The meaning of prompts and the prompts of meaning: Semiotic reflections and modelling

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14250v1
• Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:15:32 GMT
• Title: The meaning of prompts and the prompts of meaning: Semiotic reflections and modelling
• Authors: Martin Thellefsen, Amalia Nurma Dewi, Bent Sorensen,
• Abstract summary: This paper explores prompts and prompting in large language models (LLMs) as dynamic semiotic phenomena.<n>Findings suggest that prompting is a semiotic and communicative process that redefines how knowledge is organized, searched, interpreted, and co-constructed in digital environments.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: This paper explores prompts and prompting in large language models (LLMs) as dynamic semiotic phenomena, drawing on Peirce's triadic model of signs, his nine sign types, and the Dynacom model of communication. The aim is to reconceptualize prompting not as a technical input mechanism but as a communicative and epistemic act involving an iterative process of sign formation, interpretation, and refinement. The theoretical foundation rests on Peirce's semiotics, particularly the interplay between representamen, object, and interpretant, and the typological richness of signs: qualisign, sinsign, legisign; icon, index, symbol; rheme, dicent, argument - alongside the interpretant triad captured in the Dynacom model. Analytically, the paper positions the LLM as a semiotic resource that generates interpretants in response to user prompts, thereby participating in meaning-making within shared universes of discourse. The findings suggest that prompting is a semiotic and communicative process that redefines how knowledge is organized, searched, interpreted, and co-constructed in digital environments. This perspective invites a reimagining of the theoretical and methodological foundations of knowledge organization and information seeking in the age of computational semiosis

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