Karl Buhler (1879 – 1963) is a German psychologist who has devoted much of his work to language and expression. One of his most notable contributions is the principle of domination, which assumes that although each message has several functions, usually one dominates.
The result of the research can be found in his Theory of Expression (1933) and Speech Theory (1935).
Although Charles S. Peirce very carefully distinguished sign theory from psychology, he encouraged psychologists to study human sign generation and the functions of sign use.
