Of the semiotics there are more than you or I can name. A reasonable
taxonomy or even a genealogy of its species is not available. Yet it seems
to me, that Mike's questions can only get a reasonable response on such a
back ground. This alone also can give orientation to attempts at advancing
the idea of semiotic in a cultural psychological context.
Some time ago I have ventured to distinguish 4 types of semiotic which
include also an approximate genealogy: Roughly:
(A) Signs are seen as _special objects_ that carry a meaning in addition to
what they are. (Diagnostic signs, e.g.)
(B) Signs are complexes of symbols, "texts" in a general sense, which, when
you run through them open-eyed and well-equipped will give _meaning_ free
that was not obvious before.
(C) Signs are well-defined _elements of communication_ and refer to that
what can be signalled from a sender to a receiver over a channel; although
it is the signs that are sent, conveyed is a message that is encoded in the
signs.
(D) Signs are entities that can have, in suitable circumstances, effects
that they could not in any other circumstances. They are the real carriers
of true evolution of any kind.
I send a section of that paper in a separate message. The above
characteristics go perhaps a bit beyond what was said there, but it might
help to understand.
Now, when asked to charactarize Vygotsky's and Peirce's notion of sign
processes, it is obvious in the beginning that they both go beyond (A) and
(B). While (B) is prototypical for most Continental (Saussurean) semiotics
with linguistic and literary etc. interests, (C) appears to have become the
domninant semiotics in the wake of information technology which was so
readily adopted by many psychologists. (D) gives a sign definition that
will sound very strange even to most specialists with given habits of
thought, perhaps less so to novices of the field. You can easily reduce it
to the somewhat narrower perspective of interpretation (the interpretation
of a sign reveals something not obvious before) that is dominant in most of
the several Peircean definitions of sign or semiosis. The question is then
whether that something hidden in the sign, its potential, has been there
before or whether it can also be that this is newly generated. In other
words, whether sign interpretetation, the usual pivot of semiotic, is in
fact a case of sign generation, namely the creation (or actuaization,
modification) of another (new) sign.
I give 3 Peircean sign definitions below, one of a framing character,
another rather typical one, and one of his latest years more peculiar to
our interests.
As to Vygotsky I would say he also has gotten that basic innovation of the
sign being something useful to do something. That later became "how to do
things with words". So there is some touch of (D), yet he appears still
somewhat nearer than Peirce to (C), while it was only Morris who introduced
(C) into the semiotic world mistakenly attributing it to Peirce. Yet a bit
more directly than Peirce Vygotsky emphasizes the pragmatic-instrumental
character of the signs. While with Peirce, semiotic is basically a (the)
theory of knowledge and perhaps as well the basic process that can evolve
the world. With both authors I quibble as to why they did not give more
thought to answers as to how signs come about or are brought about in the
first place.
So much now, Alfred
---------------Peirce quote 1, undatable, MS Robin 278:34?-----------------
There are three kinds of interest we may take in a thing. First we may
have a primary interest in it for itself. Second, we may have a secondary
interest in it, on account of its reactions with other things. Third, we
may have a mediatory interest in it, in so far as it conveys to a mind an
idea about a thing. In so far as it does this, it is a sign; or
representamen.
---------------Peirce quote 2, 1897, CP 2.228-----------------
A sign, or representamen is something which stands to somebody for
something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is,
creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more
developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the
first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that
object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I
have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.
-----------Peirce quote 3, 1909, 6.347, From Some amazing mazes...----------
[...] a sign endeavours to represent, in part at least, an Object, which is
therefore in a sense the cause, or determinant, of the sign even if the
sign represents its object falsely. But to say that it represents its
Object implies that it affects a mind, and so affects it as, in some
respect, to determine in that mind something that is mediately due to the
Object. That determination of which the immediate cause, or determinant, is
the Sign, and of which the mediate cause is the Object may be termed the
Interpretant [...]
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Alfred Lang Internet: lang who-is-at psy.unibe.ch
Psychology, Univ. of Bern, Unitobler, Muesmattstr. 45, CH-3000 Bern 9
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