After reading two messages that professed the obvious, namely that semiotic concepts and especially Peircean versions of them, are thorny to the point of inscrutability, I'd like to offer some unsolicited help in sorting out some of the issues that are standing in the way of our ability to respond and reflect upon Marcy's fine paper. Part of this is selfish on my part; I am struggling with preparing a 20 minute presentation for a meeting this Friday where I have promised to lay out how Peirce's theory of signs serves as the foundation for a truly new form of qualitative methodology--and this to a philosophy audience, at that!
There are two immediate "roadblocks" for most of us in getting access to Peirce's notions on signs--I know this well, because I pounded my own head against them for enough years. First, Peirce is going deeper into the philosophical assumption well than we realize at first blush. One of the legacies of the analytic philosophical movement in England and America in the beginning of the 20th century was their success in convincing all of us non-philosophy types that all philosophical questions were epistemological questions. In dime store language, this means that all issues in inquiry are ultimately settled by determining whether they are true or not, where the word "true" carries all its ordinary weight along with the weight of "real" and "good" and "fair." I think most of us can see how calling something "true" does not automatically, or even ordinarily make it "good." For example, it is true the Serbs practice ethnic cleansing, but that certainly doesn't make the practice ethical. But, most of us are trained to think that once issues of truth are settled, then we know what is real and what is only apparent. In terms of research, this most often gets structured as "if something is true, that makes it meaningful." In other words, the conditions which make something true, especially where the truth is determined as an empirical claim, then serve as the basis of determining what something means. What Peirce says, and Marcy echoes, is that truth and meaning can certainly be interrelated, but ultimately they are separate concepts. In other words, we need to set asunder what the analytics joined: namely, the notions of truth and meaning, especially in the realm of empirical inquiry. If you buy this, then you can also buy the notion that it is possible to have an empirical inquiry that deals with issues of meaning and which does not rise and fall on whether or not something is true or not. And if you believe that such an inquiry is possible, then it will deal not with facts per se, because the notion of "fact" is inexorably wedded to the decision on whether that fact is true; it will deal with signs, which are crafted and which exist in the realm of meaning. So, the semiotic empirical inquirer is asking not whether it is true that such and such is better or more effective or whatever, but given such and such, what does this mean? In other words: how can I read signs, how can I understand collections and patterns of signs, and how can I put together signs in such a way as to suggest various forms of intended and unambiguous meaning? If you don't think the last part is important, just ask Mike Dukakis. He lost the presidency because Lee Attwater convinced voters, rightly or wrongly, truthfully or deceitfully, what Dukakis' pardon of Willy Horton actually MEANT.
Second, semiotics is often confused with constructivism, but they are actually light years apart. Constructivists ultimately believe that knowledge is subjective. Sometimes, in the case of radical constructivists, that subjectivity is personal. Other times, in the case of social constructivists, that subjectivity is collective. But, it is always drawn in distinction to the idea of objectivity--where the world is what it is factually in spite of how we might want it to be, or will it to be. But when we draw the exact opposite, this leads us into considering the notion that the world is not objectively factual, but simply whatever it can be interpreted to mean. Semioticans realize that the fruitful alternative to the objectivist world view, namely that the world is a collection of independent and indifferent facts and we are at the mercy of the world, is NOT to throw out the idea of facticity and replace it with an expression of the will, whether that will is singular or collective. In other words, the objectivist says there is really only truth. The constructivist says there is really only meaning. The semiotician says you have to take them both seriously, because they both matter very much. Hope this helps address some of the concerns I've just read. Sorry about rambling on for so long.