RT list: Did Peirce offer an inferential theory of communication (prior to RT)?

Dear all,

I recently came across the following claims about the work of C.S. Peirce:

"Peirce showed that all interpretation is inferential, and the kind of
interpretation involved in translation is no exception ... Drawing on
semiotics to make a case for the inferential nature of translation can also
provide sound arguments to support other theories of translation which
either implicitly | presuppose or explicitly discuss inferential processes
..." (p. 261-262)
(Stecconi, Ubaldo. 2008. Semiotics. In Routledge encyclopedia of translation
studies, ed. Baker, Mona and G. Saldanha. 2nd ed. London & New York:
Routledge; pp. 260-63)

This sounds very much as if Peirce's 'interpretative semiotics' actually
preceded RT as an inferential theory of communication and appears to be at
variance with the following claim made in RT:

"Before Grice's pioneering work, the only available theoretical model of
communication was what we have called the classical code model . which
treats communication as involving a sender, a receiver, a set of observable
signals, a set of unobservable messages, and a code that relates the two."
(Sperber, D., and D. Wilson. 2002. Pragmatics, modularity and mind-reading.
Mind and Language 17, no. 1/2: 3-23.)

Looking at Sperber and Wilson 1995, acc. to the index there is one brief
mention of Peirce - only as the originator of the term 'semiotic' - there is
no discussion of his views on communication as inferential.

My own, provisional view, based on a very cursory acquaintance with P's
work, is as follows: Peirce and 'interpretative semiotics': P acknowledged
importance of inferential processes in acquisition of knowledge in general
(deduction, induction, abduction), and hence applied inference to
communication as well; however, did not recognize the special challenge of
intentional human communication, esp. the challenge of coordinating the
inferential processing of the audience with the intentions of the
communicator. In that sense, while interpretative semiotics recognised the
insufficiency of coding alone and brought out the importance of inference
(as part of general epistemics), it did not really come up with an
inferential theory that would explain intentional human communication in
particular.

Since I am not very well versed in Peirce's work, I would appreciate any
comments and/or information on how others see his work relate to RT as an
inferential theory of communication. I am especially interested in
discussions of this issue in the RT literature, that I am not aware of.

Thank you for your interest,

Ernst-August Gutt
Received on Wed Dec 9 08:28:55 2009