Dos aproximaciones peirceanas a la imagen: hipoiconicidad y semiosis

Over a period of roughly forty years Peirce’s conception of signs underwent profound modifications. He defined a single division or trichotomy of signs from 1867 to, approximately, mid-1903, a three-division sign-system late in 1903, and in 1908 a pair of six- and ten-division typologies. Of these, the 1903 system with its universally-known icon-index-symbol division is the one most employed in the analysis of verbal and pictorial signs. Within this division, the icon constitutes the sign’s mode of representation, which Peirce, on the basis of the phenomenological framework within which signhood was based in 1903, further analyzed the icon into three distinct modes of representation, the hypoicons. However, in 1908 his conception of sign-action developed into a completely different universe-based, six-stage processual system—semiosis—from which the icon-index-symbol division was absent. The paper therefore seeks to illustrate, through an analysis of examples of metaphor and allegory, the interest for the discussion of certain types of pictorial representations, of the theory of iconicity. Since this theory has no means of tracing the sign to it origin, or source, namely the intention which determined it to existence, the paper also seeks to illustrate the later, processual conception of signs, since this, too, has bearing on the interpretation of pictorial representation. This will, of necessity, require a relatively lengthy review of the stages in the development of the later theory.