1991: Charles Sanders Peirce, Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic By Charles Sanders Peirce
As a philosopher, scientist, logician, and mathematician, Peirce was a major brainbox and wrote some pretty heavy-going technical stuff. Still, since we’re focusing on literature rather than math, this anthology is ideal: complete with handy introductions and notes, it gives us an accessible look at Peirce’s three-sided model of the sign (made up of representamen, interpretant and object) and his division of signs into three types (symbolic, iconic and indexical). Ultimately, these writings help show that, for Peirce, thought itself is organized in terms of signs.
As we can see, Peirce had a thing for dividing stuff into threes. But what are the effects of splitting up the sign into not two, but three terms? How do these terms match up with or revise Saussure’s model?