The Semiosis of Sound Signs in Romance Audio Drama from a Peircean Semiotic Perspective: A Case Study of The Early Spring

Abstract

Romance audio dramas take the development of characters’ emotional relationships as an important part of their narratives. Based on Peirce’s representamen–object–interpretant triadic framework, this study focuses on the audio drama The Early Spring and systematically analyzes the semiosis of sound signs. In specific narrative contexts, voice, music, and sound effects refer to character relationships as their objects through iconic, indexical, and symbolic mechanisms, while listeners interpret and further extend these meanings. From this point of view, the semiosis of sound signs in romance audio dramas constitutes a dynamic chain linking sound signs, character relationships as objects, and interpretants generated by listeners. This study further expands the application of Peircean semiotics to sound media and provides a new analytical perspective for understanding meaning-making through sound signs.