Modeling in semiotics: an integrative update

This paper provides an integrative and updated view of modeling in semiotics. It postulates that the essence of modeling is supersession. In any act or instance of modeling, the model supersedes and is brought to the front for salience, accessibility, and operability, whereas at the same time the modeled recedes and exists in the background, inaccessible and inoperable. The paper goes on to differentiate between two major types of modeling, the underlying “existential modeling,” functioning as the fundamental scaffold and the genuine foundation of all other types of modeling as we know them, and the overlaying “semiotic modeling,” designating the process of creation and use of “forms of meaning,” a process that underlies both cognition and communication. By focusing on semiotic modeling, the paper features an unconventional view that casts a new light on the relation between a model and a sign and thus the relation between semiotic modeling and semiosis. Endorsing an embodied approach to meaning-making as semiotic modeling, the paper finds it important to stress the appropriateness and necessity of understanding the term “model” as a verb rather than as a noun, in that modeling is never static and should be properly regarded in terms of embodied action.