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Is an icon iconic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Michael Shapiro
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Extract

To the memory of my wife the metaphysician

The word ICON (< L icon, < Gk ∊iκώv ‘likeness, image, portrait, similitude, semblance‘) has entered the parlance of linguists and philosophers as a technical term, not to speak of anthropologists and other students of culture, especially those who have some cognizance of the theory of signs (semiotics) and of its modern founder, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). In Peirce's sign theory an icon is a member of his most well-known trichotomy of icon/index/symbol, by which he meant to designate the mutable relations between a SIGN and its OBJECT. Peirce's earliest published mention of this trichotomy is from 1885 (EP 1:225).

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Type
Discussion Note
Information
Language , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 815 - 819
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Linguistic Society of America

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