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7.4.2.
There is a reason why many semantic theorists of our century have given up studying meaning by translating this notion into the one of referent. The reason is that, if one wants to keep the content of an expression separate from its possible object, one risks falling into a mentalistic or psychologistic theory. The content of the expression should then be what 'travels' within the head of an interpreter receiving a given expression. Since we cannot check such an event, certain theorists preferred to give up on meaning. The only alternatives were either to substitute it with the corresponding state of the world (a rigid extensional interpretation of signs) or to reduce it to the behavior elicited by the sign (according to Morris' second phase, 1946); but, since there are expressions that possess a meaning which cannot be detected through observable behavior, the behavioristic test seems to me rather disappointing. The recent developments in structural and compositional semantics have elaborated a purely metalinguistic description of the content, as a network of oppositional units which are selectively and hierarchically organized to form the compositional spectrum of a given item. But the problem posed by these theories, as we have seen in 7.1.1, is always a methodological one and brings into question the status of the meaning components. Are they theoretical constructs? Are they representing a finite set? Are the components of a verbal item verbal expression too? The notion of interpretant solves all these problems.
If a representamen sends back to a given content unit and if this unit is formed by minor and more elementary units, all of these cannot be approached but by means of mediatory signs.
Within the framework of a general semiotic theory, which is considering not only verbal expression but any kind of signification, along with the relationship between different systems, the compositional analysis of a verbal term should not consider as its interpretants only linguistic terms. Among the interpretants of the word 'red' are also images of red objects or a red cue as the specific space within the gradated continuum of the chromatic spectrum. Among the interpretants of the word 'dog' are all the images of dog displayed by encyclopedias, zoological treatises, and all the comic strips in which that word has been associated to these images, and vice versa. Among the interpretants of the military command Ground arms! are, at the same time, the correspondent trumpet signal and the responding behavior of the group of soldiers. A semantic theory can analyze the content of an expression in various ways: by finding out the equivalent expression in another semiotic substance (the image of a dog vs. the word 'dog'); by finding out all the equivalent expressions in the same semiotic system (synonymy); by showing the possibility of mutual translation between different codes within the same semiotic substance (translation from one language to another); by substituting an

 
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