Augusto Ponzio The Dialogic Nature of Signs “ Semiotics Institute on Line ” 8 lectures for

The sign is firstly an interpretant, that is, a response Now let's try to simplify Peirce's terminology, but without oversimplifying. In our terminology, the fundamental terms that constitute a sign include the interpreted, and the interpretant, in a relationship where the interpretant makes the interpreted possible. So that a sign can subsist, there must be an interpreted sign and an interpretant sign, in other words, an object that acts as the interpreted of an interpretant. In Peirce's view the minimal relationship allowing for something to act as a sign is triadic and involves: 1) something objective (not necessarily a physical object), i. e. preexistent, autonomous, in this sense " material " with respect to interpretation (the Object in Peirce's terminology); 2) the interpreted, that is, this very object insofar as it 'has meaning' (the Sign in Peirce's terminology); 3) the interpretant by virtue of which the object receives a given meaning. Reduced to its minimal terms, the sign presents these three faces. When we speak of the 'interpreted-interpretant' relation, our reference is to a (minimal and abstract) triadic relation. The interpreted implies the object of interpretation, so this expression must always be understood as a relation among 'object-interpreted-interpretant'.