The following selection from Peirce’s “Lowell Lectures on the Logic of Science” (1866) lays out in detail his “metaphorical argument” for the relationship between interpreters and interpretant signs.
I think we need to reflect upon the circumstance that every word implies some proposition or, what is the same thing, every word, concept, symbol has an equivalent term — or one which has become identified with it, — in short, has an interpretant.
Consider, what a word or symbol is; it is a sort of representation. Now a representation is something which stands for something. I will not undertake to analyze, this evening, this conception of standing for something — but, it is sufficiently plain that it involves the standing to something for something. A thing cannot stand for something without standing to something for that something. Now, what is this that a word stands to? Is it a person?
We usually say that the word homme stands to a Frenchman for man. It would be a little more precise to say that it stands to the Frenchman’s mind — to his memory. It is still more accurate to say that it addresses a particular remembrance or image in that memory. And what image, what remembrance? Plainly, the one which is the mental equivalent of the word homme — in short, its interpretant. Whatever a word addresses then or stands to, is its interpretant or identified symbol. […]
The interpretant of a term, then, and that which it stands to are identical. Hence, since it is of the very essence of a symbol that it should stand to something, every symbol — every word and every conception — must have an interpretant — or what is the same thing, must have information or implication. (Peirce 1866, Chronological Edition 1, pp. 466–467).
Reference
- Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
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Inquiry Into Inquiry 
Jon,
Hope all’s going good — not too cold back in Michigan. You couldn’t have picked a thread closer to my heart and I’ll be trying to follow it closely.
In regard to this passage, it strikes me that when ti comes to signs a “thing cannot stand [to] something without [also] standing [from] something.” And, since “standing from” something doesn’t require that something be a person, or even a sentient organism of some kind, that where the relationship of standing to determines the interpretant, standing from determines the object.
This seem fair enough, but then the next paragraph regarding words and symbols seem out of whack as an example of this. For symbols or words, while operating as signs of a sort, specifically eliminate that “from” and the necessity of an object by setting up a linguistic equivalence between the symbol and other symbols mutually agreed upon as the interpretants of that symbol.
Not really starting an argument here, but it seems like a distinction to be kept in mind as we try to get at the “persistent difficulty of exposition” when it comes to the interpretant.
Tom
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