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In semiotics, a sign is something that can be interpreted as having a meaning, which is something other than itself, and which is therefore able to communicate information to the one interpreting or decoding the sign. Signs can work through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory or taste, and their meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. There are two major theories about the way in which signs acquire the ability to transfer information; both theories understand the defining property of the sign as being a relation between a number of elements. In the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure the sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary motivated only by social convention. Saussure's theory has been particularly influential in the study of linguistic signs. The other major semiotic theory developed by C. S. Peirce defines the sign as a triadic relation as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity"〔Marcel Danesi and Paul Perron, ''Analyzing Cultures''.〕 This means that a sign is a relation between the sign vehicle (the specific physical form of the sign), a sign object (the aspect of the world that the sign carries meaning about) and an interpretant (the meaning of the sign as understood by an interpreter). According to Peirce signs can be divided by the type of relation that holds the sign relation together as either icons, indices or symbols. Icons are those signs that signify by means of similarity between sign vehicle and sign object (e.g. a portrait, or a map), indices are those that signify by means of a direct relation of contiguity or causality between sign vehicle and sign object (e.g. a symptom), and symbols are those that signify through a law or arbitrary social convention. ==Dyadic signs== According to Saussure (1857–1913), a sign is composed of the ''signifier''〔Mardy S. Ireland defines a signifier as: A unit of something (i.e., a word, gesture) that can carry ambiguous/multiple meanings (e.g., as U.S. President Bill Clinton once said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is', is") p. 13.〕 (''signifiant''), and the ''signified'' (''signifié''). These cannot be conceptualized as separate entities but rather as a mapping from significant differences in sound to potential (correct) differential denotation. The Saussurean sign exists only at the level of the synchronic system, in which signs are defined by their relative and hierarchical privileges of co-occurrence. It is thus a common misreading of Saussure to take signifiers to be anything one could speak, and signifieds as things in the world. In fact, the relationship of language to parole (or speech-in-context) is and always has been a theoretical problem for linguistics (cf. Roman Jakobson's famous essay "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics" et al.). A famous thesis by Saussure states that the relationship between a sign and the real-world thing it denotes is an arbitrary one. There is not a natural relationship between a word and the object it refers to, nor is there a causal relationship between the inherent properties of the object and the nature of the sign used to denote it. For example, there is nothing about the physical quality of paper that requires denotation by the phonological sequence ‘paper’. There is, however, what Saussure called ‘relative motivation’: the possibilities of signification of a signifier are constrained by the compositionality of elements in the linguistic system (cf. Emile Benveniste's paper on the arbitrariness of the sign in the first volume of his papers on general linguistics). In other words, a word is only available to acquire a new meaning if it is identifiably ''different'' from all the other words in the language and it has no existing meaning. Structuralism was later based on this idea that it is only within a given system that one can define the distinction between the levels of system and use, or the semantic "value" of a sign. ==Triadic signs== Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) proposed a different theory. Unlike Saussure who approached the conceptual question from a study of linguistics and phonology, Peirce was a somewhat Kantian philosopher who distinguished "sign" from "word" as only a particular kind of sign, and characterized the sign as the means to understanding. He covered not only artificial, linguistic, and symbolic signs, but also all semblances (such as kindred sensible qualities), and all indicators (such as mechanical reactions). He counted as symbols all terms, propositions, and arguments whose interpretation is based upon convention or habit, even apart from their expression in particular languages. He held that "all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs".〔Peirce, C. S., ''Collected Papers'', v. 5, paragraph 448 footnote, from "The Basis of Pragmaticism" in 1906.〕 The setting of Peirce's study of signs is philosophical logic, which he defined as formal semiotic,〔Peirce, C.S., 1902, Application to the Carnegie Institution, Memoir 12, "On the Definition of Logic", (Eprint ). Note that by "logic" Peirce means a part of philosophy, not the mathematics of logic. (See Classification of the sciences (Peirce).〕 and characterized as a normative field following esthetics and ethics, as more basic than metaphysics,〔On his classifications, see Peirce, C.S. (1903), ''Collected Peirce'' v. 1, paragraphs 180–202 (Eprint ) and (1906) "The Basis of Pragmaticism" in ''The Essential Peirce'' v. 2, pp. 372–3. For relevant quotes, see "Philosophy" and "Logic" in the ''(Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms )''.〕 and as the art of devising methods of research.〔Peirce, C.S., 1882, "Introductory Lecture on the Study of Logic" delivered September 1882, ''Johns Hopkins University Circulars'', v. 2, n. 19, pp. 11–12, November 1892, ''Google Book'' (Eprint ). Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 7, paragraphs 59–76, ''The Essential Peirce'' v. 1, pp. 210–14, and ''Writings of Charles S. Peirce'' v. 4, pp. 378–82.〕 He argued that, since all thought takes time, all thought is in signs,〔Peirce, C.S. (1868), "Questions concerning certain Faculties claimed for Man" (''Arisbe'' (Eprint )), ''Journal of Speculative Philosophy'' vol. 2, pp. 103–114. Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 213–63.〕 that all thought has the form of inference (even when not conscious and deliberate),〔 and that, as inference, "logic is rooted in the social principle", since inference depends on a standpoint that, in a sense, is unlimited.〔Peirce, C. S. (1878) "The Doctrine of Chances", ''Popular Science Monthly'', v. 12, pp. 604–15, 1878, reprinted in ''Collected Papers'', v. 2, paragraphs 645–68, ''Writings of Charles S. Peirce'' v. 3, pp. 276–90, and ''The Essential Peirce'' v. 1, pp. 142–54. "...death makes the number of our risks, the number of our inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. The very idea of probability and of reasoning rests on the assumption that this number is indefinitely great. .... ...logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. .... Logic is rooted in the social principle."〕 The result is a theory not of language in particular, but rather of the production of meaning, and it rejects the idea of a static relationship between a sign and that which it represents, its object. Peirce believed that signs are meaningful through recursive relationships that arise in sets of three. Even when a sign represents by a resemblance or factual connection independent of interpretation, the sign is a sign only insofar as it is at least potentially interpretable by a mind and insofar as the sign is a determination of a mind or at least a ''quasi-mind'', that functions as if it were a mind, for example in crystals and the work of bees〔See under "(Quasi-mind )" in the ''Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms''.〕—the focus here is on sign action in general, not on psychology, linguistics, or social studies (fields which Peirce also pursued). A sign is something which depends on an object in a way that enables (and, in a sense, determines) an interpretation, an ''interpretant'', to depend on the object ''as the sign depends on the object''. The interpretant, then, is a further sign of the object, and thus enables and determines still further interpretations, further interpretant signs. The process, called ''semiosis'', is irreducibly triadic, Peirce held, and is logically structured to perpetuate itself. It is what defines sign, object, and interpretant in general.〔For Peirce's definitions of ''sign'' and ''semiosis'', see under "(Sign )" and "(Semiosis, semeiosy )" in the ''(Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms )''; and "(76 definitions of sign by C. S. Peirce )" collected by Robert Marty. Peirce's "(What Is a Sign )" (MS 404 of 1894, ''Essential Peirce'' v. 2, pp. 4–10) provides intuitive help.〕 As Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990: 7) put it, "the process of referring effected by the sign is ''infinite''." (Note also that Peirce used the word "determine" in the sense not of strict determinism, but of effectiveness that can vary like an influence.〔For example, Peirce said "determined (i.e., specialized, ''bestimmt'')" in a letter to William James, dated 1909, see p. 492 in ''The Essential Peirce'' v. 2.〕) Peirce further characterized the three semiotic elements as follows:〔For Peirce's definitions of ''immediate object'' and the rest, see the ''(Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms )''.〕 # ''Sign'' (or ''representamen''〔Pronounced with the “a” long and stressed: . See wiktionary:representamen.〕): that which represents the denoted object (cf. Saussure's "signifier"). # ''Object'' (or ''semiotic object''): that which the sign represents (or as some put it, encodes). It can be anything thinkable, a law, a fact, or even a possibility (a semiotic object could even be fictional, such as Hamlet); those are partial objects; the total object is the universe of discourse, the totality of objects in that world to which one attributes the partial object. For example, perturbation of Pluto's orbit is a sign about Pluto, but not only about Pluto. The object may be ## ''immediate'' to the sign, the object as represented in the sign, or ## ''dynamic'', the object as it really is, on which the immediate object is founded. # ''Interpretant'' (or ''interpretant sign''): a sign's meaning or ramification as formed into a further sign by interpreting (or, as some put it, decoding) the sign. The interpretant may be: ##''immediate'' to the sign, a kind of possibility, all that the sign is suited to immediately express, for instance a word's usual meaning; ##''dynamic'', that is, the meaning as formed into an actual effect, for example an individual translation or a state of agitation, or ##''final'' or ''normal'', that is, the ultimate meaning that inquiry taken far enough would be destined to reach. It is a kind of norm or ideal end, with which an actual interpretant may, at most, coincide. Peirce explained that signs mediate between their objects and their interpretants in semiosis, the triadic process of determination. In semiosis a ''first'' is determined or influenced to be a sign by a ''second'', as its object. The object determines the sign to determine a ''third'' as an interpretant. ''Firstness'' itself is one of Peirce's three categories of all phenomena, and is quality of feeling. Firstness is associated with a vague state of mind as feeling and a sense of the possibilities, with neither compulsion nor reflection. In semiosis the mind discerns an appearance or phenomenon, a potential sign. ''Secondness'' is reaction or resistance, a category associated with moving from possibility to determinate actuality. Here, through experience outside of and collateral to the given sign or sign system, one recalls or discovers the object to which the sign refers, for example when a sign consists in a chance semblance of an absent but remembered object. It is through one's collateral experience〔In that context Peirce speaks of collateral experience, collateral observation, collateral acquaintance, all in much the same terms. See pp. 404–9 in "Pragmatism" in ''The Essential Peirce'' v. 2. Ten quotes on collateral experience from Peirce provided by Joseph Ransdell can be viewed (here ) at peirce-l's Lyris archive.〕 that the object determines the sign to determine an interpretant. ''Thirdness'' is representation or mediation, the category associated with signs, generality, rule, continuity, habit-taking, and purpose. Here one forms an interpretant expressing a meaning or ramification of the sign about the object. When a second sign is considered, the initial interpretant may be confirmed, or new possible meanings may be identified. As each new sign is addressed, more interpretants, themselves signs, emerge. It can involve a mind's reading of nature, people, mathematics, anything. Peirce generalized the communicational idea of utterance and interpretation of a sign, to cover all signs:〔Peirce (1906), "Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism", ''The Monist'', v. XVI, n. 4, pp. 492–546, see pp. 523–4, ''Google Books'' (Eprint ). Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 4, paragraphs 530–72, see 551.〕 According to Nattiez, writing with Jean Molino, the tripartite definition of sign, object, and interpretant is based on the "trace" or neutral level, Saussure's "sound-image" (or "signified", thus Peirce's "representamen"). Thus, "a symbolic form...is not some 'intermediary' in a process of 'communication' that transmits the meaning intended by the author to the audience; it is instead the result of a complex ''process'' of creation (the poietic process) that has to do with the form as well as the content of the work; it is also the point of departure for a complex process of reception (the ''esthesic'' process that ''reconstructs'' a 'message'"). (ibid, p. 17) Molino's and Nattiez's diagram: : :::(Nattiez 1990, p. 17) Peirce's theory of the sign therefore offered a powerful analysis of the signification system, its codes, and its processes of inference and learning, because the focus was often on natural or cultural context rather than linguistics which only analyses usage in slow-time whereas, in the real world, there is an often chaotic blur of language and signal exchange during human semiotic interaction. Nevertheless, the implication that triadic relations are structured to perpetuate themselves leads to a level of complexity not usually experienced in the routine of message creation and interpretation. Hence, different ways of expressing the idea have been developed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sign (semiotics)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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