Elements of Peircean phenomenology: From categories to signs by way of grounds

All levels of semiosis, from the materiality of signs to their contents and the contexts of their application, are structured by a selectivity in human experience and action that foregrounds only a fraction of the situation here and now. Before Sperber and Wilson, concepts of “relevance” were proposed in both semiotics and phenomenology to analyze this selectivity. Building critically on Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology, I suggest that a productive way to capture the fundamental role of relevance in processes of meaning-making is to see relevance as the outcome of an interplay between two antagonistic tendencies. On the one hand, socially stabilized and individually sedimented “types” guide our experience and action along established patterns. On the other hand, we are actively open to new and unexpected aspects; we are ready to deviate from types and to change typical patterns. Only both tendencies taken together account for our semiotic behavior in context. Spatial metaphors such as “ground” illuminate only a part of this interplay. Due to the double movement in what becomes relevant to us, the typical ground on which we produce and interpret signs is constantly being shifted and re-grounded, which keeps driving on an endless process of semiosis.

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Elements of Peircean phenomenology: From categories to signs by way of grounds

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Putting Aside One’s Natural Attitude—And Smartphone—To See What Matters More Clearly

Putting Aside One’s Natural Attitude—And Smartphone—To See What Matters More Clearly

The Elucidation of the Phenomenology of the Picture Sign from Its Phaneroscopy, and Vice Versa

Relevance as the Moving Ground of Semiosis

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