Research / Research program
Agentive Semiotics
How meaning arises in the activity of agents who pursue agendas, acquire capacities and participate in shared practices.
Agents, agendas and meaning
Agentive Semiotics studies signification through the relation between an agent and its agendas. An agent is an entity capable of doing; an agenda specifies a kind of result that orients its activity. Agency is the capacity that makes this doing, and the meaning-making that accompanies it, possible.
This perspective situates signs within the activity of those who use and interpret them. Explaining what something means requires attention to the agent’s capacities, what it seeks to accomplish and the conditions in which it acts. The meaning attributed to an object or an expression depends on these relations.
Elementos de semiótica agentiva (2015) develops the foundations of this program. It connects a description of experience with an account of the conditions that enable meaning-making, while requiring that account to be cognitively plausible. Engagement with cognitive science is part of the development of the theory.
Habits and situated signification
The capacities through which we act have a history. Learning a practice changes what we can do and what we are able to recognize as meaningful. Embodied habits provide a way to investigate this relation between learning and meaning-making.
The 2024 paper distinguishes the acquisition of habits from their deployment in a situation. Acquisition contributes to the significance of cultural products, understood in terms of possible responses and the grounds for assessing their adequacy to a purpose. The deployment of habits participates in the signification that actually occurs within a particular activity.
Agentive systems make it possible to study how agendas are integrated with available resources and the anticipation of their use. These resources include bodily capacities, objects and signs. This connection raises a question about relevance: how something comes to matter to an agent in the course of its activity.
Current questions
Abduction is one direction in which this framework is being developed. The 2025 chapter proposes an account of abductive cognition attentive to personal and collective agendas, the agent’s resources and the cultural cycles in which it participates. This context allows an examination of the conditions under which abductive inquiry can increase knowledge and understanding.
The 2026 presentations place further questions in the domain of social reality: how joint agendas are organized, how social meaning is determined, and how declarations relate to power relations. A presentation in Rome also addresses the regulation of epistemic stances in clinical inquiry.
The writings and presentations below offer a way to follow the program’s development, from its initial formulation to these recent discussions.
Significance and signification
Significancia & Significación. Hot Shots II. A Spanish-language video by Douglas Niño, available on his YouTube channel, as an audiovisual reference on this distinction.
Selected reading
The 2015 book provides the foundational account. Later works develop specific problems; the 2013 texts offer a route through some of the earlier work.
2015
Elementos de Semiótica Agentiva
An account of the foundations of the program.
Full bibliographic record2024
Embodied agentive habits: between sedimentation and ongoing ground
The acquisition and deployment of embodied habits in meaning-making.
Full bibliographic record2025
Abductive Cognition in Agentive Semiotics: A Proposal
A proposal on abductive cognition from Agentive Semiotics.
Full bibliographic recordRestricted access. For further information, contact the author.
2013
Signo peirceano e integración conceptual: una propuesta de síntesis
Earlier work on signs and conceptual blending.
Full bibliographic record2013
Agentes y circunstancias. Consideraciones en torno a factores epistémicos y fiduciarios en la argumentación intercultural
An approach to argumentation through agents and their circumstances.
Full bibliographic record2015
The Agentive Approach to Argumentation: A Proposal
Development of an agentive perspective on argumentation.
Full bibliographic record
Recent presentations
Presentations from 2026 on social reality, joint activity and clinical inquiry.
Semiótica Agentiva y Realidad Social
Conferencia por invitación. Coloquio Investigaciones Filosóficas y Científicas sobre el Lenguaje, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Julio de 2026.
Event detailsJoint Commitment without Plural Subjects: Agentive Systems, Joint Agendas, and the (In)determinacy of Social Meaning
Ponencia. Sixth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS-6): (In)determinacy of Meaning. Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italia. 4 de junio de 2026.
Event detailsFrom Suspicion to Settled Uptake: Agentive Semiotics and the Regulation of Epistemic Stances in Clinical Inquiry
Ponencia. Sixth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS-6): (In)determinacy of Meaning. Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italia. 4 de junio de 2026.
Event detailsRealidad social, relaciones de poder y declarativos: una propuesta desde la semiótica agentiva
Conferencia por invitación. Foro Lenguaje, Discurso y Cognición: Perspectivas en Desarrollo, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Mayo de 2026.
Event details