Why, that's the Peircean triad. What I don't get is, why has he used the word 'symbol' instead of 'sign'?

If he were truly pomo, he'd give a rationale for his use of certain words instead of others. I'm just gonna hazard a guess and say that "symbol" is easier to access by a broader range of folks than the Derridean usage of "sign".

Of course, I'm full of it.

Peircean sign has nothing (well, not much) to do with the Derridean usage of that word. Derrida's concept of a sign is based on (and critical of) the Saussurean concept of sign as the duality of the signifier and the signified, whereas the Peircean sign concept was developed quite independently of Saussure and is a triad (Peirce loved triads)... Also, the Peircean sign is an object (something), whereas the Saussurean sign is a relation; the Derridean sign is a void.

I wonder why he used symbol instead of sign then. ;)

I guess it's because this is an article on Computational Semiotics and symbols (or conventional signs) are the kind of signs that computers deal with.

In any case, the article's a horrible mess. The author throws a number of basic Semiotic concepts into the pot (some of them through other authors and thus horribly misinterpreted) but achieves nothing by this (he doesn't even use the semiotic terms he introduced in the beginning). If this isn't pomo, then I don't know what is...

Hehehe.

I actually just posted this because I this morning I thought chat is cat in French so I should find a meta chat and post it. This was the closest I could find.