Glossar-English:Sign, Sign Carrier, Sign System

Sub-Item to: Sign theories: Overview

Original: Zeichen, Zeichenträger, Zeichensystem

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The expression ‘sign’ has many different uses, which complicates its use in image philosophy. Only the most relevant aspects of the sign discussion in the philosophy of images will be dealt with in the following. Communicative interactions and sign actions Critics often accuse semiotic image theories of focusing solely on the representational function of an image. Media-theoretical approaches claim its communicative aspects, while perception-theoretical positions criticize the arbitrariness and conventionality they assume when images are understood as a kind of sign. Both critiques are directed at notions of signs that were admittedly more frequently used in the “pre- and early history” of semiotics: ‘a thing that stands for something else’ or ‘an idea that arbitrarily stands in for another idea’ (cf. also [Nöth 2005a]Nöth, Winfried (2005): Zeichentheoretische Grundlagen der Bildwissenschaft. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflexion und Anwendung. Halem, Köln. ). The ontological or mentalistic sign concepts thus outlined are indeed ill-suited to capture the characteristic peculiarities of images. However, nothing speaks against sign concepts that – not least in the wake of the linguistic turn – are developed from a broad act-theoretic concept of communication. One such starting point is the distinction between factual and communicative interactions. Sign use is thus understood as an action that takes place between two agents. The roles of these two agents are usually referred to as ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ (or also ‘producer’ and ‘recipient’). The point of communicative interactions is that the sender addresses the receiver by representing themselves in a particular way. In this self-representation (ostentation), something third becomes recognizable for the receiver – the represented, which can also be a fictitious state of affairs, which the sender represents themselves to perceive. It is evident that a sign concept based on this nested type of action is much more complex than the one of early semiotics, which was directly oriented toward the representational function. Symptoms and signals On the one hand, it is noticeable that the action-theoretical concept of communication no longer allows symptoms (indications) to be understood as signs without further ado. Although it is possible to use symptoms as signs for the phenomenon causing them, at least the corresponding self-presentation of a sender in a communicative interaction must then be added (⊳ “Natural” images). For example, smoke, although a symptom of fire, is not in itself a sign of fire. But it can be used by someone in a communicative interaction to make the receiver aware of the fire. The problem with the view that symptoms are a kind of sign, then, essentially, is that they are not (as a rule) communicative interactions and lack the corresponding agents – sender and receiver. That is not true for (animal) signals. The particular cry of a monkey warning about a predator, the pulsating coloration of an octopus in front of a sexual partner, or the baring of the teeth of a dog towards a child annoying it are undoubtedly cases of communicative interactions with the characteristic self-presentation of the sender. Nevertheless, they are not to be considered instances of signs. The reason is that the self-presentation to be observed fulfills the purpose of communication only for the observer; for the agents themselves, this purpose is not (yet) accessible. For this reason, the sender's meaning of a signal can always be distinguished from the receiver's. By applying the adequate behaviorist concept of meaning, the former is given by the internal and external conditions (taken as such by an observer) that must be present for the sender to utter the signal. In contrast, the latter corresponds to the activities triggered by the reception of the signal (in the eyes of the observer). For signs, on the other hand, it should apply that their meaning is the same for the sender and the receiver, also in their own view. Sign acts and communicative intentions Figure 1: Hierarchical embedding of the sign concept in the action concepts and their context Sign acts differ from other communicative interactions (especially signals) in that they are used by the acting subjects with insight into their purpose. Thus, the sender and receiver do not simply communicate with each other by, for instance, following a learned pattern of action (‹in this and that situation: do this!›), the actual purpose of the (overall) actions being apparent only to an external observer. Instead, they do so in their own awareness of the goal of reaching an understanding with someone else (even imagined) (‹do this in order to coordinate yourself with the other person›). Sign acts are thus precisely those communicative interactions that are at the same time actions in the narrower sense. A sign-actor thus always presents themselves to another (or to themselves in the role of the recipient), in particular as a being who carries out a communicative interaction with this counterpart, The producer then presents themselves as one who presents themselves as one who faces a particular situation (the italicized passage articulates precisely the sender's behavior in communicative interactions in general). The same is true for the recipient, who represents themselves as one who participates in a communicative interaction in an understanding way. In signal-like communicative interactions, the receptive participant does not need to perform ostentation, which changes in sign acts. By doubling the ostentation in this twofold manner, the possibility opens up for the agents themselves to relate the producer-side meaning and the recipient-side meaning to each other and, thus, ultimately, unify them into a single, controlled, shared meaning. That precisely forms the basis for the fact that in the case of signs, a propositional angle of the sign action can be established separated from other components. Figure 2: The traditional semiotic triangle according to [Richards & Ogden 1923a]Richards, I.A. & Ogden, R.G. (1923): The Meaning of Meaning. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. : p. 11 Conversely, the shared and separated meaning also opens the view for the purely physical aspect of the sign action: the sign carrier. Only in this complex constellation of action does the semiotic triangle make sense as an organization of aspects of a corresponding execution of action that is distinguishable for the agents themselves: the sign carrier as the signifying aspect (Fig. 2: „Symbol“), the propositional angle as the signified aspect („Referent“), and as a third aspect the execution of a (more elementary) communicative interaction that at all binds the other two together (mostly shortened to „Thought or Reference“ in the standard versions of the semiotic triangle). Rules and habits: Sign systems In contrast to the simple execution of elementary communicative acts, the communicators themselves become at least partially aware of the corresponding sub-acts and their interplay when such acts are presented. That means, in particular, that they appear to the sign-actor as one of various alternatives between which they can choose – and between which they also assume that the communication partner can choose. The sign action is, thus, a communication action to be understood as part of a whole system of possible variants: It is an element of a sign system. It is true that signals also form systems of alternatives: The warning cries of certain primates (as well as the reactions to them) are differentiated according to the enemy sighted – leopard, eagle, or python. What for an ethological observer can be found out quickly as a connection between different, alternative signal expressions of a shared scheme can nevertheless not yet be brought into a regular connection by non-sign-using animals since they can refer in each case only to the current situation and the self-presentation limited to one case to be presented in it. The regularities to be observed are habits, which are not controlled like rules by mutual (i.e., interindividual) coordination of the actors themselves and change in their characteristics only “behind the actors' backs” (e.g., by evolutionary processes). Only with the competence to sign acts do the agents also gain the ability to coordinate those habits with each other to transform them into genuine rules. The scope of alternative sign acts that form a sign system is therefore determined by rules: The alternatives can occur on the syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic level. ‘Signs’ as »sign carriers« and as »sign action schemata« Colloquial sign concept In colloquial language, the expression ‘sign’ often refers to the sign carrier as an object that can be separated from the sign action. That happens especially often when the sign carrier is used outside its sign function: ‘Put the poster behind the no-stopping sign!’. However, this extra-semiotic usage is often also employed as a basis for the everyday language concept of signs, which can thus be determined as a unilateral sign concept, in which the sign is characterized only by the properties of a single object (the sign carrier). Such a unilateral image concept occasionally underlies media-informatics reports as well: The digital encoding of images in an image file (for example, as jpg or tiff), which is usually referred to simply as ‘image’ by computer scientists, is, in fact, merely a description of syntactic elements of the actual pictorial sign, the file format just a notation for image carriers (⊳ Digital image). This approach, however, obscures the view that (1) another entity – that which is signified – plays a role in determining the object as a sign and that, moreover, (2) this signifying relation can only be instantiated in a certain framework of action – namely, a communication – so that two further roles (‘sender’ and ‘receiver’) are also necessary for the definition of the sign concept. Bilateral and multilateral sign concepts Bilateral (or dyadic) sign concepts, such as the one of Saussure ([Saussure 1916a]Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916): Cours de linguistique générale. Payot, Paris. Notiz: Deutsch: Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. 3. Aufl. Berlin 2001 ) but also already of Aristotle ([Keller 1995a]Keller, Rudi (1995): Zeichentheorie. Zu einer Theorie semiotischen Wissens. Francke, Tübingen, Basel. ), essentially try to solve the problem (1) mentioned for the unilateral concept, since here a sign is understood as an object, provided that it has a semantic relation to another object. Depending on the theory, this second object may be, in particular, a mental object (an idea), an abstraction (such as a class), or a concrete thing (physical individual object). However, all uses of the sign carrier as a sign are based on the meaning or representation relation. Figure 3: Bühler's Organon model In multilateral sign concepts, as proposed by Bühler ([Bühler 1934a]Bühler, Karl (1965): Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Fischer , Stuttgart. ) and Peirce ([Peirce 1983a]Peirce, Charles S. (1983): Phänomen und Logik der Zeichen. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. Nicht angezeigt: hg. u. übers. v. Helmut Pape ), the representational function is only one aspect of the sign, alongside which other pragmatic aspects occur focusing on the sign users and, thus, also on the activities that are (supposed to be) related to the sign act hence determining its meaning in a broader sense. That also results in approaches for remedying the problem (2) mentioned above. Bühler's organon model, for example, integrates the interaction aspect immanent in signs by schematically assigning to the two activity carriers involved in each case specific functions performed with the sign act, namely the expression function for the sender and the appeal function for the receiver (Fig. 3). Action-theoretical sign concept It is true that Bühler and Peirce develop a sign concept that is already decidedly oriented towards action. However, in their elaboration, they remain strongly oriented to the semiotic tradition of the bilateral sign concept: For example, the interpretant of a sign in Peirce's view is first a kind of mental sign, which the sign users generate for the interpretation of the “external” sign (and for whose interpretation they involve further interpretants in each case). The chain of interpretants finally leads to the „ultimate logical interpretant“, which Kuno Lorenz understands as a change of a behavioral habit – a „habit change“ ([Lorenz 1990a]Lorenz, Kuno (1990): Einführung in die philosophische Anthropologie. WBG, Darmstadt. Notiz: (<sup>2</sup>1992) : p. 121) – so that here the sign is finally anchored in actions. Lorenz stands in the tradition of the Erlangen constructivism of Kamlah and Lorenzen, who, in the wake of the linguistic turn and the action-theoretical reinterpretation of mental phenomena by Mead, Wittgenstein, v. Holst, and others, developed a less mentalistic sign concept from the concept of signifying actions. The focus is not on the sign carrier that signifies something by being used in a particular form of action but on what is determined as common to all executions of one type of sign action (all „actualizations“ of this type): A sign in the sense of Kamlah, Lorenzen, and also Lorenz is the action schema of a presentation action (= demonstration action, i.e., the schema of a conscious communicative interaction; [Kamlah & Lorenzen 1973a]Kamlah, Wilhelm & Lorenzen, Paul (1973): Logische Propädeutik. Vorschule des vernünftigen Redens. BI Wissenschaftsverlag, München. Nicht angezeigt: 2. Aufl. (<sup>1</sup>1967, <sup>3</sup>1996) , [Lorenz 1970a]Lorenz, Kuno (1970): Elemente der Sprachkritik – Eine Alternative zum Dogmatismus und Skeptizismus in der Analytischen Philosophie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. ). The network of relations between a sign action and its sub-actions, on the one hand, and the contextual activities (in particular, the preparatory actions required and the subsequent actions caused in each case), on the other hand, are thus brought much more directly into the focus of semiotic consideration. It is not about material objects but about extremely complex forms of interactions. This approach, therefore, also takes into account the peculiarity of certain sign acts in which the sign carrier is not an object that can be separated from the sign use: if, for example, a cyclist at an intersection makes a waving motion with his left hand to indicate to other road users that he intends to turn left – then this is definitely a clear case of sign use. Nevertheless, it is difficult here to determine the sign carrier at all, independent of the sign action. Accordingly, separable and mainly as such existing (i.e., persistent) sign carriers beyond the actual sign partial action are not simply called ‘signs’ – not even abbreviated – but are called ‘marks’. A mark can serve the recipient as a symptom for the preceding producer-side partial actions, which they imagine and can now complete to a sign act by the corresponding recipient-side partial actions: Utilizing the object at hand, the recipient presents themselves to themselves as one who in an understanding manner participates in a communicative interaction involving the mark in the presence of an imagined sender. Verbal signs Certainly, language is the best-studied sign system. Accordingly, the structure of verbal signs has strongly influenced the terminology of sign theory. As a consequence, critics of the semiotic image concept occasionally express the fear that an image theory decidedly oriented towards the sign concept operates in a way that is too language-heavy and that, thus, the differences existing between image and word are not sufficiently taken into account (⊳ Iconic Difference). However, the expression ‘signs’ is neither synonymous with ‘verbal signs’ nor ‘sign system’ synonymous with ‘language of signs’. Linguistic signs are also not the same as language(s) in linguistics, which can be characterized semiotically better as word/sentence-language sign systems (see below). Generalized concept of language and non-language sign systems In contrast to the (narrow) concept of language, which is primarily oriented towards linguistics, a more general semiotic distinction can be made, which is based on the fact that the signs of a sign system can – in a broad sense – be structured syntactically: The associated sign action schemata consist of parts which, in different combinations, constitute different signs of the system (see again Fig. 1). In the case of non-language sign systems, there is no such structure. The system does not have a morphology with the help of which the individual signs can be related to each other in a meaningful semiotic way based on the properties of the sign carrier alone (i.e., purely syntactically). For language sign systems, on the other hand, it must be possible to specify a morphology. It is not required for language sign systems (sign languages) in this extended sense that the parts themselves must, in turn, be signs of the system, as would be the case with the relation between word and sentence. Therefore, let us first consider the case of sign systems in which the sign parts are generally not signs of the system – more precisely formulated: none of the partial actions constituting the sign action schemata of such a sign system is already a sign action in the same sign system. In contrast to the non-language sign systems, a syntactic structure of sign languages can thus be specified, which, however, does not yet correspond to the combination of words to sentences, but, putting it in a linguistic analogy, instead to the composition of (not independently usable) morphemes to words. The sign system underlying »track reading« may serve as an example. The signs of this system are distinguished as interpretations of the variations of properties of the imprints (etc.) and their parts: For instance, the degree of blurring of the edges in connection with other peculiarities may serve as an indication of age. However, recognizing “blurredness” is not yet an independent sign that could be used within the system detached from other sign components. Nevertheless, together with the other relevant dimensions, it determines the morphology of the signs of this system. Word/sentence-language sign systems: Languages in the narrower sense The class of word/sentence-language sign systems is to be differentiated from the general sign languages. The former have a syntactic structure in the narrow sense, insofar as the partial actions that form a sign of these systems are already signs of that system themselves, namely, words forming sentences. That makes the distinction between words and sentences possible in the first place, and thus a combinative syntax that goes beyond pure morphology, like grammar in the sense of Chomsky ([Chomsky 1957a]Chomsky, Noam (1957): Syntactic Structures. Mouton, Den Haag. ; on this also ⊳ Image Grammar and Image Morphology). The definition of the concepts »word« and »sentence« is controversial in linguistics and semiotics: This is not least due to the bi- and multilateral sign concepts mostly considered in this context, which hardly provide criteria for a distinction between language sign systems organized only morphologically and those organized syntactically in the narrower sense (grammatically). From the action-theoretical point of view, however, it is quite obvious to explain the expression ‘sentence’ as the totality of signs in the narrower sense, which are used in the respective partial actions of a unified action such as »to state something«, »to communicate something« among others. On the other hand, the expression ‘word’ may be explained in its usage by referring to the individual signs in the narrower sense used in the context of such an overall action, in the execution of a partial action belonging to it. From this explanation follows, first of all, that an action schema of a particular kind, e.g., a sound, can indeed be recognized as a word only in connection with the utterance of a sentence. However, it also follows from this explanation that a speaker can form structurally new and, at the same time, understandable sentences: According to this explanation, they have neither “inductively derived” their use of individual words from sentences they have already heard, or even formed themselves, nor are they pre-determined in their future speech by rules already “created” in them ([Ros 1979a]Ros, Arno (1979): Objektkonstitution und elementare Sprachhandlungsbegriffe. Hain, Königstein/Ts. : p. 174). Therefore, the point of word/sentence-language sign systems is that not only the overall sign action (the sentence) is oriented to rules in form and use, but the form and use of the partial sign actions (the words) are already, in each case, entirely oriented to rules. The correct (syntactic) form and the correct (pragmatic) use of the sentences (and thus their meanings) can then be derived compositionally, if necessary, from the morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the words. Analogous arguments are missing for simple sign languages. The massive increase in complexity associated with the use of partial sign acts pays off with an extraordinary increase in the flexibility of these language systems. Propositional and explicitly performative sign actions Admittedly, word/sentence-language sign acts are not yet sufficient to articulate an explicit factual reference. Such a reference unfolds only with propositional speech acts. However, the actual syntactic breakdown of the sign system is a necessary precondition for the latter because the partial acts characteristic of the proposition – predication, nomination, and context-building act – must appear as independent sign acts, each with its own rules of interpretation. Only in this way is it also possible to communicate states of affairs that are not present (as such). Furthermore, explicit performative sign acts – such as ‘I hereby baptize you in the name «Titanic»’ or '‘I hereby swear (to you) that p’ – presuppose the competence to perform sentence/word-language communication acts (or, in the second example, even propositional sign acts): The explicit articulation of the illocution performed with the sign act can only succeed if the naming is available as an independent (partial) sign and, as such, embedded in the overall sign act. In the linguistic sense, languages always comprise propositional and explicitly performative sign actions, thus belonging to the most complex sign languages. The precise semiotic classification of pictures, however, is still controversial. In any case, the differentiations presented here will have to be taken into account when the application (or applicability) of the concept of signs to images is up for discussion. More Complications There is yet another way in which the complexity of sign acts, in general, and pictorial sign acts, in particular, can increase. In the cases considered so far, only one producer and one recipient each have participated in sign-using communication. On the receiving side, the transition to a plurality of recipients still seems to remain relatively simple and ultimately leads primarily to the theoretical considerations on mass media: In terms of sign theory, this does not change too much since already the sign use between two individual agents depends on the respective concrete ideas of the one about the other. In the case of mass media sign usage, these conceptions of the respective communication partners are replaced above all on the side of the producer by the “image” of a standard recipient (for instance the book author and „her reader“, the painter and the viewer intended by him). However, with the transition to a plurality of recipients, complications are at least possible in the form of double (multiple) uses of one and the same sign carrier in different but simultaneously occurring sign acts towards different recipients (cf., for instance, [Born 1983a]Born, Rainer (1983): Schizo-Semantik: Provokationen zum Thema Bedeutungstheorien und Wissenschaftsphilosophie im allgemeinen. Conceptus, 17, 41. ). For example, a remark ostensibly addressed to person A in a literal reading can simultaneously be addressed to the present friend B of the producer in a non-literal (e.g., ironic) reading. Accordingly, both sign actions, performed simultaneously with the same sign carrier, differ at least in interactional and expressive angles (possibly also in the propositional angle). Cooperative sign production The production of a sign act by several persons occurs just as frequently as the mass-media variant: Every newspaper, every book, and every film ultimately represents such a sign, in the production of which several, sometimes even numerous producers (or even subordinate producer collectives) have collaborated. Nevertheless, the theoretical and practical problems of such cooperative sign production turn out to be even more complex, not least because essential aspects of responsibility for the communicative action and its consequences are connected with the producer role. As an alternative to one of the agents from the collective of producers being considered the actual producer – such as the director in an auteur film – institutional agents (legal persons) are often regarded as the responsible producers of the cooperatively created sign. Thus, for example, the German broadcasting station ZDF is considered in the sense of a legal person as the responsible producer for the sign acts with the audience performed with the help of the corresponding broadcast television program as a sign carrier. At least in some of the cooperatively produced sign acts, separable partial sign acts can be identified, so there is an analogy to the word/sentence relationship of linguistic signs (see above). That applies, for example, to comics (verbal-linguistic sub-signs and pictorial sub-signs) or also movies (possibly linguistic, musical, and pictorial sub-sign acts). Nested and multi-layered sign actions Furthermore, sign acts can occur in the propositional angle of other sign acts: Quotations in a scientific lecture, direct or indirect speech in a novel, and the photographic reproduction of a painting in an exhibition catalog are only a few examples of such nested signs (see also ⊳ Image quotation). Here, quite different producers and recipients can be assigned to the sign acts on different levels: With the novel, an author addresses their readers; with the speech reported in the novel, on the other hand, a novel character addresses another novel character. The nesting can run over several levels, as in Count Potocki's novel «The Manuscript Found in Saragossa». Different from nested sign acts are the multi-layered sign acts that a sign agent performs with one counterpart in order to achieve communication with another partner on a different level simultaneously. For example, a computer player communicates in some way with the manufacturer of an immersive game to speak in the guise of an avatar to another avatar within a virtual world communicatively created in that manner. The relation between the purpose of “inner” and “outer” sign action is crucial for the distinction: In nested signs, the embedded sign action takes place to enable the embedding sign action. Communication between novel (or film) characters has the overriding goal of accomplishing the intended communication between the author (or director) and the audience. The author communicates with the reader by letting their novel characters communicate with each other. On the other hand, in the case of multi-layered signs, the outer sign action should enable the inner one. For example, using an email system also represents such an outer sign action, namely between the user and the system publisher. It aims to enable the actually intended embedded email communication with other users of the email system. The user communicates with another user via email by communicating with the publisher of the email system. Transitions to media theory If one looks at the relationship between the sign systems of inner and outer signs in the case of nested or multi-layered signs, a connection of the respective pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic peculiarities characteristic for communication media opens up. Suppose we assume that, given a fixed external sign act, every sign act encompassed by the corresponding sign system can occur as an internal sign act. In that case, the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic manifestations of the external sign act form a constant framework that always remains equally effective for the entire range of variation of sign actions differentiated by the “internal sign system”. Moreover, just because it works for all these sign variants without variation, it remains medial for the inner sign acts. The communication medium would thus be all that is not captured by the differential perspective of a sign system: in this case (among others), another (namely the external) sign act with its pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic characteristics (which become only visible in a different perspective; cf. on this also [Krah & Titzmann2013a]Krah, Hans & Titzmann, Michael (2013): Medien und Kommunikation. Eine interdisziplinäe Einführung. Stutz, Passau. Notiz: dritte erweiterte Aufl. ). In so far as in this concept of communication media, on the one hand, the syntactic structure of a sign carrier is determined not least by the technical conditions of its realization, and on the other hand, the pragmatic rules must take into account, in particular, the institutional context of the sign action, the “classical” aspects of argumentations on communication-media can thereby be integrated without constraint into a semiotic approach, too. See also: Comic Communication media Context-building acts Deceptive and immersive modes Digital image Film Iconic difference Idea Illocution Image grammar Image morphology Image quotation Image reception as a communication process Image semiotics Interaction and communication Interactional, expressive, and propositional angles Linguistic turn, pictorial turn, medial turn Mass media Morphology and syntax "Natural" images Nomination Notation Phenomenological image theories Pragmatics, semantics, syntax Predication Proposition Representation Symbol, index, icon Typologies of media

Notes Literature [Born 1983a]Born, Rainer (1983): Schizo-Semantik: Provokationen zum Thema Bedeutungstheorien und Wissenschaftsphilosophie im allgemeinen. Conceptus, 17, 41.[Bühler 1934a]Bühler, Karl (1965): Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Fischer , Stuttgart.[Chomsky 1957a]Chomsky, Noam (1957): Syntactic Structures. Mouton, Den Haag.[Eco 1977a]Eco, Umberto (1977): Zeichen. Einführung in einen Begriff und seine Geschichte. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.[Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1974a]Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus (1974): Stammesgeschichtliche Anpassungen im menschlichen Verhalten. In: Immelmann, K. (Hg.), Grzimeks Tierleben. Ergänzungsband Verhaltensforschung. Kindler , Zürich.[Kamlah & Lorenzen 1973a]Kamlah, Wilhelm & Lorenzen, Paul (1973): Logische Propädeutik. Vorschule des vernünftigen Redens. BI Wissenschaftsverlag, München.[Keller 1995a]Keller, Rudi (1995): Zeichentheorie. Zu einer Theorie semiotischen Wissens. Francke, Tübingen, Basel.[Krah & Titzmann2013a]Krah, Hans & Titzmann, Michael (2013): Medien und Kommunikation. Eine interdisziplinäe Einführung. Stutz, Passau.[Lorenz 1970a]Lorenz, Kuno (1970): Elemente der Sprachkritik – Eine Alternative zum Dogmatismus und Skeptizismus in der Analytischen Philosophie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.[Lorenz 1990a]Lorenz, Kuno (1990): Einführung in die philosophische Anthropologie. WBG, Darmstadt.[Nöth 2005a]Nöth, Winfried (2005): Zeichentheoretische Grundlagen der Bildwissenschaft. In: Sachs-Hombach, K. (Hg.), Bildwissenschaft zwischen Reflexion und Anwendung. Halem, Köln.[Peirce 1983a]Peirce, Charles S. (1983): Phänomen und Logik der Zeichen. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.[Richards & Ogden 1923a]Richards, I.A. & Ogden, R.G. (1923): The Meaning of Meaning. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.[Ros 1979a]Ros, Arno (1979): Objektkonstitution und elementare Sprachhandlungsbegriffe. Hain, Königstein/Ts.[Ros 1989/90a]Ros, Arno (1989): Begründung und Begriff. Wandlungen des Verständnisses begrifflicher Argumentationen. Meiner, Hamburg.[Saussure 1916a]Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916): Cours de linguistique générale. Payot, Paris.[Shannon & Weaver 1949a]Shannon, Claude & Weaver, Warren (1949): The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, Champaign.[Trabant 1996a]Trabant, Jürgen (1996): Elemente der Semiotik. Franke, Tübingen. Version 2: 2017 Ausgabe 1: 2013 Responsible: Schirra, Jörg R.J. Editing: Sachs-Hombach, Klaus Contributions by: Joerg R.J. Schirra und Marcel Lemmes — (Note) Quote as: Schirra, Jörg R.J. (2017). Sign, Sign Carrier, Sign System. (Ausg. 2). In: Schirra, J.R.J.; Halawa, M. & Liebsch, D. (Hg.), Glossar der Bildphilosophie. (2012-2026). [bildglossar.org/index.php?title=Glossar-English:Sign,_Sign_Carrier,_Sign_System].