Signs and Their Temporality: The Performative Power of Interpretation in the Supreme Court

Abstract

Building on pragmatist uses of semiotics as a heuristic for understanding social interaction, this article argues that temporality is a significant and undertheorized component of signs and their interpretation. Using transcripts from the oral argumentation of a Supreme Court case, I examine how different interpretations of the same sign (a burning cross) rely not only on differing understandings of the sign’s object and how that object is signified but also, more specifically, differing understandings of the sign’s relationship to the past, present, and future.