Iconicity: A Fundamental Problem in Semiotics

In a new interest in semiotics over recent years, the concept of iconicity has been pivotal. Not just as an abstract notion of the fundamental ‘possibility’ in general semiotics, i.e. of firstness, as its originator Charles Sanders Peirce has it, but also as a key concept for the particular semiotic understanding of the logical interrelations between the world and its images! In the wake of this interest, it has finally become possible to speak openly in semiotic circles of the obvious iconic aspects of semiotics. This volume features eleven articles on general and very specific problems pertaining to the semiotic concept of iconicity. Its contributors not only represent one, but in fact most of the basic semiotic ‘schools’ or approaches to be found in Scandinavia today. Setting off from a couple of critical apologies for the concept of iconicity in semiotics, these articles outline a number of contexts and perspectives urgent to a contemporary study of iconicity and its relevance for the theory and analysis of signification.