Structure

In one of his letters of 1905, Peirce says,

on May 14, 1867, after three years of almost insanely concentrated thought, hardly interrupted even by sleep, I produced the . . . “New List of Categories” in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . . .we may classify objects according to their matter; as wooden things, iron things, silver things . . . etc. But classification according to structure is generally more important . . .I hold that a classification of the elements of thought and consciousness according to their structure is more important . . . I examine the phaneron and I endeavor to sort outs its elements according to the complexity of their structure.

Here we have the beginnings of a clearly structural approach to the phenomenological problems. And he adds, “I thus reached my three categories of signs.” Yet, permit me to say what the editor adds to the words of Peirce in a footnote: “Peirce then begins a long discussion of the categories of signs.” The editor does not publish this discussion. This is an incredible thing.

. . .

One of the most felicitous, brilliant ideas that came from Peirce for semiotics and linguistics in [is?] his definition of meaning. Meaning is the translation of a sign into another system of signs. How many fruitless discussions about mentalism and anti-mentalism would be avoided if one would speak simply on the problem of translation, which no mentalist, no anti-mentalist, and no behavioralist would consider as something that is not completely new? The problem of translation is really the fundamental problem in Peirce’s views.

. . .

As Benveniste says, the most known concept from Peirce is the existence of three types of signs—icons, indexes, and symbols. It is known. But things that are well known are usually distorted. Peirce never divides signs into these three classes. There are three poles, three categories, and all three can be present in the same sign. He says that a symbol may have an icon and index incorporated into it. He speaks about the various bonds of signs. For him the essence of semiotics is just this interaction, the hierarchical interrelation of these three semiotic forces.

Roman Jakobson, “A Few Remarks on Structuralism,” 1535, 1537, 1539, MLN Dec. 1976