Choreographies of Landscape. Sally Ann Ness
semeiotic, one must first understand what it means to claim that it is, as Peirce understood it to be, a sign.
The particular rhetorically adapted characterization of the pragmaticist sign that I advance here is not one that has been stated previously in the terms employed, either by Peirce himself or by any of his interpreters. Some, admittedly, might find it controversial. Peirce, however, gave many definitions of the sign concept, allowing for some latitude on the subject. The relatively underdeveloped status of the rhetorical branch of Peirce’s semeiotic, I argue, allows for considerably more. In formulating the present definition, I have “rhetoricized” two definitions that come from Peirce’s later writings, neither of which was identified by him as specifically or particularly rhetorical in character. These were formulated in 1903 and 1906 respectively. Drawing on both of them, I define a pragmaticist sign, approached rhetorically, as “an agent of intelligent, or at least intelligible, relational movement.”
The 1903 definition that inspires this rhetorical conceptualization was given in part of Peirce’s Syllabus, in an essay titled “Sundry Logical Conceptions” (EP2: 267–88). This “mature” definition of the sign, as it is sometimes called (EP2: 325), is phrased in the terms of Peirce’s ceno-pythagorean Universal Categories (EP2: 272), or “Universes of Experience,” as he eventually termed them (EP2: 435; 1908). In this definition, Peirce characterizes signs as “facts of Thirdness” (EP2: 272). As such they manifest as “triadic” relations. These are relations whose being consists in “bringing about” connections between more basic (monadic and dyadic) relata that previously were unrelated in the particular way that the sign connects them (EP2: 267, 269).
In that they belong to Peirce’s Universal Categories, signs are essentially relational in character. This characteristic I identify in the rhetorical definition of the sign above, specifying that the movements signs perform are “relational.” In their capacity to bring about or make manifest triadic relations, signs may be characterized as relationship instigators (logical and grammatical discourses more often characterize them as “determiners” or “informers”). In this respect, they are agentive, as the definition specifies. And, in that Peirce identified all triadic facts as “intellectual” (EP2: 171), or possessing entelechy, a concept Peirce took from Aristotle, they have the capacity, if not the demonstrated and/or recognized ability, for intelligent or at least intelligible (potentially intelligent) performance. As Peirce wrote, “Thought plays a part” in all cases of Thirdness (EP2: 269), and “wherever there is thought there is Thirdness” (EP2: 269). The 1903 Syllabus definition, in this manner, identifies three of the four characteristics specified in the rhetorical definition here conceptualized: relationality, agency, and intelligibility/intelligence.
The second, even later definition, formulated in 1906, was given in a letter Peirce wrote on March 9 of that year to his English colleague Lady Victoria Welby. In this formulation, Peirce defines a sign as “any medium for the communication or extension of a Form (or feature)” (1977; EP2: 477). This definition identifies two characteristics corresponding to the 1903 definition. As a “medium,” the sign is relational, and in its embodiment or manifestation of some form or feature, it is intelligible if not intelligent.
The fourth and most distinctive characteristic that the rhetorical definition above also identifies—the processual or moving character of the sign—may at first seem lacking from these 1903 and 1906 definitions. Here, it must be remembered that from a rhetorical perspective, as Peirce himself defined that point of view, any “form” involved in semiosis (or any feature or fact or thing or bit or unit or atom for that matter) is always apparent as a form in process, a form whose being is that of “bringing forth.” That is, forms, rhetorically conceived, are understood as living forms, as forms whose being is “being-born,” so to speak, or form-ing. A sign’s identity as such a “form-ing”—which is what matters most about the sign, rhetorically conceived—is what I have termed “movement” in the rhetorical definition given above.21 Peirce himself characterized such form- movement as the “essence” of semiosis, at times speaking of “thought-motion” as that which signs, particularly those of Logic, functioned to describe (1906, cited in Stjernfelt 2014: 78).
The rhetorical definition of the Peircean sign here conceptualized, then, does no more than identify from a rhetorical vantage point the four fundamental distinctive features Peirce attributed to signs according to their particular categorical classification as “facts of Thirdness.” It recognizes their relationality, their agency, their form-ing-ness, and their thoughtfulness. While it may read very differently from more standard logically and grammatically oriented definitions, it is nonetheless as consistent with Peirce’s pragmaticist orientation as they are and might arguably be seen to better represent what is most foundational to his thinking—“processuality,” if there might be such a term—despite its emerging from a relatively neglected area of his semeiotic.
The Peircean symbol is not, in this rhetorical regard, necessarily the transmitter of some kind of meaningful content that “it” conveys. Although many sorts of symbols, and other pragmaticist signs as well, conform to this definition, it is not their most basic identifying character. Peirce’s pragmaticist sign is even more fundamentally general in reference than such a definition would allow. Perhaps only Victor Turner’s definition of a symbol as “a positive force in an activity field” rivals Peirce’s as far as the applicability and referential inclusiveness of the conceptualization is concerned (1967: 20). From a rhetorical regard, a Peircean sign is basically kinetic rather than substantial. Whatever else it may be, a pragmaticist sign is always moving in a certain way. It is a “moved mover,” in Colapietro’s terms (1989: 22). Its agentive, performative character is born in movement, not in content. It emerges in activity—in transition, transformation, transmission, or translation or in some other kind of changeful process. Again, if the “e” in the Peircean spelling of “semeiotic” might be encoded with yet another meaning (multi-stably), it might also be read as signaling this kinetic performative identity of the rhetorically approached Peircean sign.
A semeiotic sign, in performance, moves movingly, as it, in its turn, has been so moved. This triple moving-ness is the source of its performative identity—its energeia,22 or actualizing capability—as well as its meaningfulness and intelligence. One could say, in this regard—indeed one should say—that the pragmaticist sign’s most basic performative character is dance-like. It is so in the sense that it is its thoughtful moving-ness that enables all of its relational capabilities. All other identities—intellectual, substantive, aesthetic, executive, political, argumentative, conceptual, placial, persuasive, all of them—emerge out of and remain continuous with this most basic dance-like identification.
A semeiotic sign may be a movement itself. It may be as simple as a mule-packer’s jerk on the reins of his horse, or the raising of a deer’s head at the sound of a shotgun, or a column of smoke rising into the sky above a forest fire. Signs, however, may also be inherent in material objects—in “things” of virtually any kind.23 If they are so inherent, however, they invest objects and/or the places of their being with a certain capacity to perform—to inspire or to bring about some kind of significant relational change. A giant boulder sitting in the middle of the Merced River, as it affords a means for visitors to jump into cool water on a hot summer day, plays host to a sign in this manner. The sun’s warmth, when it enables campers to get out of their sleeping bags and start their day, becomes a sign as well, as do the words of cheerful greeting that campers may employ with their neighbors while they are arising. “Beautiful day!” “Excuse me, can I heat some water on your camp stove?” “The summit will be out of the clouds by 9:30, don’t you think?” Such words and phrases inspire and move along processes of emotional, logical, imagined, and also physical significance. Linguistic speech acts, too, in this regard, are pragmaticist signs in their capacity to serve as agents of intelligent relational movements.
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