Rethinking the Peircean trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol

AbstractClassification of signs into various kinds is a vital enterprise in semiotic research. As early as over a century ago, the American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce laid down a solid foundation for this work by proposing his famous trichotomy of signs. Later scholars have been mostly applying Peirce’s theory to their own semiotic studies rather than challenging the inadequacies that exist therein, thus giving rise to a great number of confusions or even contradictions. The present article modifies Peirce’s theory from the perspective of sign emergence and evolution and emphasizes the importance of understanding sign transformations.