The six types of sign action

Abstract The Peircean doctrine of signs is incomplete. This paper rethinks the standard model of sign action to provide a common framework for analyzing all the different kinds of semiotic processes, including the workings of thinking creatures, sentient beings, single cell organisms, social systems, and sciences. Through a detailed theoretical analysis, the paper shows how we can separate mediation (featuring the steps: source, mediator, and outcome) from representation (featuring the conventional sign correlates: object, sign, and interpretant) in Peircean semiotics and combine the two to establish a general model of sign action. This leads to the fundamental and, in a Peircean context, somewhat controversial ideas that there are not two but three dynamical sign correlates and, notably, that there is not one direction of mediation in the sign triad, but six directions, which constitute six fundamental types of sign action: perceiving , acting , interpreting , expressing , sensing , and reacting . The sixfold model of sign action is a step toward a general theory of semiosis, it promises to reconcile the split in biosemiotics, and it provides a coherent semiotic foundation for a general theory of observation in science. Chiefly, it offers a workable framework for semiotics.