Jay-- This summary was helpful to me:
For Peirce, and usefully for many influenced by his semiotics, SIGN is the
most general term, and SYMBOL is a special case (contrasted usually with
"index" and "icon") where the interpretation or construal of a relation
between the symbol (as form, i.e. signifier, aka representamen) and what
it's taken to be a symbol of or for is based on a culturally conventional
and otherwise arbitrary relationship unrelated to any physical-causal
connection or to any formal similarity.
SIGNs are not just symbols, but all possible types of 3-way relationships
in which something (1) interprets a relationship between (2) one item
(form, event, thing, whatever) and (3) another, which is not reducible to a
simple sum of pairwise relations.
So, would it be fair to say that Vygotsky really was talking about
sign mediation of at least the index and symbolic subvarieties? (I am
not so sure about icons because of his writing on "natural"
psychological processes where images are precursors of signs). Then
when he slips into using the term symbol as in "symbolic activity"
(see index of collected works) he is not making some new point we
should focus on?
And, what should WE really be talking about? From an earlier message,
Peg, in November,
wrote in response to a note from Peter:
The definitions you found for sign and symbol make me think of Grice's
discussion of natural and non-natural meaning. "These spots mean measles"
is an example of natural; "Three rings of the bell means the trolley is
about to
stop" is an example of non-natural.
Tools and symbols would both be non-natural. Signs would be natural.
For language, there is also a tripartite distinction among sentence meaning,
utterance meaning, and speaker meaning. Maybe that distinction would come
in handy when thinking about symbols that re-present in/for a
socio-historical community of users.
So, Peg, if we talk about a word like "water" it can operate as a
sign in the sense of Jay's para 2, but also as both "a culturally
conventional
and otherwise arbitrary relationship unrelated to any physical-causal
connection or to any formal similarity" and "symbols that re-present in/for a
socio-historical community of users." It operates as a sign if I say
"The rain in southern
california is finally filling our reservoirs with water" but as a
symbol when I say " Water reminds us of the cycle of living matter, of
the fragility of life in southern california, and of life
everlasting."
But if this is a reasonable way to think two questions come to mind:
1. Are all tools only symbols and never signs?
2. The three kinds of meaning you mention do not map easily for me
onto the sense/
meaning distinction in vygotky, in particular "speaker meaning."
Wouldn't speaker meaning be sense?
As usual, confused in southern california.
mike
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