As defined here, an information-bearing element of an epistemic artifact (cf. sign). Note the term is intended to refer not only to components of formal sign systems, but any elemental information-bearing pattern, for example a face in a photograph.
“I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former.” (Peirce, 1998, 478)
According to C.S. Peirce, a sign is an entity consisting of three parts, a signifier (or sign-vehicle, for example a map symbol or written word), an object (the thing the signifier refers to), and an interpretant (the meaning construed in the mind of an observer).
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