Epistemological notes on Greimassian semiotics

Abstract

This paper intends to make a brief epistemological analysis of Greimas’ “scientific project” in the course that goes from its “appearance” to its “immanence”, that is, the modus operandi of his semiotics, aiming ultimately to examine the productivity of the Greimassian alternative for apprehending sense production processes. Therefore, it describes how Greimas articulated the two pillars of his theories: a linguistic theory that has in Hjelmslev one of its bases and a philosophical theory based on a specific reading of Husserl’s phenomenology through Merleau-Ponty’s reinterpretation. From the definition of the scientific method of Greimassian semiotics and the exploration of the relationship between Hjelmslev and Husserlian phenomenology, it examines some specific relations established by Greimas, presenting the pillars of his semiotics, on account of his foundation discourse and other works that served him as grounds for developing such theory. Finally, it examines some other relevant moments of Greimas’ course in order to show that certain changes which his project underwent did not change the “fidelity” to the first principles as well as it proposes an evaluation of Greimassian semiotics from a discursive perspective.