Semi-symbolism as a didactic strategy in Visual Semiotics

Abstract

In Greimassian semiotic researches, the theoretical models related to the expression plane have not been developed as much as the ones linked to the content plane. While the generative process of meaning has flexibility in integrating concrete (discursive level) and abstract (fundamental level) factors into a single model, the expression plane lacks the same versatility. Based on this methodological configuration, we verified in plastic semiotics, developed by Jean-Marie Floch, and in tensive semiotics, developed by Claude Zilberberg, the challenges facing the constitution of a model more in accordance with the content plane. Based on Tatit’s semiotic discussion (2014), we will show the disjunction between these two approaches in the semi-symbolism theory, departing from the Hjelmslevian premises of empiricism (exhaustiveness, non-contradiction and simplicity), arbitrariness and appropriateness. Therefore, the Flochian approach, linked to the object, would be less arbitrary and more adequate, whereas tensive semiotics, linked to the structure, would be more arbitrary and less adequate. Thus it is sought, in the exposition of these inconsistencies, a didactic strategy that develops the skills of abstraction of the students in order to provide them with the basis for the development of a solution for the integration of the planes into an isomorphic model.