Signs and Cognition

This article combines Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic theory and Darko Suvin's cognitive estrangement theory in an analysis of signs and cognition in Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and The Lifecycle of Software Objects. This article contends that this blended approach will allow for new insights into the interpretation of signs and meanings in science fiction texts. Pursuant to this, this article analyses the ways in which novum may be found in Chiang's text through the interaction of representation, object, and interpretant, to trigger the cognitive estrangement of the implied readers and reshape the implied readers’ understanding of time, language, and ethical issues. In Story of Your Life, the nonlinear view of time displayed by Heptapod B as a written system is the embodiment of the multiple meanings of language as a sign, the dynamic nature of the interpretants, and the deep connection between language and time perception; while Suvin’s novum is a valuable tool in unearthing the ways in which language as a sign instigates defamiliarization, which triggers a rethinking of human time perception. In The Lifecycle of Software Objects, the digients exist as signs of novum, which not only challenges the traditional definition of life and subjectivity, but also shows the complexity of technological ethics through the interaction of signs. At the same time, Peirce’s three categories of signs (a meaning-generating system, including Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness) provide a stronger scaffolding to explore the connection between the digients as technical and emotional signs. The interdisciplinary perspective of this article provides a new path for science fiction studies, revealing the ways in which the meaning of signs and cognitive estrangement reflected in Chiang’s two stories work together, enriching the implied readers’ understanding of the becoming of the meaning of signs and cognitive experience, and influencing the implied readers’ deep thinking on language, cognition, technology and ethics. Keywords: signs; cognition; semiotics; artificial intelligence; Darko Suvin; cognitive estrangement DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2026-3202-20

Component (thermodynamics) · Object (grammar) · Reading (process) · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Software