Dalle nuvole di Peirce a una semiotica rasserenata. Riflessioni sull’uso attuale di un fondamentale patrimonio d’idee

Abstract

As we can easily see, although there is in semiotics a serious and diffused tendency to honor masters of the discipline such as Peirce, that does not mean that their thought is actually understood and respected, much less put to good use. Considering them with the eyes of today, many Peircean concepts can appear outdated and no longer useful – and the same can be said about the teachings of Saussure. But if, instead of considering these conceptions as unchangeable and mutually incompatible, we see them as flexible, open to constant development and reciprocal interactions, then the teaching of Peirce appears to us in many ways up to date, productive, crucial not only from a historical point of view but, moreover, in the light of a radical improvement of a current, advanced, necessarily complex semiotic theory. In this framework, I consider here some key points, starting from the definitions of indexical and iconic signs. I try to point out some key lines of a perspective which could make us possible to resume the ideas of Peirce making them compatible and complementary to other aspects of the heritage of the discipline.