The dialogical self and Thirdness: a semiotic approach to positioning using dialogical triads

Abstract

The American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce described ‘Thirdness’ as the influence of one subject on a second mediated by a third. In psychology the idea of Thirdness has been captured in a wide range of triadic models that draw on Peirce’s original insights about mediation. In this paper links are developed between Peirce’s triadic approach to semiotics, accounts of the dialogical self as ‘multi-voiced’, and the role of ‘mediating objects’ as third-term semiotic markers in self-representation. Using case material from a life history, the emergence of conflicting positions in the self is illustrated using dialogical triads. The triads incorporate meaning-charged objects (people, things, events) as third-term mediators. The mediators are distinctive because they have a doubled quality, defining both similarities and differences between opposing positions. I argue that the analytic approach developed here helps to shed light on the tension between multiplicity and integration in theories of the self’s formation.