Origin of Charles Sander Peirce's model of triadic signs diagram?

Question

Does anyone know the origin of this diagram based on Charles Sander Peirce's model of triadic signs?

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/peirce-semiosis.gif

Is it by Peirce and if so from what or is it from a reader on Peirce?

Answer 1

Peirce' Theory of Signs is complex and - unfortunately - there are no complete treatises dedicated to semiotics by Peirce himself :

Across the course of his intellectual life, Peirce continually returned to and developed his ideas about signs and semiotic and there are three broadly delineable accounts: a concise Early Account from the 1860s; a complete and relatively neat Interim Account developed through the 1880s and 1890s and presented in 1903; and his speculative, rambling, and incomplete Final Account developed between 1906 and 1910.

For an early exposition, see : On a New List of Categories, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 7 (1868). [See also Peirce's Categories.]

For a full-lenght book on Peirce's semiotics, see :

• T.L. Short, Peirce's Theory of Signs (2007).

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For relevant "semeiotics" quotes, see here. [See also Peirce's Triadic signs.]

It seems to me that the diagram is not present, also if we have clear "descriptions" of it :

The easiest of those which are of philosophical interest is the idea of a sign, or representation. A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its Object; that which it conveys, its Meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its Interpretant. [from a 1893-5 Ms., Chapter II: The Categories.]

A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. [from a c.1897 Ms., On Signs.]

[...] a sign is a thing related to an object and determining in the interpreter an interpreting sign of the same object. It involves the relation between sign, interpreting sign, and object. [from the 1903 Ms.prepared for the Lowell Lectures of 1903.]

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Possible source of the diagram (if my conjecture about its non-Peircian origin is sound) :

• Charles Key Ogden & Ivor Armstrong Richards, The Meaning of Meaning : A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923), page 11, with no explicit reference to Peirce.

But Peirce's ideas are summarized into Appendix D [page 279-90] :

by far the most eleaborate and determined attempt to give an account of signs and their meaning is that of the American logician C.S.Peirce [...].

The diagram of Ogden & Richards is reproduced into :

• Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (original ed.1975), page 59 :

The diagram in question is the well-known triangle, diffused in its most common form by Ogden and Richards (1923) [...]. The triangle apparently translates Peirce’s : [here you can find reproduced your diagram].

Answer 2

Peirce invented the so-called "existential graphs". A good description of this is found in §4.7 "The geometry of thought: Existential graphs" (pp. 69-72) of Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed by Cornelis de Waal.

More in-depth studies are:

• Don D. Roberts, The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce (The Hague: Mouton, 1973)

• J. Jay Zeman, “The Graphical Logic of C.S. Peirce.” (1964).

Answer 3

It's not the Charles Key Ogden & Ivor Armstrong Richards diagram, that uses the terms Symbol, Thought or Reference and Referent and there is no indication of Semiosis.

I think I may have located the source. It seems to be the article from which the original image link I posted came - at least the post on this weblog (http://bpdp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/web-semiotics-web-as-sign-system.html) suggests that it's original to that article.