In the last writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, a new element is incorporated into the tripartite semiotic scheme of sign, object and interpretant, which is form. This modification adds this significant element and functions as an opening to new fields of inquiry, especially to elucidate the action of form in the processes of semiosis.
I will refer preferably to two of Peirce's
late works: Manuscript 793 and Letters to Miss Welby. In these works, semiotics shifts from the
treatment of the sign as representation to the sign as communication. It is a
prioritization of the communicative fact rather than an erasure of
representation.
In Peirce's later writings he focused
on the notion of communication as an essential feature of all semiosis, not
only the sign as a medium of communication between two minds, but also the sign
as a medium within the sign relation, which communicates a form from the object
to the Interpretant.
Communication does not exhaust the field of
action of signs, although it is now considered as the central axis of semiosis.
It is in this context that Peirce places the notion of form as part of the
communicative process and the exchanges of information.
The general function of signs is to
communicate ideas; this is equally true of thoughts, imaginary signs that
convey ideas from the self of the past to the self of the future, as it is of
the signs used in external exchanges of information... However, this does not
mean that semiosis would be exhausted by communication as it is ordinarily
understood.
Studies tend to focus on this transformation
of semiotics and the question of form is treated in a very marginal way. This
remains a term of automatic understanding without further elucidation, as if it
were evident that what is communicated is the form. In this sense, we do not
enter into the debates of semiotics but concentrate on the role that form plays
in the communicative process of the sign and on the consequences for a full
understanding of the notion of form, which allows its use beyond the sphere of
semiotics.
Before entering fully into the texts that
refer to form, it is convenient to keep in mind what dynamic objectives and
dynamic interpretants are, since they are integrated into the processes of
communication, where form appears. The immediate object, part of the triad of
sign, object and interpretant, is subsumed in the dynamic object and is now
understood as a partial, incomplete moment of that dynamic object, which is
found when the communication is already given or concluded.
The dynamic object fulfills two essential
functions for semiosis: it establishes a sequence of signs and intertwines them
in such a way that none of them are isolated, that is, it builds a chain of
signs; and, once this has been given, it is integrated into a system of
signs; only when these two movements are complete does the object attain
its full significance.
The dynamic object is, in some senses,
the object that generates a chain of signs. The aim of a sign chain is to
arrive at a full understanding of an object and so assimilate that object into
the system of signs. Using slightly more simplistic terms, Ransdell (1977, 169)
describes the dynamic object as the "object as it really is", and
Hookway (1985, 139) describes it as "the object as it is known to be [at
the end of inquiry]".
In turn, the dynamic interpretant follows the
movement of the dynamic object. Once we have the dynamic object, then a level
of understanding is reached; for this reason, it is affirmed that this
interpretant corresponds to the interpretation that we have effectively arrived
at in each communicative situation.
The dynamic interpretant, then, is the
understanding we reach, or which the sign determines, at any particular
semiotic stage. To continue with linguistic examples, we know that the dynamic
interpretant is the actual interpretation we make, or understanding we reach,
in the first instance of interpretation.
Let us now see how the form is located in this
brief context that has been outlined. In Manuscript 793, in Note 22, Peirce
introduces the term form as part of the semiotic process of communication: "For the
purposes of this inquiry a Sign may be defined as a Medium for the
communication of a Form."
The need for the presence of the form that
completes the triad and that makes all communication possible originates in
those quasi-minds that present themselves as forms capable of indexing,
concretizing or expressing themselves in a diversity of manifestations. The
type of form that communicates is manifested through various tokens. The shape
would be a type that is indexed in its tokens.
It is not logically necessary that
anything possessing consciousness, that is, feeling of the peculiar common
quality of all our feeling, should be concerned. But it is necessary that there
should be two, if not three, quasi-minds, meaning things capable of varied
determination as to forms of the kind communicated.
The sign is the carrier that carries the form
from the object to the interpretant; that is, from the dynamic object to the
dynamic interpretant in such a way that it closes the circle of communication.
In this sense, form is the content of communication. To put it more rigorously,
the content that goes from the object to the interpretant is always the form of
the content; or a content formed in a certain way, through which it maintains
its unity and makes possible a varied indexing.
That which is communicated from the
Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form... The Form that is
communicated does not necessarily cease to be in one thing when it comes to be
in a different thing, because its being is a being of the predicate.
The fact that the form is embodied
representatively means that it produces the specific communicative effect,
producing the closure of the communicative act, allowing it to be effective and
for the dynamic interpretant to understand not only the immediate meaning but
the complete meaning of what is being communicated.
In the Sign the Form may or may not be
embodied entitatively, but it must be embodied representatively, that is, in
respect to the Form communicated, the sign produces upon the Interpretant an
effect similar to that which the Object itself would under favorable
circumstances.
The two aspects of semiosis, representation
and communication, are fully realized in the communication of form. Behind the
communication process there is necessarily the sign as representation that, in
this new approach, is subsumed to the dynamics of communication. Perhaps
because of this crucial role given to form, Peirce associates it with the truth
of the proposition.
The Being of a Form consists in the
truth of a conditional proposition. Under given circumstances, something would
be true... The Form is in the Object, entitatively we may say, meaning that
that conditional relation, or following of consequent upon reason, which
constitutes the Form, is literally true of the Object.
Peirce probably goes too far with this
statement, which, moreover, is not expanded or substantiated. Rather, it would
be preferable to say that the communication of form opens up to the veritative
sphere of the proposition, which can be true or false. As Umberto Eco says, all
semiotics has to be able to explain both truth and lies: "In that sense,
semiotics is, in principle, the discipline that studies everything that can be
used to lie."
The form is the result of the duality of the
sign, which represents the object and, at the same time, continues to
refer to the sign in its function of representation as such. This means that
there is representational content, but
there is also the form, which refers to the sign as soon as it connects it with
the object.
Indeed in
what we may, from one point of view, regard as the principal kind of signs,
there is one distinct part appropriated to representing the object, and another
to representing how this very sign itself represents that object. The class of
signs I refer to are the dicisigns.
In the example given by Peirce, the object is
clearly distinguished as meaning and the relationship established between them,
"he is in love with", as the form that the relationship between John
and Helen takes. In this way, the form immersed in the process of semiosis is
the one that gives a concrete content to the object of the sign, uniting representation
and communication in a single step, making the dynamic interpretant apprehend
the dynamic object.
In 'John is
in love with Helen' the object signified is the pair, John and Helen. But the
'is in love with' signifies the form, this sign represents itself to represent
John-and-Helen's Form to be.
Although the form, coming from reality or
fiction, is independent of communication, it cannot do without the sign in case
it wants to communicate, which includes its representation. When the sign
catches the form, the form becomes the object of the sign. Semiosis makes the form,
which is independent of communication, the object of the sign, precisely in
order to be able to communicate it. Only when form enters the semiotic process
does communication take place, which necessarily becomes communication of form.
The Form
(and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the former
Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must say that
the object of a sign can be nothing but what that sign represents it to be.
Upon entering the semiotic field,
forms acquire this status of signifying forms and for this reason, they
can be communicated by the sign to an interpretant: "On the other hand,
Peirce also suggests that the object is similar to an utterer in that it
functions as a "repository of ideas or significant forms". In addition, the social or collective dimension
is introduced, because these signifying forms have a common substrate, which
implies that the production of both forms and meanings occurs within the
framework of common experience.
Furthermore,
in the same passage Peirce introduces the peculiar (and rare) concept of
commens, which may be characterised as the common ground requisite in order
that any communication can take place. It seems to be a different way of saying
that the sign interpretation requires collateral experience, the stress being
laid on a common or shared acquaintance with the object.
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