Beyond meaning: Peirce’s interpretant as a meta-semiotic condition for communication

Abstract

In Bergsonism, we come to a halt when it comes to communication because it involves static immobile elements such as concepts and words, which, for Bergson, make it impossible to gain an adequate understanding of each other’s nature. Peirce offers an epistemological model, where the immobility of a linguistic sign is dissolved in semiosis. Peirce’s concept of interpretant, reflecting the dynamic relation of the subject, object and the sign that is being interpreted, offers a model of cognition that is based on the dynamism of meaning making, which provides a foundation for communication as a meaning making process, a case of duration in its own right.