ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Saussurian vision of language to the more general sign theories of the American pragmatist Charles S. Peirce, the French linguist Emile Benveniste, and the American philosopher Charles Morris. It emphasizes the interplay between indexicality and convention precisely because Peirce's third type of sign, which he calls the symbol, is based solely on conventionality (:112). Peirce's intended range is well indicated by the title of the piece, "Logic as Semiotic." Despite the difficulty of reading him, however, Peirce's work has had a profound impact on contemporary linguistic anthropology, and several of his distinctions have entered into the common language of the field. Peirce's interpretant is not contained within the confines of a preestablished system. An interpretant might be a simple sign, or it might be an entire elaborate discourse. Just as Peirce's object is a point of contact between signs and the broader world of experience, so, too, the interpretant opens out onto the world.
