Francis Lieber and the semiotics of law and politics
pp. 167-177
in: John Deely, Margot D. Lenhart (eds), Semiotics 1981, Berlin, Springer, 1983Abstract
"The signs which man uses, the using of which implies intention, for the purpose of conveying ideas or notions to his fellow-creatures, are very various, for instance, gestures, signals, telegraphs, monuments, sculpture of all kinds, pictorial and hieroglyphic signs, the stamp on coins, seals, beacons, buoys, insignia, ejaculations, articulate sounds, or their representations, that is, phonetic characters on stones, wood, leaves, paper, etc., entire periods, or single words, such as names in a particular place, and whatever other signs, even the flowers in the flower language of the East, might be enumerated…These signs then are used to convey certain ideas, and interpretation, in its widest meaning, is the discovery and representation of the true meaning of any sign used to convey ideas' (Legal and Political Hermeneutics…1839: 17, 18).
