Semiotic-conceptual analysis: a proposal

Abstract

This paper provides the basic definitions of Semiotic-conceptual analysis (SCA), which is a mathematical modelling of signs as elements of a triadic relation. FCA concept lattices are constructed for each of the three sign components. It is demonstrated how core linguistic and semiotic notions (such as synonymy and icon) can be represented with SCA. While the usefulness of SCA has already been demonstrated in a number of applications and several propositions are proven in this paper, there are still many open questions as to what to do next with SCA. Therefore, this paper is meant as a proposal and encouragement for further development.

Keywords:

• Semiotics
• triadic relations
• sign
• formal concept analysis
• interpretation function

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

1 Priss (2015) discusses how SCA relates to the semiotics of C. S. Peirce in more detail.

2 Because this paper is published in a special issue on FCA, it does not provide an introduction to FCA. Information about FCA can be found, for example, on-line (www.upriss.org.uk/fca/) and in the main FCA textbook by Ganter and Wille (1999).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [grant number 01PL16066H].