Peircean semiosis as the process for the making of meaning

Abstract

Abstract One domain in which one would expect to find enlightenment concerning the nature of meaning is the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and, in particular, the various versions of the pragmatic maxim that he refined over the years. For the maxim was, he claimed in a late text, really nothing more than a sort of protocol for determining the meaning of “hard words.” However, at the same time, Peirce saw the communication of meaning as a process that necessarily involved signs, thereby placing the onus of meaning-making within the scope of semiotics. The paper begins by examining the possible contributions to our understanding of the nature of meaning provided by Peirce’s pragmatism and the well-known ten-class classificatory system of 1903 derived from his theory of universal phenomenological categories. However, finding that both present structural limitations for such a study, the paper proceeds to develop the hexadic, 28-class sign-system of 1908 – based, in this case, on three modal universes of existence – and the process of semiosis in order to show how a neo-Peircean conception of semiosis enables the researcher not only to demonstrate the way meaning is communicated but also to hypothesize the way meaning is made through mediatization.