Semioticians refer with an incomprehensible pride to more than eighty definitions of sign by Peirce. As I will demonstrate below, the fact that Peirce had so many different definitions of sign and that during his whole life he constantly returned to redefining it, shows that he was not satisfied with any of those.
What has been said is not confusing. To a certain extent it paralyzes the development of semiotics. Most semiotical studies are, so to say, handicapped I mean, more in a sportive than in a medical sense : we can successfully manipulate signs, but only if the sphere of signs is predetermined, both synchronically and diachronically.
We can indeed speak of the progress of semiotics in the description of empirically given semiotic systems, but there is no progress in exploring the essence of semiosis.
Here we are as far as Peirce; however, without his optimism. Therefore, we have nothing to be proud of in front of the philosophers. Like philosophy, semiotics is cursed to return constantly, searching for its foundations and sources. Below I will not attempt to solve any problems of foundations of semiotics, rather I will try in Peircean spirit to cleanse the ground and make a few steps that seem to be useful.
The First Step. Peirce and Saussure: A Total Incomparability When we observe the development of semiotic studies during the last fifty years, on the one hand, we cannot disregard the enormous amount of practical researches, processing of a great bulk of material, but neither can we disregard an obvious stagnation in the sphere of semiotic theory. Moreover, when we compare the present situation with that of the beginning of the twentieth century, the theory of semiotics seems to face now even bigger obstacles.
The situation is even more complicated by the fact that schools which pursue their activities under the general heading of semiotics differ from each other not in details, but in their basics and it is almost impossible to find a compromise or a common part between them.
Above all, we should distinguish the Peircean and Saussurean 2 Cf. At first sight it seems that the contributions of the above-mentioned scholars are not comparable to one another at all. Lotman In the center of attention there is a single sign. From the standpoint of the Peircean semiotics, the sign is elementary and, semiotically, the smallest element.
Since the whole construction of semiotics depends on what a sign is, he paid so much attention to the exact description of the sign. The most famous of them is the following: A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity.
I would like to emphasize that I mean namely semiotical, not, for example, physical elementarity. Since sign is any object something , then it can have quite a complicated structure, but, semiotically, it is still elementary, it does not consist of smaller semiotically relevant components. Single signs constitute complex signs, expressions which in sum form a language.
When, for example, Noam Chomsky defined language as a complex of grammatically correct sentences Chomsky , then, without referring to Peirce, he proceeded from the same point of view. An utterance as well as a language as a whole are in comparison with a single sign secondary and a lot more complicated objects. Hence, a lexicon, which we could conceive, for example, in the case of a natural language, as a scope of linguistic signs, is closed and primary, while a language as a whole is open and secondary.
Therefore, we should not wonder that for Peirce, language is in comparison with sign a far less important phenomenon: the correct description of sign guarantees the correct description of language. Such treatment seems to be simple and logical. When we now turn to Saussure, then we notice a completely different and strange logic.
For Saussure, the isolated sign does not exist at all. Here we are dealing with an obvious paradox. The precondition of signs are other signs, a sign system, a language to where it belongs. For Saussure, it is vice versa: language is a primary reality, with the clear structure which is divided into single signs with not so clear or elementary nature.
As it is known, Saussure divides the sphere of language langage into language itself langue and speech parole. In such distinction two circumstances seem to be most important. First, language is an abstract system which is primary with regard to speech. Language is represented in speech, whereby what is linguistically relevant in the latter is only how and to what extent it realizes the structure of language. The latter seems to be especially paradoxical: the speech signals not only the single sounds, but full sentences as well which are said and sensed are not signs by themselves, they only represent signs of language.
The central part in this scheme belongs to the relationship which connects the signifier and the signified of a sign later Louis Hjelmslev calls this relationship the sign function. Although usually there is no treatment of semiosis in the Saussurean tradition and this term is not in use, we could still say that namely the sign function is the basis for the formation of sign i. It seems that here we are dealing with an obvious contradiction. On the one hand, the sign of language is something certain, being determined by the system of language; on the other hand, the relationship between the components of sign is fully optional, arbitrary.
To solve this dilemma, Saussure distinguishes meaning and value valeur. Arbitrarity characterizes the meaning of the sign, and the absolute determination characterizes the value of it. Meaning arises from the relationship between the signifier and signified, value characterizes the position of an element in a system, that is, value is the complex of all the internal connections of the given element in the given sign system.
To illustrate this statement, Saussure offers the following schema: signified …. The most problematical is here the linear alignment of signs. Probably we should not pay too much attention to it, since, obviously, we are dealing with the inertia of the linearity of speech. Hence, unlike Peirce, for Saussure the proceeding-point is language and its structure which, to his mind, are fully clear and fixed, while the single elements of language, including the question of the sign of language, are problematical.
The subsequent studies in the sphere of the semiotics of language showed that the Saussurean approach, regardless of its above-discussed paradoxicality, appears to be far more powerful and productive.
One of the examples is the problem of meaning of grammatical categories. It is especially remarkable that the contemporary formulation to this problem was given by an outstanding American linguist Edward Sapir , who, as it is known, was not a direct follower of Saussure.
Nevertheless, his conception of grammatical categories which is not a bulk of occasional indicators, but a certain system characteristic to every given language has been developed in the Saussurean, that is, in the holistic spirit. The complex of grammatical categories is one of the most important parameters of the description of language.
It is individual for every language and what functions as a grammatical category in one language does not have to do so in another language. At the same time, Sapir shows the semiotic nature of grammatical categories.
These are not only the schemes of conjugation or declination, but the conceptual network with which language creates its own world-view. It is a very important fact: at least part of the signs of language are not given in advance, but at the same time they are not an open amount, as, for example, words in a lexicon; grammatical categories are the signs which clearly represent the Saussurean valeur.
Proceeding from his idea of sign, Peirce creates a rather complicated typology of sign, of which the most important part constitutes what he himself calls the second trichotomy of sign: the iconic, indexical and symbolic signs.
The basis of this classification is the nature of connections between signs and objects signified by them. As was pointed out by Jerzy Pelc in a paper exclusively devoted to this problem, when we speak of iconic signs, it would be more correct to speak of the iconical usage of a sign, that is,, iconicity evolves only in speech, not in language.
Proceeding from the analysis of language by Charles Bally and especially by Emile Benveniste, we could most certainly assert that the same applies to the indexical signs as well: there is no indexicality in language. It evolves in speech, in every certain speech act. But it would be inconsiderate to conclude, as does, for example, Roman Jakobson, that only symbolic signs can be found in language, since symbolic signs can not exist without icons and indexes.
What I intend to say, is that all the Peircean types of signs characterize only speech, while the signs of language are based on a principally different logic, which is grounded on the values of sign, not on its connections with objects. Emile Benveniste emphasizes that speech has its own semiotic qualities that are not derived from language.
Secondly, speech can also be a closed and stable system. Such system was to be called text. In the case of artistic text, Tartu-Moscow semiotic school has achieved analogical results. Hence, text is an immanent system, the elements of text form a structure and every element of text has its own certain value. The Second Step. Usually Peirce divides everything into three parts. The difference between Saussurean and Peircean styles of presentation is remarkable.
Of course, his ideas also developed different draftings of his Course demonstrate it clearly , but his style of presentation was always the same. For Peirce, on the other hand, it is very important to take the reader into his way of reasoning and this way of reasoning is no less important to him than the final result to which it leads.
Unlike Saussure, Peirce constantly appeals to readers, their experience and ability to make conclusions. To a certain extent this correlates the Peircean and Saussurean world-view, their philosophical bases. Saussure was a Platonist and his langue, structure, and valeur are Platonic ideas.
Ideas cannot be defined, there can be no introduction to them, they can only be grasped, perceived, recognized. Peirce, the non-orthodoxical pragmatist, proceeds from the stand- point that one can reach truth only through practice. Peirce treats signs in the frames of his phenomenology he himself calls it phaneroscopy. The sign is a priori something that has been given by experience. In this sense, the most characteristic sign for Saussure is a non-existing sign, the so-called zero-sign.
Zero sign is present through its absence. Its absence is meaningful. As it has been said before, every Saussurean sign is a pure form which is not present in text, but only represented in it. In this sense zero sign indicates the double absence: an absent sign is represented through the absence of sign. Now let us return to Peirce. The whole Peircean treatment of signs and all his definitions of signs show a kind of uncertainty.
The sign is a definite object, but in explication Peirce is forced to use either indefinite pronouns some, something, somebody or ordinal numbers first, second, third. He has no right words to describe signs. In a certain sense the indefinite pronouns demonstrate the purest type of reference: a reference without the referent. Something is not some certain thing, but any kind of thing.
The same applies to somebody. Thus, to say about some thing that it is something, actually means nothing or means that we are creating an illusion of saying something. In a way it is the same with ordinal numbers. An isolated ordinal number means nothing. When Peirce talks about the third the preconditions of which are the first and the second, then it has a certain sense, but when he claims, for example, that the idea of First is predominant 3, , that the first does not need the second or the third, then it is, above all, a bad usage of language.
We probably understand what Peirce wants to say here, but not thanks to his formulations, but in spite of them. The most interesting thing about Peirce is that he tries to use ordinal numerals in a kind of half-substantive form. First, second and third are for him categories which he writes with a capital letter; yet, we must note that he finds no other, non-numeric names for these categories. Hence, first, second and third are not just some objects named so.
To emphasize this difference, Peirce distinguishes first and firstness, etc. Rougly speaking, the difference is that the first is an ontological category, the firstness is an epistemological one: firstness is the idea of first. Firstness, secondness and thirdness are first of all not categories, but ugly words, words non-existent in English.
They are like monsters, something connected with the Loch Ness monster, I suppose. Peirce needs special terms to express the most elementary, the most natural and at the same time the most basic phenomena, but he does not find any already existing words for them in the language and is forced either to create impossible words or to use empty words like something. When we try to define a sign proceeding from the same logic with which we define any other empirical object but that is exactly what Peirce is trying to do in his phenomenology or phaneroscopy , a sign simply slips away.
Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. Jason J. Data and Aims of Linguistics: o i. A record of all languages and their familial associations 2. Identify operational laws governing the structure of language 3. Analysis of Object Catch22 1. If linguist isolate an individual facet of language, they lose the systemic understanding. If linguists study language as a system, they are confounded by the simultaneous relations between component parts.
New American Library, p. IV, Sec. So the diagram represents what the word means. The proof of this lies in the fact that the value of a sign may change without affecting either meaning or sound simply because some neighboring sign has undergone a change. Dream images are signifiers.
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