Charles S. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics

11 -Semeiotic and Linguistics

Philosophers are still divided concerning the importance of Peirce’s philosophy. Nevertheless, if Peirce is accepted today everywhere, and especially in France, it is thanks to the linguists who followed Jakobson’s misreading of Peirce. The cross-reading I propose here is not intended as a criticism of Jakobson, but as a kind of clari¤cation of Peirce. The fact that I worked on the French text of Jakobson does not affect the argument.* We shall deal respectively with Jakobson’s reading of Peirce and with a possible Peircean reading of Jakobson. JAKOBSON’S READING OF PEIRCE In the ¤fties, Roman Jakobson discovered Peirce and wrote that Peirce was one of the greatest forerunners of structural analysis in linguistics. He said that Peirce had not only proved the necessity of semiotics, but stated the outlines of its theory. And he predicted that, when Peirce’s ideas on the theory of signs, and of linguistic signs in particular, were thoroughly studied, the researches on the relations between language and the other systems of signs would be far easier. - 11 Semeiotic and Linguistics peirce and jakobson [Charles Sanders Peirce] est l’un des plus grands précurseurs de l’analyse structurale en linguistique. Peirce n’a pas seulement établi la nécessité de la sémiotique, il en a aussi esquissé les grandes lignes. Le jour où on se décidera à étudier soigneusement les idées de Peirce sur la théorie des signes, des signes linguistiques en particulier, on se rendra compte du précieux secours qu’elles apportent aux recherches sur les relations entre le langage et les autres systèmes de signes. —Jakobson (1963: 27–28) * The Jakobsonian material I used is: Roman Jakobson, Essais de linguistique générale (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1963); Roman Jakobson, “A la recherche de l’essence du langage” in Problèmes du langage (Paris: Gallimard, 1966); “Roman Jakobson,” L’Arc, special issue n° 60 (1975). The translations from the French otherwise mentioned are mine. From his reading of Peirce, Jakobson concluded (1) that the sign is divided into icons, indices, and symbols, and (2) that this division is “relative” in the ordinary sense of the word. In every sign there is a ratio of icon (resemblance), index (contiguity), and symbol (conventional rule)—“merely a difference in relative hierarchy within individual signs, since in each case one of these factors predominates over the others” (Jakobson 1966: 26–27). Unfortunately, the de¤nition of the sign and the conception of the “hierarchy ” are wrong: there are three trichotomies and not one (i.e., nine relational aspects of a sign and not three), and the hierarchy is not relative, but ordered. The Conception of the Sign The fact that Jakobson says that the “totality of signs” is divided into “icons, indices and symbols” (Jakobson 1966: 26) is a genuine misreading. According to Peirce, the division between “icons, indices and symbols” refers only to the sign in relation with its immediate object. It is true, however, that Peirce is not always very clear and that the following way of speaking is misleading: Thus we may show the relation between the different kinds of signs by a brace, thus: Signs: RIcons SIndices TSymbols (2.282) The misreading is aggravated when Jakobson introduces Peirce’s icons, indices , and symbols between Saussure’s signi¤er and signi¤ed. It is not the absolute presence or absence of resemblance or contiguity between the signi¤er and the signi¤ed, nor the fact that the usual connection between these constituents would be of the order of the purely factual or the purely institutional , which is at the basis of the division of the totality of signs into icons, indices and symbols, but only the predominance of one of these factors over the others. (Jakobson 1966: 26) Jakobson is here trying to explain Peirce in Saussurean terms, for example, the use of “signi¤er” and “signi¤ed,” without mentioning the “interpretant.” Is the signi¤er Peirce’s representamen? Although Jakobson is right concerning the fact that the icon is related to similarity together with the emotional aspect of sign and that the index is related to contiguity together with the action or pragmatic aspect of sign, he does not mention the third relation with the object: the symbol, which is related in the same way to continuity together with the inferential aspect of sign. We will later encounter the same problem with Umberto Eco’s reading of Peirce: I am thus asserting...