Greimas’s intellectual journey: the path to structure

Abstract

After presenting Greimas’ goals and theoretical bases in his lexicological research, both in his doctoral dissertations (the main and the subsidiary one) and in his post-defense articles, this paper shows why he abandoned lexicology and created a structural semantics, and then a semiotics. By analyzing Greimas’ intellectual trajectory, we note the presence of preoccupations that originate in his dissertations and lexicological works: the search for a rigorous methodology; the study of meaning independent from other linguistic disciplines; the structural and historical study of meaning, always based on the principle of immanence; and the prevalence of synchrony over diachrony. The study of Greimas’s oeuvre reveals his intellectual coherence throughout his life, in his search to construct a scientific program to research meaning.