Le papillon tête-de-Janus A propos de Sémantique structurale
Le papillon tête-de-Janus A propos de Sémantique structurale
Yazar: Landowskı, Eric
Dergi: Dilbilim No. 32, 2017
Anahtar kelimeler: Linguistics ; Dilbilim ; Structural semantics,A.J. Greimas,semiotics,perception,meaning,actantial models,semio-narrative,visual semiotics,semiotics of space,semiotics of gesture,aesthesia

Over time, Structural Semantics has become a kind of monument, a “classic”that is often merely welcomed from afar. Is it still necessary to read this text whichtakes us back fifty years? Yes, because the potentialities as well as the problemsof the present semiotics are essentially related to the options around which thisfounding work is articulated: The adoption of a generative perspective, a lastingalteration of the problem of meaning on a theory of narrativity, but also an essential place attributed to perception as the basis of the comprehension of meaning.The subsequent developments and extensions, made either by Greimas, his collaborators or his successors, show a relatively coherent development process inwhich the new positions, far from invalidating the original project, have, on thecontrary, made it possible to enrich it.The “reflections on the actantial models”, the subject of the last chapters of thebook, succeed ten years later in a narrative grammar that presents itself universalin scope. The strategic choice made in favour of this approach had to result in theprovisional storage of another problem, which was also contemplated from theoutset. For the interrogation of the first pages of Structural Semantics talks aboutthe “situation of man” attacked “from the prenatal age to death” by meaningsthat “appeal to him from everywhere”. In fact, Greimas reminds us ten years laterin his Dictionnaire, “the natural world is a figurative language whose figures aremade of” sensible qualities “[which] act directly - without linguistic mediation -on man”. Hence the possibility of conceiving a semiotics “of experience”: fromthe experience of a meaning, not deciphered from the surface of texts but experienced from our relations with “the things themselves”. Thus, in parallel with theconstruction of the “semio-narrative”, Greimas did not cease at any moment toencourage the work on semiotics directly related to the perception of the sensitiveworld (visual semiotics, semiotics of space, semiotics of gesture), and more generally to call for the constitution of a semiotics “of the natural world”. There aretherefore good reasons to read, or to re-read his Structural semantics.

Over time, Structural Semantics has become a kind of monument, a “classic”that is often merely welcomed from afar. Is it still necessary to read this text whichtakes us back fifty years? Yes, because the potentialities as well as the problemsof the present semiotics are essentially related to the options around which thisfounding work is articulated: The adoption of a generative perspective, a lastingalteration of the problem of meaning on a theory of narrativity, but also an essential place attributed to perception as the basis of the comprehension of meaning.The subsequent developments and extensions, made either by Greimas, his collaborators or his successors, show a relatively coherent development process inwhich the new positions, far from invalidating the original project, have, on thecontrary, made it possible to enrich it.The “reflections on the actantial models”, the subject of the last chapters of thebook, succeed ten years later in a narrative grammar that presents itself universalin scope. The strategic choice made in favour of this approach had to result in theprovisional storage of another problem, which was also contemplated from theoutset. For the interrogation of the first pages of Structural Semantics talks aboutthe “situation of man” attacked “from the prenatal age to death” by meaningsthat “appeal to him from everywhere”. In fact, Greimas reminds us ten years laterin his Dictionnaire, “the natural world is a figurative language whose figures aremade of” sensible qualities “[which] act directly - without linguistic mediation -on man”. Hence the possibility of conceiving a semiotics “of experience”: fromthe experience of a meaning, not deciphered from the surface of texts but experienced from our relations with “the things themselves”. Thus, in parallel with theconstruction of the “semio-narrative”, Greimas did not cease at any moment toencourage the work on semiotics directly related to the perception of the sensitiveworld (visual semiotics, semiotics of space, semiotics of gesture), and more generally to call for the constitution of a semiotics “of the natural world”. There aretherefore good reasons to read, or to re-read his Structural semantics.