The Text and its Environments: the Production of Meaning and the Pertinence Levels in Jacques Fontanille’s Proposal

Abstract

Among the new proposals of the semiotic theory, there is one by Jacques Fontanille that proposes the integration of the semiotic situation in the pertinence levels of analysis of texts. His idea is interesting as it allows formalizing what was considered, for a long time, an extrapolation of the text or violation of the immanence principle. This way, to explain and to have a better understanding of the specificities of the analysis process proposed by the French semiotician, as well as the contributions that he brings to the semiotics, we have chosen to analyze a photograph of press linked to a news piece published by an electronic media. The purpose is to show how the semiotics situation allows the text-object to work according to the rules of his own genre, regulating its interaction with the process and the uses of the potentials enunciatee, their expectations and their modal and passion competences. The objective of this work is, therefore, to show the validity and efficiency of the theoretical instrument proposed for the analysis of the texts, verbal and non verbal, as well as the gains to the theory when we extend its reach to the level of manifestation.