[6] However, a contract is not binding, and therefore void (and not merely voidable), if it is lacking what is called, in legal jargon, “consideration”. A bare and gratuitous promise is generally insufficient ground to create, for the one party, an enforceable duty to deliver any (material or immaterial) goods, not for the other, to take and pay for them. The obligation resting upon each party only exists “in consideration of” the act or promise of the other, --- meaning that neither is bound unless both are bound. Consideration is, in the Anglo-American legal system (the so-called common law), the essence and backbone of legal contract. It is also known as the quid pro quo (“what for what”, “something for something”) mentioned in the title of this Chapter because of the analogy to the scholastic aliquid stat pro aliquo, which exemplifies the semiotic sign relation and is (like quid pro quo) rooted in equivalence. Quid pro quo indicates that something must be given in return for the promise; that there must be some bargain; that a responsibility incurred by the one party must be matched by a corresponding benefit gained by the other. Consideration pits the promise to give (often, to pay) against the promise to do, thereby highlighting the thing of value each party agrees to give in exchange for what he or she receives by the bargain. This thing of value, or consideration, is the reason for which the contract is made.

[7] Semiotics being, essentially, the study of how verbal and nonverbal messages are created, sent, received, understood, interpreted, and otherwise used, it is clearly the case that contract is a semiotic problem. Here we must distinguish a contract as a written document from contract as a communicative act or event. Though different, both are facts of law and both are semiotic signs.

[8] The written document, or contract form, is an object which is a sign because of the verbal signs (signs of Thirdness) it is codified in. when filled out and signed, it serves as a genuine Third, or sign of law. In accordance with Peirce’s classification of signs, it must be characterized as a symbolic sign strongly tinged with indexicality. More specifically, it is proposition, or dicent symbolic legisign which on being signed by parties (and, if necessary, co-signed by one or more witnesses, an attorney, and/or notary public) will acquire the status of an argument, or argumentative symbolic legisign. The mixed, symbolic - indexical nature of the contract is signified in the appearance of the formal, written contract but can also be recognized (though perhaps in a less explicit form) in informal contracts –- agreements, that is, which may result from an exchange or letters or even from casual acts.

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