Semiotics Analysis of the Film Stranger than fiction

Abstract

The film Stranger than fiction proposes a challenge to the enunciatee by creating an interesting actantial syncretism, deliberately associated with a subversion of the usual relationship established between the narrator and the interlocutor. A singular discourse actor accomplishes this by taking over two actants, there by shortening the distance that usually separates each of them. The following semiotic analysis aims to show that the originality of the film lies in the enunciator’s strategy, by which the narrator and the interlocutor are put to interact at one same level. Such craft helps to bring the enunciatee closer to the work as well as it guides the development of the movie’s main theme: fiction versus reality. The figurative construction of the discourse actants also plays an essential role in the movie development since their unexpected interactions question the boundaries that limit what fictional means. In this way, the enunciatee is invited to untangle the narrative web established among the actants and the unusual relationships in which they engage. In order to shed light on the enunciator strategies, this study employed the generative process, proposed by A. J. Greimas, as an analysis method. Verbal as well as visual excerpts of the movie were taken into account for this analysis.