On Jul 2, 2009, at 11:39 PM, Frances Kelly wrote:
Let us have in a brief statement some definitions from members of what the term "sign" seems to mean.
No, Frances, YOU use the term "sign" quite a lot, but you haven't offered us a definition of how you use it. We may well guess or suppose what you mean, or we may each have our own idea--and they may all be very similar--but the BURDEN IS ON YOU to tell us how you are using the word, regardless of how long it will take you to spin out Ariadne's thread of baroque and complex and difficult stuff.
In the possible absence of any positive replies, it can likely be assumed that no confusion exists about this issue.
"It can likely be assumed"? You mean, YOU may likely assume, right? But this assumption is a basic logical error. You cannot logically infer ("assume") anything from the absence of a response. As the saying goes, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
In regard to the pragmatist jargon about signs, it is admittedly baroque and complex and difficult. The very real task for me in probable perpetuity is to weave this snarl of twine into a common lingual thread, and then tailor it for specific kinds of audiences. It may be that there is indeed a failure here.
Well, you must have a working understanding of "sign," or else you wouldn't be able to assert anything about signs with any degree of confidence. Tell us what your "provisional" definition is, your working definition.
Eco says that a sign is always an element on the expression plane that is conventionally correlated to one (or more) elements on the content plane. More exactly, he says, we should refer to a sign-function in which two functives (content and expression) are mutually correlated. He then elaborates about codes and how the sign-function operates.
Peirce wrote extensively about signs, and his system was indeed complex. He refers to representamen, ground, and object, and describes three kinds of triadic configurations of them....
You want to take it from here? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [email protected] http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
