Peirce’s Triadic Model – Interpreting Signs

A sign or  a symbol? Image by Lesley Lanir 
When Ferdinand de Saussure was formulating his two part ‘dyadic’ model of the sign, consisting of a ‘signifier, or  the form that a sign takes, and the ‘signified,’ or concept  it represents, American, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) was theorizing his own model of semiotics and signs.
In contrast to Saussure’s model, Peirce formulated a three-part triadic model consisting of an interpretant,  representamen, and an object.

Symbols according to Peirce. Diagram Lesley Lanir


By examining the relationship between objects, interpretants, and representamens and, in particular, the way the referent determines the sign, Peirce also distinguished three main ‘modes’  into which signs can be assigned: symbol, icon and index.

Example of  an iconic sign. Image by Lesley Lanir

Iconic signs according to Peirce. Diagram Lesley Lanir


Example of an indexical sign. Image by Lesley Lanir
Indexical signs according to Peirce. Diagram Lesley Lanir


Peirce’s Triadic Model – Interpreting Signs

Having an interpretant as part of his semiotic model was Peirce’s new and distinctive addition to understanding and defining signs.
Peirce did not believe that signification was a straightforward binary relationship between a sign and an object, and he viewed this innovative  part of his triad as how we perceive or understand a sign and its relationship to the object it is referring to.
A critical point in Peirce’s theory is that the meaning of a sign is created by the interpretation it stimulates in those using it. He reiterates this in his comment that  “a sign … addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign.”
So an interpretant is the sense we make out of the sign, similar in meaning to Saussure’s ‘signified’ except that it is a sign in the mind of the interpreter.  The element of interpretation in Peirce’s theories also emphasized his claims that semiosis is a process, whereas Saussure’s emphasis was always on structure.

Find out more about Peirce’s theories by reading,
Charles Sanders Peirce’s Semiotics – The Triadic Model  an article I wrote for Decoded Science and a previous blog post on Peirce.

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