Semiotics: Peirce, Saussure, and Beyond
Peirce’s Theory of Signs
Peirce I
Philosophical perspective.
Theory of reality and knowledge through signs.
It is thought by signs.
Semiosis (semiotic) = = = logical inference from signs.
Inference from signs.
Semiosis, triadic process.
Peirce II
Women with the index finger on the mouth (representamen = sign). Sequence of letters, sound, form, image or smell.
He understands that we must be quiet (object) from a semiotic process of inference is that the representative triggers an interpretant.
Representamen, object, interpretant.
Peirce III
The interpretant explains what is meant by the representative and in turn represent the same object.
In a dictionary the word you seek is the representamen, which stands for an object that has an interpretant which is the definition.
The Interpretant
Is the effect representamen produces in the mind of the person.
It is the abstraction of meaning in relation to what it means, is always another sign.
May consist of development of one or more signs.
The Immediate Interpretant
This is what the concept or thought of as constituting a sign meaning independent of context.
The immediate interpretant is the meaning of fire is maintained even if such a cry or the order to light a cigarette.
The Dynamic Interpretant
It is the particular effect that a sign has on the mind of an individual performer in a situation of enunciation or in a context of use.
The dynamic interpretant “fire” in a fire that can mean fear, call the fire department or bolt.
The Final Interpretant
Interpretant is intended as a habit that makes possible the recurrent and stable interpretation of a sign.
The interpretant “being an adult female” for representamen “woman” is final because it is a usual interpretant attributed representamen object.
Act of Semiosis
For Peirce are the three levels of interpretation of a sign.
Immediate interpretant: the interpreter as a concept thought.
Dynamic interpretant: the interpreter thought real effect in the interpreter.
Final interpretant: the interpreter thought as a habit.
Pragmatism
The belief in the truth of the concept of heating stove is an environment object, for example, develops the habit that the kindle when it’s cold.
Peirce says that for pragmatism Immediate interpretant every concept is a behavior.
The Object
It is what it refers to representamen is in place. Represents something else.
A spokesman, a deputy, proxy, an agent, a diagram, a symptom, a description, a witness.
The Immediate Object
inside the semiosis,
Dynamic Object
outside semiosis.
Dynamic Object
It is a source of knowledge because it is reality as such.
Think of the planet Venus, an object of reality outside of reality considered semiotics.
Venus = morning star, evening star.
Dynamic object is the object represented.
The immediate object is the mode of presentation of the object. 2 Representamens
Dynamic Object Example
Signs semiotically constructed objects that represent reality.
A dynamic object as General Peron
Immediate object was built as a negative way “the fugitive tyrant” and positively “the first worker.”
The Dynamic Object According to Peirce
It has an independent existence from the sign that represents and adds information to the sign.
But for the sign to represent this object must be something known to the interpreter, meaning that he must have knowledge of collateral that is the result of previous semiosis.
Summarizing
The dynamic object is the object of a reality that has an independent existence of semiosis but for the sign may say some of it is necessary to have undergone previous semiosis from which the interpreter is aware of that object that is also a sign. The three components are signs of semiosis.
The Foundation
Peirce says that the sign represents its object reference to a sort of idea.
He has called the representamen basis. Ground.
The basis are the distinctive features or attributes that differentiate it from other objects.
Example of Foundation or Ground
The morning star and evening star as Representamens represent the planet Venus on the basis of other grounds (time of year).
The first representamen select the object (Venus) the hallmark “morning” and the second selects the same object representamen the hallmark “evening”.
The Rationale and Purpose
The same dynamic object (Venus) is represented with two Representamens constructing different immediate objects.
Representamen is the foundation of what builds the immediate object, ie the sign establishes the immediate object through the foundation.
What He Says Eco
The foundation is a component of the meaning of the sign, understood as the sum of semantic features that characterize its content.
The sign “woman” contains an amount of semantic features “human”, “female”, “adult” that are the hallmarks, the object attributes that differentiate women from other objects, ie the foundation or component of the meaning of the sign woman.
Infinite Semiosis
The interpretant is a sign that is not isolated, but integrates a chain of semiosis: each sign interpretant is both the interpretant which precedes it and from the next.
As all thoughts are signs also refer to each other.
Knowledge has always aimed to other knowledge.
The Branches of Semiotics
The fact that each representamen connect to the foundation, the object and interpretant makes for three branches.
The Pure Grammar
for what must be the representamen to embody the meaning?
Want to find out what is true in the representamen.
The Branches of Semiotics
The Logic Proper
is the formal science of truth conditions of representation. Answer the following question in what sense it is true that a representamen instead of an object?
The Pure Rhetoric
when a sign leads to another?, Ie increasing concerns “logic” of knowledge.
The Categories or Trichotomy of Signs
Each sign is divided into three which is what Peirce called phaneroscopy, phenomenology or ideoscopía.
Phaneroscopy derived from fanerón – ideas. Peirce sees it as all that is present in the mind, the manner or whatever manner appropriate to the real thing or not.
The Fanerón
The three categories that Peirce posits three modes of fanerón are three ways that fanerón is present in the mind, ie three points of view on it.
Peirce holds that all fanerones (ideas) can be thought of from three categories:.
Secondness
Thirdness
The Category of Firstness
It implies something to consider as it is without reference to anything else.
The first relates to ideas of freedom, possibility, uncertainty, beginning novelty.
Peirce gives an example of quality first taken independently as whiteness, hardness, rough, red or any quality before they are manifested in an object.
The quality representamen corresponds to the category of first.
The Category of Secondness
Involves considering something as it is but in relation to something else, a dyadic relationship.
Peirce linked to the idea of existence and brute fact.
For example: a falling rock in rock and soil dyadic relationship.
The object class corresponds to the second.
The Categories of Third
Enter a regular progression is not random by law, for example, n + 1.
The interpretant corresponds to the category of third because it compared to the first with the second and third
The interpretant involves a triadic relationship.
The three components of semiosis are the trichotomy of signs.
Types of Signs: Qualisign
Representamen: qualisign, sinsign, legisign.
The qualisign falls under the category of the first.
It is a quality: a color, shape, texture, a mere possibility until it manifests in a sinsign (existing sign).
Types of Signs: Sinsign
Falls under the category of second because anything that exists is that it is a sign.
The sinsign is an embodiment of qualisign and becomes meaningful through a legisign (a general type of which is a manifestation).
Types of Signs: Legisign
Corresponds to the third because it is a law that is a sign understood as an integrated general an organized system.
Back to sinsign significant.
“Dog” written on the blackboard: qualisign the whiteness and texture of the chalk; sinsign the effectiveness of writing; legisign the word as a member of the Spanish language system.
Another Example
The traffic sign with the image of a child on a yellow background on the corner of a school.
Qualisign: the sheer quality of the colors. (tone)
Sinsign: specificity of the signal placed in the corner. (sign in itself)
Rhematic: A significant because it is a sign of the traffic signaling system in both law states that the black image of a child on a yellow background represents the proximity of a school. (the type of signal).
Object Phaneroscopy
Icon
a first enters into a relationship of similarity, analogy with its object as a photograph or drawing.
Images
share simple qualities of the object, color, shape, size, onomatopoeia.
Diagrams
share relationships of the parts of their subject. Organizational, computer graphics, metaphors that are parallel to its object.
Index
In many seconds, a sign is engaged in a relationship with the object of existence, and direct, a black cloud is an indication that it will rain. It is anything that attracts attention.
Nouns, possessive pronouns, personal, demonstrative, relative quantifiers (some, every, none, all, none, some, something, someone, a, a, one), instructions.
Symbol
Relations, customary or legal and what it represents. Flag.
Signs of writing, signaling systems, the symbols of the different disciplines signs constituting communication systems created by man to replace natural languages, the signs of musical notation, the isotypes and logos advertising.
Phaneroscopy of Interpretant
Rema
is a term or a name corresponding to a class:
Each dog is an animal.
Snoopy is a dog.
Snoopy is an animal.
A common name and a name for a class.
Phaneroscopy of Interpretant
Dicisigno
dicentic or corresponds to a proposition:
Each dog is an animal.
In an interpretant with concrete content.
Argument = argument.
Saussure’s Structuralist Linguistics
Saussure
Object of Study
The language as a system of signs that express ideas.
Comparable to the writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite forms, military signals.
Semiology teach that constitutes signs and what are the laws that govern them.
The Object of Linguistics
The laws which semiology will discover applicable to linguistics because linguistics is a part of semiotics.
To discover the nature of language must consider what he has in common with other systems in the same order.
Language is a particular articulated in opposing pairs.
Pairs of Opposites
- Significance – significant.
- Language – speech.
- Mutability – Immutability.
- Synchrony – diachrony.
- Syntagmatic relations – paradigmatic or associative relations.
Saussure’s thought is markedly dichotomous and binary.
The Linguistic Sign
Significance – Significant
Something double fact and sound-image concept – mental footprint without moving his lips as we talk to ourselves.
Tree – arbor.
Meaning (associated with) – significant.
Hydrogen – oxygen.
Referral to mental activity of individuals within society.
Sign Language
Arbitrary because the bond between signifier and signified is unmotivated and conventional.
The idea is not linked to southern succession of sounds s / u / r /.
Arbitrary and unmotivated. (Symbol-Justice).
Some Motivation
Ten-nine-pear.
Arbitrary absolute and arbitrary relative.
The conventionality in the non-linguistic signs.
Image of a Cow
which means stray animals. Convention and motivation.
Eco has said that if a sign has to be a relationship established between a signifier and signified.
Black clouds and loaded.
Linear Nature of the Signifier
The signifier is measurable in one line.
Phonemes.
Paso, weight floor.
Line of phonemes chains.
Language and Speech
Language
general system of signs.
Psychic phenomena.
Social Fact
The individual records it passively.
Code.
Talk
individual use of that system.
Psychic Phenomena
physiological and physical.
Individual act.
Act of will.
Individual Use of the Code
Immutability and Mutability of the Sign
The Immutability
(inheritance).
The signifier seems freely chosen, but is imposed.
A bill supported by the community.
By the arbitrariness of the sign.
For the number of signs of a language
On the complexity of the system.
The resistance to innovation.
Mutability of the Sign
The weather more or less rapidly alters language signs.
The sign is able to alter it continues over time.
When moving always alters the relationship between signifier and signified.
Necare (kill) in Latin, French noyer (drown) drown in Spanish.
The Value
Language is a system of differences.
One word can change an idea.
Matter phonetic differences that distinguish one word from another.
Dog.
Mal – Mar.
Synchrony and Diachrony
Axis of Simultaneity
concerning coexisting things.
Line of succession which considers a single thing at a time, but there are things with their respective changes in diachrony lies the evolution of language.
Taurus – bull.
Syntagmatic and Associative Relations
There are two forms of our brain activity essential to the operation of the tongue.
In the Presence
Based on the extension.
In Absence
They are part of that inner treasure which is the language of each individual. Association with missing elements analogy in meaning or in the signifier.
Syntagmatic and Associative Relations
Rel Phrase
In the presence
Linear nature
Fixed order
Defined number of elements
Rel Associative
In the absence
Virtual Series
Order no fixed
Indefinite number of elements
Developments in Semiotics
Last Class:
Developments Epistemic
After Peirce and Saussure
Structuralism and poststructuralism
The Structuralist Linguistics
takes as a model and tries to develop grammars (systematic elements and their possible combinations) that shape and explain the significance of literary texts.
Post-structuralism investigates the functioning of the texts.
Post-structuralism
Each text is a machine that produces an infinite significant deferral of meaning. And the chain must be significant ad infinitum.
Infinite semiosis and character of the sign as object represented.
The referent is a representamen inserted in the chain of unlimited semiosis.
Nothing exists outside the text.
For Umberto Eco
Reading is a process of free association where the performers will shake the texts and give them the way that serves their purposes.
Semiologists and discourse analysts interested in the relationship between ideology, social production of meaning, the construction of reality they refer to Peirce and his theory of sign and significance.
Structuralism
Benveniste
argues that there could be no thought without language and that the way of thinking is shaped by the structure of language.
Tartu School
argues that the fundamental work of culture is structurally organize the world that surrounds man.
The School of Tartu
Jurij Lotman
conceives natural languages as primary modeling system of the world.
He understands art as a secondary modeling system in the world, modeler because it provides models of the world and second because it overlaps the first model given by the tongue.
It maintains that all semiotic systems including art, language modeled
Roland Barthes
The images, objects, behaviors can mean but never independently, semiotic system because everything has to do with language, because a substance perceive what it means, implies the use of the language.
The language accompanying the images.
Language and Image
The cartoons, advertising, film, photo journalism, often require the presence of the linguistic message on anchor or relay.
Semiology
is a part of linguistics, one aimed translinguistics large meaningful units of speech and will serve to anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, stylistic
Emule Benveniste
A semiotic system is characterized by: its mode of operation, its domain of validity, the nature and number of signs, the type of operation joining the signs and gives them a distinctive role.
At the traffic light: the visual mode of operation is the domain of validity is transit, the signs are color opposition, alternating function.
Language is a semiotic matrix