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This article has been published in: Ocula 15, Commemorating Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914): Interpretive Semiotics and Mass Media

author: Valerio De Michele (Università di Bologna (IT))

Notes for a typology of Dicisigns

language: italian

abstract: In the Speculative Grammar, Charles Peirce proposes two types of Dicisigns: Indexical Dicisigns and Symbolic Dicisigns. Their structure seems to be a blueprint of the complete relatives introduced in the Logic of 1897. Indeed, in both cases we have an icon with blanks. An icon that shows in its full appearance the dent of a lack, the necessity to pertain to “another”. Thus Dicisigns present an iconic part (that appears as structurally independent and logically complete) on which an indexical part is grafted, exhibiting its own structural incompleteness, its necessity to pertain to another entity. As I understand them, the two typologies of Dicisigns correspond to two different ways of filling the indexical part of that deep structure. In Indexical Dicisigns, the indexical part is filled by making use of a semiosic unit also having an indexical nature. The Dicisign exhibits a predication that is applied to en entity which – in its turn – expresses itself, inside the Sign, in a symbolic mode. The Peircean model seems to be incomplete for two reasons: i) it focuses on the necessity to fill the indexical part of the sign, wholly neglecting the iconic one; ii) it focuses only on the indexical and symbolic filling of the indexical part, neglecting the possible iconic filling. Therefore i) I try to reduce the two typologies advanced by Peirce to a more general model, in which both the indexical and iconic parts of the Dicisign are considered and, moreover, ii) I try to fill all their possible blanks: iconic, indexical and symbolic. From the combination thereof we are able to obtain nine different typologies of Dicisigns.

citation information: Valerio De Michele, Note per una tipologia dicisegnica, "Ocula", vol.15, n.15, November 2014. DOI: 10.12977/ocula31

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