Semiotica del progetto: la via pragmatista / Design Semiotics: The Pragmatistic Route

Abstract

The semiotics research in the design field often deals with the problem of meaning. Beyond aesthetic and functional issues, it is a “problem” due to its relation with the fact that the world of the artifacts is not always structured as a system of signification, where the meaning identification of an object is often merely a descriptive exercise. The vision of the artifacts within the social practices still – even if relevant in the socio-semiotics – leads, in my view, to partial results.
Thus, from where should one start to identify the sense of things? The answer, that is, the direction of research, theoretical and applied, is then sought within the Peircean pragmatistic view of meaning: the sense and the meaning of objects are in the mental habits and behavior they are able to produce. Then, it is a matter of searching the sense of things in the ways through which the objects are able to influence and guide our will to act and think. This has significance not only in the everyday practice, but also in the mental formation (e.g. preferences, ideological positioning, etc.), starting with the idea that «what a thing means is simply what habits it involves» (CP 5.400).