Three’s Company

I’m stuck on a Writing question and need an explanation.

Week 2 – Three’s Company

• Changing Signs of Truth (Downing, 2012)
  • Chapter 7: A Place for the Coin
  • Chapter 8: Placing the Coin on Edge

Peirce’s (Sheriff, 1989) idea of a triadic sign was not a modification of Saussure’s structuralist approach but is simply a different understanding altogether of how a sign might be interpreted. It allows one to take account of the context that gives any sign–word, utterance, object, and so on–its meaning. This is something that the structuralist simply is unable to do. For the structuralist, words have meaning based upon a given set of possible significations. For Peirce (Sheriff, 1989), meaning is determinate but much more fluid because it takes more factors into account. In four to five paragraphs, respond to the following:

• What is Peirce’s triadic understanding of the sign? Be sure to define terms like object, representamen, and interpretant.
• Compare and contrast it with Saussure’s understanding of a sign.
• What does a Peircean triadic sign allow you to do that a Saussurean dyadic does not? How might this understanding affect the interpretation of parables?

Support your statements with evidence from the Required Studies and your research.