Talk:Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce

Initial notes
Some emphasis on terminological issues to help beginners avoid needless confusions. The Tetrast 20:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms
Thanks for trying to help, but the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms should not be confused with any Commons dictionary. It's got its own Website and everything, check it out http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html The word "commens" itself is Peirce's word for that which he also called the "commind". Basically it's com- + mens or "mind".The Tetrast 15:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

== Copied from section "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" at the Tetrast's User Talk page, in order to help meet attribution requirements for the article. ==

Hi! I was just reviewing Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce). It's very good work and you clearly have a lot of expertise on the subject. However, my concern is that some of the content may have been taken from another Wikipedia page or other material available on the web. What are the external sources of the article? Wikipedia articles are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License which means they may be copied, but must be attributed, meaning we might have to link back to the original article/its history, or do a history merge (by this point, that seems improbable). And copyrighted material on the web may not be used in most cases.

Cheers! &mdash; madman bum and angel 16:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I wrote or rewrote most of the "Classes of sign" section, some of it for "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" and some of it originally for the main Charles Peirce article. In the main Charles Peirce article, it appeared under "Types of signs" which was a subsection of "Theory of signs, or semiotic," which is a subsection of "Dynamics of inquiry", and some of that was in rewriting things which others had already written. In the main Charles Peirce article, I also replaced the "Types of signs" subsubsection with a "Classes of signs" subsubsection, and I wrote it. (I changed the title because "Types of signs" was always a bad title, since the word "type" itself is a label Peirce used for a certain kind of sign, the "type" as in the type-token distinction). Meanwhile, in the "Clases of signs" section "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" article, some phrases and a few sentences, I think, remain as written by others back in the main Charles Peirce article. For instance, the word "typology" was introduced by somebody besides me, and it proved a very useful word in discussing three of Peirce's most prominent typologies. (This in spite of "Types of signs" being a bad section title; if I had to use both or neither, I would get rid of "typology.")

The "Semiotic elements" section was originally the Peirce article in the section "Sign relations." I wrote a lot of it, including the bulleted definitions and the numbered definitions, but significant portions were written by others. And of course I've tweaked some of that stuff and others have tweaked some of my stuff.

The versions which I used as a basis for the "Semiotic elements and clases of signs (Peirce)" article had been reverted at the main Peirce article.

The main external sources were the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, and the definitions consist entirely in quotations from C.S. Peirce (b. 1839, d. 1914) himself. I did not copy whole unattributed sentences or paragraphs from Peirce, but some phrases such as "pure abstraction of a quality," yes. The main concern, then, will be with tracing the history back to the main Peirce article Charles_Peirce. I don't know anything about how to merge article histories. The Tetrast 17:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 17:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Only administrators can perform history merges. I think the link to the original article should suffice for attribution, but I'll ask around.  Thank you!  &mdash; madman bum and angel 17:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The main external sources were the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, and ITS definitions, I should say, consist entirely in quotations from C.S. Peirce (b. 1839, d. 1914) himself. My definitions are not copied and pasted from there. Also I did use a long quote from Peirce, near the beginning. I don't think that there should be a problem there, but I'll inquire and I should be able to say by tonight or tomorrow. The Tetrast 17:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Now that I think about it, some of my phraseology in the definitions of rheme, dicisign, argument, are so close to Peirce's, that I should footnote to the sources. I'll do that tonight (I'm at work right now) and review more generally. But it's still a matter of sentence clauses rather than longer passages. The Tetrast 18:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 18:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The long quote is indeed in the public domain -- it was originally published in the in the Monist in October 1906. Google Books has it available with no registration required and in OCR text-only form as well. I've expanded the sourcing after the passage: "(Peirce, The Collected Papers, vol. 4, p. 551; originally in "Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism," pp. 492-546, The Monist vol. VI, no. 4, Oct. 1906, see p. 523)"

As regards the phraseology in my definitions of rheme, dicisign, and argument, I find that it's not as close to Peirce's sentences as I thought, and some is drawn also from things which Peirce said in A Letter to Lady Welby published in Signs and Significs. I want to work some more on it, but I have to go to sleep for work tomorrow. I don't know what I was thinking when I suggested that I could get it all done tonight. The Tetrast 00:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I notice that in "Classes of signs" I used the table of categories which I originally created in the main Charles Peirce article. I should just note that in the main article it's not in the "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section; instead it is in the "Theory of categories" section. So not everything coming from the main article came from the its "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section. Maybe I'm getting too detailed with this! Well, it's just a talk page. The Tetrast 01:33, 22 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If you copy something from one wikipedia page to another, you are supposed to say so in the edit summary; and if you forget then you are supposed to either say so in a subsequent edit summary or on the talk page. The idea is to fulfill the GFDL requirement for attribution in a reasonable way. Wikipedia is the largest and most significant GFDL copyrighted item in existence and since the issue has never been tested in court, it is expected that Wikipedia's customary practices will be influential if not defining in this regard. WAS 4.250 06:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

END OF COPY The Tetrast 10:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This version, or one much like it, of the main Peirce article is the one whose section on "Theory of signs, or semiotic" I used in starting the present article. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=108168784&oldid=108168209#Theory_of_signs.2C_or_semiotic. There's also a paragraph now under "Sign relations" both here and in the main Peirce article, a paragraph which I got from some version of the main Peirce article and which I didn't originate. The Tetrast (talk) 23:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC).

Added note: Jon Awbrey contributed to the Charles Peirce wiki's "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section (and probably was the one who named it). I had written a lot of it before it was deleted it, but I think that some significant amount of material by him was already in it, and I'm pretty sure that he was doing some ongoing tweaking. The Tetrast (talk) 00:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion on attributions should be continued below here. Thank you.
The Tetrast 10:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 10:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC) Re-revised The Tetrast 11:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

For reference, the following is the "long quote" to which I was referring in the discussion above: Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable denial, and you will be driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to Fichte's. Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying it, so there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give "Sign" a very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within our definition. Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic. (Peirce, The Collected Papers, vol. 4, p. 551; originally in "Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism," pp. 492-546, The Monist, vol. XVI, no. 4, Oct. 1906, see p. 523)  The Tetrast 10:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Again, please note the original publication in the Monist of October, 1906. The quoted passage is in the public domain. The Tetrast 11:03, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I've footnoted like crazy. Actual quotes in the Rheme-Dicisign-Argument section are indicated, and referenced and linked to public-domain text "Prolegomena To an Apology to Pragmaticism." Lots more footnotes as well. Whew! The Tetrast 18:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

When I have time, I have to nail down the issue of Peirce's 1906 retention of the word "rheme" as a word for predicate, even while he's started using "seme", "pheme", and "delome". It may just possibly be an "H" (predicate) versus "Hx" (predicate-of-"something") kind of issue. The Tetrast 14:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

(Birth–Death) Dates
I used to do that too, being used to it from composers, but I'm just passing on that tidbit of custom that someone told me was done here. Maybe it's in the style sheet somewhere, I don't know, I never bothered to look it up. But it does get a bit cluttered when people feel compelled to put the dates in on every first mention of a biographical name, which was starting to happen at one time. By the way, it does say in the style sheet to use endashes "&amp;ndash;" = "–" between the dates.Armand Boisblanc 23:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I keep worrying that some folks still use old browsers on old computers and the endash won't be displayed correctly. Anyway, I don't put the birth and death dates for every name that appears, instead I do that or something else just for the hero, in order to give a frame of time and years old at the beginning of an article which, after all, needs to stand by itself somewhat. An admin got me to rewrite the beginning of one of these articles, an article which originally had simply launched into the topic as if it were nothing but an extension of the main Peirce article, which is pretty much what it is, but still.... At the beginning of the Categories (Peirce) article I say, "On May 14, 1867, the 27-year-old Charles Sanders Peirce..." and don't give the birth and death dates. The Tetrast 13:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Tables now look right in Mozilla/Netscape
I should have checked a long time ago. There's always a problem across browsers. But I simply had no idea what difficulties Mozilla has with centering and widths. All fixed up now. The Tetrast 01:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Page Setup
I liked the article. But after eBook export found it difficult to read, as the first text part was squeezed between the two upper boxes. Might be better (for the printed version too) to move the "reference" box (style of citation) to the end of the article. Or at least under the "Context" box. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeTigre (talk • contribs) 05:47, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I used a different solution - moved the semiotics template downward. This really is a Peirce article and I first named it "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" but somebody deleted the "(Peirce)" recently. The Tetrast (talk) 19:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC).

Simply put ..
I am trying to relate the quote of Peirce given with the text that follows: Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. (Peirce 1902, NEM 4, 20–21).

The punctuation and style of the sentence make it ambiguous and opaque rather than elucidatory. The word "it" occurs in it four times, increasing the ambiguity each time. Would the following for instance be a correct rephrasing:

a sign, A, brings B (its interpretant sign - determined/created by it) into the same sort of correspondence with C (its object) as that in which A stands to C.

IMO the quote should either be deleted, as it doesn't really help ther reader's understanding, or a modern English phraseology/grammatical "translation" be used, or a brief simple explanation provided that eliminates its internal referencing. LookingGlass (talk) 12:02, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Move this page to "Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce"
May I propose this page be moved to the title "Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce"? This would more clearly encapsulate the article's actual subject matter, clarify that it is in a sense a sub-article of Charles Sanders Peirce elaborating Peirce's views on a particular subject, and bring the title into consistency with other such sub-articles of biographical articles, e.g. Political positions of Barack Obama. Dan 06:33, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:46, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree as well. I've been poking through the various pages on Signs and Peirce and this information is repeated in at least 3 different places. Etherfire (talk) 20:59, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Done! Thanks for the input, Maunus and Etherfire. Etherfire, what are the other locations with redundant material? We can start merging them into this article. Dan 07:49, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This article on signs --sign (semiotics) -- has a ton of this info in there. I suggest we just branch the article, providing a short summary in Sign (semiotics) and then linking to this article. Likewise, I'm not sure we need all of what is in Charles Sanders Peirce. It just leads to overlap in potential explanations and if anyone edits/adds to any one of these locations, it doesn't necessarily lead to an update in the others. Then there are a bunch of smaller or stub articles that I'm not sure we actually need or, at least, they need to be linked to from this article:
 * Sign relation -- also a pretty elaborate article
 * Interpretant
 * Logic of information
 * Semiotic information theory
 * Sign relational complex

Most of those articles start by citing Peirce but they don't really add much and I only found them by clicking around random articles so some of them are nearly orphans, at least in their relation to the article that would most readily link them (this one). Thanks for working to improve this! 19:15, 16 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Etherfire (talk • contribs)


 * MOVE PRECIPITATE and strongly disagree.

The suggestion for a move was made on the 14th Feb, discussion consisted of two people agreeing (that day), and the move being made two days later. This is not reasonable. Two days to determine a consensus on wiki is wholly inadequate. Please revert the move/retitling - until there has been at least the possibility of some discussion. I received notification of the proposal, came to disagree, only to find it is a fait accompli. The articles here on semiotics generally seem to have nose-dived in quality since I last read them, maybe six months ago, and in general to become increasingly biased towards Peirce's ideas. Changes, such as the one that has occurred to this article, exacerbate problems both specifically as well as to the editorial processes of wiki in general. LookingGlass (talk) 20:00, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * As written, this is explicitly an article about Peirce's ideas. It isn't an article about sign classifications in general. Probably such an article should exist -- maybe you could write it? In any case, this one isn't it, and the page move reflects its actual subject matter and conforms to Wikipedia article titling standards. Dan 20:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the change was made a bit too quickly but Dan's point about the content of the article still holds. We can certainly have a longer discussion if you'd like. I do think that the title before was quite vague and confusing, especially for those less acquainted with semiotics. What was your reason for wanting to keep the previous title? Etherfire (talk) 22:16, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

When I created it, I titled the wiki "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)", so the connection to Peirce was originally clear in the title. Somebody eventually deleted the "(Peirce)", and that bothered me, but on the other hand I had noticed that email programs that automatically embed a link in a URL omitted the closing parenthesis from the link, thus breaking the link. Also, IIRC, I was generally editing much less often at Wikipedia when it happened. The main problem with the title "The semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce" is that the article concerns only the first of his three divisions of semiotic: stechiotic, which he also called "logical grammar" and similar phrases including the term "grammar", i.e., mainly semiotic elements (sign, object, interpretant) and kinds of sign, although in some late writings he explicitly included the nature of belief and so on as subjects in that division. The wiki's first paragraph does state eventually that the wiki is only about stechiotic, but that point still seems kind of buried, and knowledgeable people may skim over it because later writers often say "semiotic" when they mean only his stechiotic. In other words, I'd like to preserve against the tide the broader meaning which Peirce gave to "semiotic". The best way may be to edit first paragraph to state earlier that the wiki is only about stechiotic a.k.a. logical grammar, but I'm afraid that that would make the paragraph clumsy in other ways. Now, as to alternate titles, "The logical grammar of Charles Sanders Peirce" doesn't seem a good solution, way too vague for the general reader. "The stechiotic theory [etc.]" will convey nothing to the average reader. "The semiotic grammar of Charles Sanders Peirce" conveys a better idea than "The logical grammar [etc.]" (though still kind of vague). However, I just searched the electronic editions of CP, W 1–6, and CN, and the phrase "semiotic grammar" does not occur in any of them (and I tried the search with all variants of "semiotic"). So I'm not crazy about using the phrase "semiotic grammar" although, Googling around, I find that some others have used that phrase in connection with Peirce. The Tetrast (talk) 16:40, 20 February 2017 (UTC).
 * P.S. I don't think Peirce ever called sign, object, interpretant "semiotic elements"; he called them the three correlates of semiosis, but "Semiotic correlates [etc.]" just seemed a bad title for the wiki. The root of "stechiotic" does mean "element". The Tetrast (talk) 16:55, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * It is clear that you are quite knowledgeable on this topic and the work you have done here is quite incredible. Thank you. TBH, it is in many ways clearer than the Stanford Encyclopedia's comparable entry . But this is part of the problem I think that the other editors were trying to point to: this is an article for general readership and risks becoming too specialized and too detailed, placing it outside the parameters provided by WP:NOT. As an academic who has studied and taught Peirce, I can say that the majority of readers who will be working through this article will not necessarily follow Peirce's distinction between stechiotic and semiotic. While you seem to know a lot about Peirce's nuances to his terms (despite their incredible variation throughout his scattered writings), most readers will be less concerned with these nuances. The question is: does it really matter? Within the history of semiotics more generally, what is here is well within the realm of what is generally referred to as semiotics. Likewise, if we use the aforementioned Stanford Encyclopedia article as a comparable example, Semiotic Theory (or Theory of Signs) seems to be an appropriate and intelligible for the larger intellectual community. I suppose, in summary, my question back to you would be: what is the investment in arguing for the more specific yet ultimately more obscure title for this article? If your reason is ultimately due to an intellectual nuance within Peirce's own theory, the question then becomes, is this appropriate or necessary in determining how people come to and read this article? Etherfire (talk) 21:09, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I think the essential issue is this: an encyclopedia article may certainly be about Peirce's elaborate technical terminology, defining terms, discussing their evolution over the course of his life, charting his many and varied glosses on each term over the years, and so forth. But an encyclopedia should not itself adopt Peirce's terminology — the terms, and the theoretical claims they represent and structure, are the subject of the article. To actually employ the terms unique to him is tantamount to an endorsement of the theory underlying them, which Wikipedia is not in the business of doing, even on an arcane philosophical issue like semiotics. Instead, it should use neutral, widely accepted and accessible terms, and "semiotic theory" (or "semiotics", but I think "semiotic theory" is clearer, though I'd be open to contrary arguments) is today the most neutral and widely accepted way of characterizing a theory of signs. Dan 23:47, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, Tetrast, may I echo Etherfire's appreciation of your work on Peirce-related articles. Most of my familiarity with his work comes through its application in contemporary linguistic anthropology, which uses its own particular construal of one version of Peirce's framework and adapts it heavily to other purposes. I admit to finding Peirce's own corpus a bit intimidating, and I really do admire anyone who has gotten to know it in depth. Dan 09:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm disinclined to push forcefully for a particular wiki title and, like I said, the best solution is probably to rewrite (not radically) the opening in some way, but, in my recent look at the opening, it seemed a challenge to me to do so. Thanks for the accolades, folks! I should say that I took a good deal of material from the Charles Sanders Peirce wiki, not all of it written by me. Jon Awbrey in particular had done a lot of work. I did a lot of expansion, especially on Peirce's terminology, and classification, of signs, which I had seen cause endless reruns of arguments at peirce-l, among people who had read this or that but missed some other thing. I wanted to give beginners and others a heads-up and guide to typical pitfalls and help them (and thereby others) avoid wasting time and energy that ought to be saved for deeper issues. I knew that no other encyclopedia's article covering his semiotic classifications did this despite the special problems that Peirce's writings present. Otherwise I wouldn't have done the wiki. Certainly there are way too many Wikipedia articles (math, logic, physics) that consist mostly or only of advanced technical explanation and little or nothing for the general reader, written as if by students for their professors, rather than as if by professors for the varied public. It's as if nobody had ever read the likes of E.T. Bell or, as I recall it from my youth, SciAm in which the typical research paper combined material for the general educated public with material especially for experts and serious students. I tried to strike a balance. Recent experience of mistaken claims made at peirce-l by advanced students, which I quickly settled by providing appropriate references, indicates that I need to add something brief about a revision of sign classes, culminating in the "canonical" classification, that Peirce made in a paper's successive drafts printed in succession in Essential Peirce vol. 2. I developed my expertise in the course of continual revisions of the wiki. Wikipedia's requirement to provide references was a fruitful constraint, along with the availability of online texts that let me strengthen my footnotes with links. The Tetrast (talk) 15:59, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
 * and I appreciate the clarity the discussion you folk have had brings.  Thank you.  I was not so much resisting the title change itself but what I see as a tendency to conflate semiotics with Pierce.  In respect of this article is it unmistakably, exclusively and explicitly about Pierce?  I think I both accept AND take issue with Dan's comment that "an encyclopedia should not itself adopt Peirce's terminology".  I agree that Wiki shouldn't adopt Pierce's terminology as if it were the expert-neutral terminology.  However if his terminology is not used then the impression is given that his is the expert-neutral perspective, which I do not believe to be the case.  IMO reading the article with a well founded prior understanding of semiotics gives a different impression to that gained by someone reading it as a first point of contact with the field.  An encyclopaedic article should not mimic a textbook that is appropriate to a certain level of knowledge, as it is for a broad church.  Instead it has to proceed from as close to first principles as reasonable.  So I agree in principle with what I believe Etherfire is saying regarding generality and specificity.  However the article (as it is on Pierce's ideas) should not attempt to substitute for the article on semiotics.  It should open with a defining paragraph of a few sentences on "modern semiotics and how it came to be" (e.g linguistics, meaning, bisemiotics, Saussure, Grice, etc) and then go into the detail of what "Pierce was up to".  As it is the impression I have of the article is that it falls between two stools by appearing to describe semiotics from the perspective of Pierce rather than the other way around, by presenting Pierce within a minimalist frame of semiotics. This sounds severe but it is a criticism only of style not of the content which I value. LookingGlass (talk) 14:19, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * p.s idly musing .. re-reading Etherfire's earlier comment regarding other articles on Pierce's theories/models, my ideal would be for all these to form a composite whole rather than floated about quasi-independently, so as to minimise duplication, to reduce their individual size, and increase their ability to specialise in information at a certain level of complexity. LookingGlass (talk) 14:26, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, the wiki is unmistakably, exclusively and explicitly about Pierce's semiotic, and that is how it was conceived and written. The wiki's new title "Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce", like the earliest title, clearly implies that it is not about semiotics in general. But the wiki's opening could be edited to outline the following: Peirce's semiotic, or (philosophical) logic as formal theory of signs, preceded Grice, Saussure, and 20th-Century semiotics, which was called "semiology" until, for some reason, semiologists adopted Peirce's term to replace the term "semiology". For many years, semiotic(s) WAS simply Peirce's semiotic, (1) in the sense that there was no other major developing theory of signs, and then (2) in the sense that when there came to be another such theory, it was called "semiology", not "semiotics". Peirce's work was not a departure from later semiology which did not exist yet and which has been an area more in linguistics than in philosophy; Peirce's philosophical semiotic does not fit into the linguistic semiological framework and is not a subdivision of it. The wiki is a spin-off from the main Peirce wiki. I see little redundancy. The discussion of kinds of signs in the main Peirce wiki is brief, but enough to keep the wiki on course in its exposition in generally architectonic order that helps make sense of Peirce's philosophy and which is lost if one breaks the main wiki's sections about the content of his work up into nothing but spin-offs, and who will read the spin-offs in architectonic order anyway? So each spin-off would also need to recapitulate any number of things currently in the main wiki in order to provide proper context. The discussion in the "Semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce" wiki goes into much further depth on his "stechiotic" theory of signs than the main Peirce wiki does. The system of Peirce articles appears in a box at the top right of each Peirce wiki. The Tetrast (talk) 17:52, 26 February 2017 (UTC).
 * Note: I never added to the Peirce wikis infobox the five wikis mentioned near the start of this thread, because they were either stubs (and there are more such stubs) or got into technical discussion that I little understood and have been unprepared to defend. The section on triadic signs in Sign (semiotics) became long when I edited it to be more accurate, while keeping plenty of things that I hadn't put there myself. My motivation, if I remember correctly, was that when students of (the field formerly known as) semiology and even of Charles Morris made edits, they kept getting Peirce's ideas wrong in a beginner's way, so I figured, they're hardly reading any article by Peirce or written knowledgeably about Peirce, so I ought to put an account of Peirce's view of signs in a place where they might actually read it. I really wouldn't worry about edits uncoordinated between "Semiotic theory of [CSP]" and the section on signs in the main Peirce wiki, since they haven't been substantially edited in many years. Presumably we're not concerned about bandwidth any more, since all those high-KB subject template boxes (or whatever they're called) appear at the bottom of the main Peirce wiki (and many other wikis at Wikipedia) and they probably more than double the main Peirce wiki's total KBs; I originally replaced them with links to the subject template pages but made the links look similar to subject template boxes (they can be seen for example in this old version of the wiki, but somebody eventually replaced them with real subject template boxes. The Tetrast (talk) 21:11, 26 February 2017 (UTC).
 * Another Peirce wiki with a problematic title is Classification of the sciences, which I originally titled "Classification of the sciences (Peirce)" but somebody got rid of the "(Peirce)" and of course it had had that problem with a final parenthesis in the URL that, when copied, can result in a broken link. If anybody has an idea about a different title, maybe we could discuss it over there. The Tetrast (talk) 22:07, 26 February 2017 (UTC).
 * HOLD IT, somebody restored the original title Classification of the sciences (Peirce) and apparently quite a while ago. The Tetrast (talk) 03:22, 27 February 2017 (UTC).

Thanks for explaining that and, fwiw, I appreciate your work. Saussure, as far as I can make out, was a younger contemporary of Pierce but I in no way seek to dispute Pierce's significance nor the historical use of the terms semiotic, semiotics, and semiology. Rather I have responded to what easily appears as a conflation of Pierce with semiotics/semiology, as that subject now (the interest of wikipedia imo) extends far beyond its historical domains (e.g biosemiotics). The only way I can see to address this is, as you note, by contextualising information, in ledes and via internal in-line links between articles, and also perhaps by the organisation of "see also" etc sections. But that's idle speculation! Thanks again. LookingGlass (talk) 11:16, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciation
, my gob is smacked by your erudition, but: as a general reader, if I am ever to use any of Peirce's neologisms I will need to know how to pronounce them. That's asking you to add a new dimension to the article, but its utility is thus restricted therewithout. Errantius (talk) 12:10, 28 February 2021 (UTC)