CHARL E S M O R R I S

BY:

UHAMM AD IQB AL MAL IANG

M
F022212002
 HISTORICAL SEMIOTIC
CHARLES MORRIS
 CHARLES WILLIAM MORRIS IS A "CLASSIC OF SEMIOTICS" (POSNER 1981), WHOSE
INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF SEMIOTICS WAS
DECISIVE IN THE 1930S AND 1940S

 IN APPLIED SEMIOTICS, MORRIS'S THEORY OF SIGNS HAS BEEN INFLUENTIAL IN

SEMIOTIC AESTHETICS AND IN THE THEORY OF ICONICITY. HIS PRAGMATIC
TYPOLOGY OF DISCOURSE IS OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO TEXT SEMIOTICS.
 THE SCOPE OF SEMIOTICS
• Peirce and morris
Both founders of semiotics defined the theory of signs as the study of signs of any kind,
including language and any other signs, but while peirce conceived of semiotics basically as a
science of man, morris extended the scope of the general theory of signs to include sign processing
by animals (see zoosemiotics) or, more generally, by organisms
In spite of their difference in approach, morris agreed with peirce in the assumption that
"something is a sign only because it is interpreted as a sign of something by some interpreter [. . . ].
semiotic, then, is not concerned with the study of a particular kind of object, but with ordinary
objects in so far (and only in so far) as theyparticipate in semiosis"
 ICON, INDEX, AND SYMBOL
Morris gave the following reinterpretation of the famous peircean trichotomy (1938: 24): "an
indexical sign designates what it directs attention to." The index is
opposed to a sign which "characterizes that which it can denote. Such a sign may do this by
exhibiting in itself the properties an object must have to be denoted by it,
and in this case the characterizing sign is an icon; if this is not so, the characterizing sign may be
called a symbol" (ibid.). Instead of the category of index, morris
later introduced the sign type of identifior (see typology 4.2.3). For morris's theory of iconicity
•
THREE DIMENTION OF SEMIOTICS
Syntactics
In contrast to linguistic and logical syntax, morris generalized his syntactics to cover more than only language signs:
"there are, then, syntactical problems in the fields of perceptual signs, aesthetic signs, the practical use of signs, and
general linguistics" (1938: 16). Posner (1985b) gives an interpretation of morris's dimension of syntactics which closes
the gaps that have been criticized by the linguists.

• Semantics
In morris's early definition, "semantics deals with the relation of signs to their designata," that is, "that which the sign
refers to" (1938: 21,3). In this definition, semantics covers only the aspect of reference, not that of sense (cf. Meaning).
Later, however, morris gave a broader definition of semantics.

• Pragmatics
Morris defined "the science of the relation of signs to their interpreters" as "that branch of semiotic which studies the
origin, the uses and the effects of signs" (1938: 30;1946: 365). Morris proposed a scope of pragmatic studies which is
much broader than that of pragmatics in current language studies (1938: 30). While the linguist leech, for example,
defines it as "the study of how utterances have meanings in situations"
 HISTORY OF THREE DIMENTION
Posner discusses two historical precursors of morris's triadic subdivision of semiotics. One is
the medieval trivium of the three language arts. The other is peirce's triadic reinterpretation of this
trivium. Peirce distinguished "three branches" of the science of semiotics "in consequence of every
representamen being connected with three things, the ground, the object, and the interpretant”. The
first branch is called pure grammar. "It has for its task to ascertain what must be true of the
representamen used by every scientific intelligence that they may embody any meaning." The
second branch is called logic proper. "It is the science of what is quasi­necessarily true of the
representamina of any scientific intelligence in order that they may hold good of any object, that is,
may be true." The third branch is pure rhetoric.