Semiotic Triangle

Definition

Ogden and Richards's extension of Saussure's two-part sign into a triangle (the "semiological triangle," 1923): the symbol (their term for Saussure's signifier), the thought or reference (the signified), and the referent — the actual object, person or event referred to. Its point: the relation between symbol and referent is only mediated (represented by the triangle's dotted base) — words do not connect to things directly but through thought. Hjelmslev pushed the elaboration further into a four-part structure (plane of content / plane of expression), which, Broadbent notes, "allows for a process of encoding between one's immediate thought about the object and the way one chooses to refer to it by means of words or other signifiers."

The triangle is the hinge of the referent debate. Eco objects that no necessary relation binds signifier, signified and referent: a sign-vehicle may signify a fictitious object (the unicorn) or a content with tenuous evidence (Napoleon's death, Alpha Centauri, transubstantiation); the object of a sign-system is its "content," a "cultural unit," not a referent — "the referent will certainly not be the dog x standing by me while I am pronouncing the word" dog. Broadbent's rejoinder (1980): Eco "merely confuses two perfectly ordinary terms… coterms in linguistics; connotation and denotation," and the referent should be taken as a thing — "What is or may be an object of perception, knowledge, or thought" (Oxford dictionary definition) — a formulation that covers real and imaginary things, "whatever else sign systems may or may not do… they aren't much good if they don't refer to it." (The article also reports Broadbent's running joke: a colleague who actually calls his dog 'Dog' — for which it must certainly be the referent.)

Key Thinkers

• C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (not yet paged — see log) — The Meaning of Meaning (1923); the triangle; the referent as "a thing," "not an active person."
• Louis Hjelmslev (not yet paged — see log) — the four-part sign (content/expression planes).
• Umberto Eco — the referent's dismissal: sign-objects as "cultural units" of content, not things.
• Geoffrey Broadbent — the defence of the referent as a real-or-imaginary thing; the denotation/connotation confusion charge.
• Ferdinand de Saussure — the two-part sign the triangle extends.

Related Concepts

• denotation-and-connotation — the distinction Broadbent charges Eco with confusing.
• semiotics — the parent field.
• pragmatics-syntactics-semantics — the tripartition within which the referent debate belongs (semantics).
• paradox-of-the-sign — the sign/referent crisis in Baudrillard's register, where "the signifier becomes its own referent."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Architectural Objects and Their Design as a Subject for Semiotic Studies (Broadbent 1980) — the triangle's architectural treatment: Ogden & Richards's extension of Saussure; Hjelmslev's four-part sign; Eco's unicorn/cultural-unit objection and the dog example; Broadbent's "thing" rejoinder ("even the most extreme of metaphysical philosophers now admit that a real, physical world does exist"); Pei's denotation/connotation definitions accepted against Eco's "complexify[ing] what can be fairly straightforward."

Open Questions

• Does Broadbent's "thing (real or imaginary)" actually concede Eco's point — a referent that includes dreamed things is already close to Eco's "cultural unit"? Or does it keep what Eco's account loses: that sign systems are answerable to a world?
• For architecture, what is the referent of a building-sign — the building itself (as Broadbent argued in the anthology: "Any existing building obviously can be a referent"), the functions it houses, or the cultural unit it encodes?