We will present Charles Sanders Peirce's three philosophical categories, and then explain how these categories operate at various levels in the process of semiosis, or sign functioning. The process of semiosis is a triadic relationship between a sign or representamen (a first), an object (a second) and an interpretant (a third). Each of these three terms is in turn broken down following the three categories. From this structure, by observing the hierarchy of categories, ten mechanisms of signification may be identified.
An updated and extended version of this chapter can be found in Louis Hébert, An Introduction to Applied Semiotics: Tools for Text and Image Analysis (Routledge, 2019, www.routledge.com/9780367351120).
According to Peirce, three categories are necessary and sufficient to account for all of human experience. These categories correspond to the numbers first, second and third. They have been designated as firstness, secondness, and thirdness.
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Firstness is a conception of being that is independent of anything else. For example, this would be the mode of being of a redness before anything in the universe was yet red, or of a general sensation of hurt, before one starts to wonder whether the sensation comes from a headache, a burn or some emotional pain. We must be clear that in firstness, there is only ONENESS. Thus, it is a conception of being in its wholeness or completeness, with no boundaries or parts, and no cause or effect. A quality is a pure, latent potentiality. Firstness belongs to the realm of possibility; it is experienced within a kind of timelessness. Firstness corresponds to emotional experience.
Secondness is the mode of being that is in relation to something else. This is the category that includes the individual, experience, fact, existence, and action-reaction. For example, the stone that we drop falls to the ground; the weathervane turns to point in the direction of the wind; and now you feel pain because of a toothache. Secondness operates within discontinuous time, where the dimension of past time enters in: a certain event occurred at a certain moment, before some other event, which was its consequence. Secondness corresponds to practical experience.
Thirdness is the mediator through which a first and a second are brought into relation. Thirdness belongs to the domain of rules and laws; however, a law can only be manifested through the occurrences of its application, that is, by secondness; and these occurrences themselves actualize qualities, and therefore, firstness. Whereas secondness is a category of individuality, thirdness and firstness are categories of generality; but the generality of firstness is on the level of possibility, and the generality of thirdness is on the level of necessity, and therefore, prediction. The law of gravity, for example, allows us to predict that each time we drop a stone, it will fall to the ground. Thirdness is the category of thought, language, representation, and the process of semiosis; it makes social communication possible. Thirdness corresponds to intellectual experience.
Charles Sanders Peirce's Semiotics — The Triadic Model
According to Peirce, a sign may be simple or complex. Unlike Saussure, Peirce does not define the sign as the smallest unit of signification. Any thing or phenomenon, no matter how complex, may be considered as a sign from the moment it enters into a process of semiosis.
The process of semiosis involves a triadic relationship between a sign or representamen (a first), an object (a second) and an interpretant (a third).
The representamen is a thing that represents another thing: its object. Before it is interpreted, the representamen is a pure potentiality: a first.
Triadic Model Of Semiosis Of Charles Sanders Peirce. Source: Own Figure.
The object is what the sign represents. The sign can only represent the object; it cannot furnish acquaintance with it. The sign can express something about the object, providing that it is an object with which the interpreter is already familiar from collateral observation (experience created from other signs, which are always from previous history). For example, a piece of red paper that is used as a sample (= representamen) for a can of paint (= object) indicates only the red colour of the object, since it is assumed that one already knows all of its other characteristics (packaging, content, usage, etc.). The piece of paper shows that the paint in the can is red in colour, but it says nothing about the other characteristics of the object. Furthermore, if the interpreter knows that it refers to a can of paint, then, and only then, does the sample give him the information that this particular can of paint must be red. To put it more succinctly, Peirce distinguishes the dynamical object (the object as it is in reality) from the immediate object (the object as it is represented by the sign). In our example, the can of paint is the dynamical object, and the colour red (of the can of paint) is the immediate object.
Upon being interpreted, the representamen has the ability to trigger an interpretant, which in turn becomes a representamen by triggering another interpretant referring to the same object as the first representamen, and thereby allowing the first one to refer to the object. And so on,
. For example, the definition of a word in the dictionary is an interpretant of the word, because the definition refers to the object (= what the word represents) and thereby allows the representamen (= the word) to refer to this object. But in order to be understood, the definition itself requires a series, or more accurately, a bundle of other interpretants (other definitions)... Thus, the process of semiosis is theoretically unlimited. We are engaged in a thought process that is always incomplete, that has always begun previously.
Semiosis Charles S. Peirce
The process of semiosis is theoretically unlimited. However, it is limited in practice, being short-circuited by force of habit, which Peirce calls the final logical interpretant - our habit of attributing a certain signification to a certain sign in a certain context with which we are familiar. Force of habit temporarily freezes the infinite recursivity of one sign to other signs, which allows interlocutors to quickly reach consensus on reality in a given communication context. But habit is formed by the effect of previous signs. Signs are the catalysts that cause habits to be reinforced or changed.
Peirce's view of semiosis integrates all the components of semiotics: Pragmatics (the domain of the interpretant) is inseparable from semantics (the domain of the object) and from syntax (the domain of the representamen).
Each of the three terms of semiosis is further subdivided following the three categories: thus, we distinguish firstness, secondness and thirdness in the representamen, in representamen-object relations, and in the way the interpretant implements the relationship between representamen and object.
Symbol, Index, Ikon
The representamen can be (1) a qualisign (firstness), meaning a quality that functions like a sign; (2) a sinsign (secondness), meaning a specific spatio-temporal thing or event that functions like a sign; or (3) a legisign (thirdness), meaning a conventional sign.
Examples of legisigns are passwords, insignias, tickets for a show, traffic signals, and the words of a language. However, legisigns cannot act until embodied as sinsigns, which are replicas. For instance, the article the is a legisign in the English language system. But it can only be used within the medium of the voice or the text that embodies it. It is embodied in sinsigns (its occurrences, occupying different spatio-temporal positions), but also includes qualisigns, such as the intonation of the oral replica, or the shape of the letters of the written replica.
A representamen can refer to its object by virtue of firstness, secondness or thirdness, that is, through relationships of similarity, contextual contiguity or law. Following this trichotomy, the sign is called (1) an icon, (2) an index or (3) a symbol, respectively.
Table 2 From Commemorating Charles S . Peirce ( 1839 1914 )
The reference between a sign and its object is iconic if the sign resembles the object. An icon may have as its representamen a qualisign, a sinsign or legisign. For example, the feeling (qualisign) produced by playing a piece of music is the icon of that piece of music. Someone's portrait (sinsign) is the icon of that person, and a model (sinsign) is the icon of a building. A drawing of a glass (sinsign) is the icon of a glass, but if it is placed on a crate, then it belongs to the pictogram code and becomes a replica of the legisign signifying 'fragile' through iconic portrayal of a species (a glass) that is part of a genera (fragile objects).
The reference between a sign and its object is indexical if the sign really is affected by the object. For example, the position of a weathervane is caused by the direction of the wind; it is the index of the wind direction. A knock on the door is the index of a visit. The symptom of an illness is the index of that illness. An index cannot have a qualisign as its representamen, because there is only sameness in firstness, and no contextual contiguity; therefore, a qualisign is always iconic (refer to the hierarchy of categories below). An index may have as its representamen a sinsign, as in the examples above, or a legisign, as in certain words known as indexical words
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