In the introduction, the author summarizes the "four modes and three stages" (p11-15) of the development of semiotics, which refer to:

1. Linguistic model - pioneered by Saussure, followed by the Prague School in the thirties and the Paris School in the sixties, they emphasized the position of language as the center of gravity of the super-large symbol system, and its semiotics was actually a "linguistic" semiotics;

2. Peirce's logic-rhetorical model, which considers all types of signs, rather than linguistics, and more importantly, proposes a series of signifiers (as opposed to Saussure's signifier-signifier dichotomy). However, he was left out for a long time, and it was not until the seventies that he was rediscovered, and Sibioc, Eco and others advanced semiotics to the post-structuralist stage. "Peirce's theory has become the basic theory of contemporary semiotics, and has become the most important model of contemporary semiotics."

3. Cassirer's "Theory of Cultural Semiotics";

4. Bakhtin pioneered the tradition of studying culture from the form, and his theory was mainly borrowed from information theory and cybernetics, especially Prigogine's dissipative theory, with a strong technical color.

The development of the four models is intertwined (especially the influence of Saussure and Peirce) to form three stages of semiotic development, of which the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century (the second stage) is the take-off stage of semiotics as a theory, and Saussure's semiotics dominates and directly develops into the tide of structuralism (the so-called "linguistic turn" From the seventies to the present (the third stage), the development of semiotics is characterized by the replacement of Saussure's model by Peirce's open model, whereby structuralism breaks through itself into post-structuralism.

The author bluntly states that "in the first part of the book, the various models of semiotics are re-examined and tried to learn from others' strengths, but it is needless to say that today's semiotics inherits more from the Peirce model than from the Saussure model." Reading through the whole book, we can clearly feel that its biggest feature (and for the author, the biggest novelty and doubt) is to use Pierce to reverse Saussure. Therefore, the most important thing to grasp this book is to understand the differences between these two founders of semiotics, which are mainly concentrated in the third chapter of the "Principles", "Arbitrariness and Rationality", and the fourth chapter, "Symbolic Ideograms", from which we get the following two key points.

First, arbitrariness and rationality

It is well known that Saussure, in his Tutorial in General Linguistics, treats the connection between signs and meaning as arbitrary, i.e., we cannot directly object by signs, and the signifier-signifier is only socially conventional. It was from this fundamental principle of arbitrariness that Saussure's linguistic theory set off a monstrous wave of structuralism. For the recognition of arbitrariness means that in order for signs to be expressive, they must be incorporated into a synchronic system organized by the principle of difference.

Fundamentally different from Saussure, Peirce's semiotics does not fundamentally take language as a symbolic paradigm, so the relationship between a sign and its "object" shows various "intrinsic" connections. According to Peirce, there are three types of signs: icon, index, and convention. The first two are justified symbols.

Symbols can be divided into three levels: imaginal, image-likeness (image, reproduction of transparency), diagram-like (symbol-object "structural homogeneity"), and metaphorical image-likeness (a certain kind of thinking or "mimicry", such as a high platform symbolizing power). p78

Indicative, that is, the sign and the object can prompt each other because of a certain relationship, especially the relationship between cause and effect, adjacency, part and whole, etc., so that the receiver can perceive the sign and think of the object, and indicate the role of the sign.82

And the so-called prescriptiveness is Saussure's arbitrariness, 86

However, the extent to which Pierce's three points challenged Saussure's arbitrariness is open to debate.

Eco had questioned likeness. Repeated absolute likeness, and signs that are completely unable to find similarities to objects, are the two ends of the likeness spectrum. The difference between likeness can be so great that Eco argues that likeness can actually be connected to symbols and meanings by cultural conventions, "Likeness does not exist between the image and its object, but between the image and the previously culturalized content." What he means is that a similar sign requires the receiver of a sentence to understand both the sign and the object before it can be expressed. So he called Peirce's justification for likeness "iconic fallacy." P81

Even Peirce himself admits that the connection of any sign to an object ultimately requires a social convention, that is, there can be purely prescriptive signs, but rarely purely rational signs. Whatever the rationality, the interpretation must still rely at least partially on social norms. That is to say, prescriptiveness is a quality that most signs must have to some extent, otherwise the efficiency of the symbol's ideographic expression cannot be guaranteed.86

2. The symbol means a third

The third point of symbolic meaning, which the author calls Peirce's "wonderful pen", is also the core concept that influences the author's semiotic theory.

We already know that Saussure dichotomy the signifier, where the signifier is the "sound-image" and the signifier is the "concept" (and the social collective concept). Pierce, on the other hand, proposed a three-element scheme of symbols.

Representatum refers to the perceptible part of the sign, which is equivalent to the signifier;

An object is something that a symbol replaces;

An interpretant is a symbol-induced thought. The author praises this: in this way, Peirce puts "the emphasis of symbolic ideograms on the receiving end, which provides the key to many subjects of semiotics"P97, and his separation of explanatory terms from "objects" is a crucial step in the formation of modern semioticsP100.

Even better, Peirce proposes the concept of "infinite derivation" from the explanatory term, which is regarded by the author as a precursor to deconstruction. "The explanatory term becomes a new sign, to infinity, and the sign is what we know in order to understand something else." This is to say that in order to explain an explanatory term, another symbolic process must be initiated, and the meaning of the sign must be "explainable", but to explain the meaning, 104-105 The author argues that we can find in Peirce's idea of infinite derivation that leads to Bakhtin's theory of dialogue.106

As we can see, explanatory terms do become central to the author's thinking and continue throughout the book, such as:

1. The author begins by defining symbols and meanings: symbols carry the perception of meaning: meaning can only be expressed by symbols, and the purpose of symbols is to express meaning P1; meaning is the potential of a symbol to be interpreted by other symbols, and interpretation is the realization of meaning P2.

2. The author's definition of text: Symbolic text is the result of the "textualization" of the receiver [receiver, interpretation, these emphasis on the terminal are all evidence of Peirce's influence], 44

3. Expand Kristeva's concept of "intertextuality" by pulling in the receiver dimension (Chapter 6, Section 4)

It should be said that the explanatory term does lead to a proper solution to many semiotic problems, as the author says, but it is from this that my first question, that Derrida, as a master of deconstruction, is not discussed in detail in this book. In my opinion, deconstructivism should be the result of a two-pronged approach, one is Pierce, and the other is Derrida, the latter seems to be seen more as a reaction against Saussure within the linguistic model (perhaps because of this, the book "pays special attention to non-linguistic, non-narrative ideographies" is not taken seriously).

The second point doesn't seem to be a doubt, but just my personal expectation horizon. There is often a strong impulse to die in the ubiquitous symbolic activity of human beings, and the most famous is the last sentence of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: "One should be silent about what cannot be discussed." In my opinion, the linguistic critique of "the Tao is all useful, not a fragment of words can be spoken" and Derrida's so-called "logocentrism" are two sides of the same coin. However, the author does not pay much attention to the eternal paradoxical key existential situation of "language and silence", which seems to me to be a pity.

Let's talk about it for now.

Five stars are given because the book is indeed a good introduction to semiotics, both in terms of the depth of knowledge, the plainness of the language of the arguments, and the appropriate thoroughness of the arguments. However, this is indeed a typical "Zhao Yiheng" text, whether it is in terms of the problem domain, the construction of the theoretical system, the concise weaving of dialogues with other theorists, or the unique characteristics of the example argument, so it is indeed only a primer.