subjective aspects of signification and
strongly influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, where
meaning is construed as a subject-effect (the subject being
an effect of the signifier). The other is a semiotics
concerned to stress the social aspect of signification, its
practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal
communication; there, meaning is construed as semantic
value produced through culturally shared codes. (de
Lauretis 1984, 167)

Summary
Unlimited

Semiotics
Triadic Model
Icon, Symbol, Index