Le papillon tête-de-Janus A propos de Sémantique structurale, quarante ans aprês

Abstract

Structural Semantics, Greimas' first book, is undoubtedly a "classic" in semiotics , in other words a sort o f monument at which people look with respect but preferably from far away. lts interest, however, is not merely historie . The fecundity of "Greimasian" semiotics, as well as most of the difficulties it arises until now, stem from three basic options that have been initially taken in this book : the choice in favour of a generative theory, the decision to shape the problematic ofmeaning in the terms ofa narratrive grammar, the attribution ofa decisive role to p e rception as the foundation of our access to signification. Making explicit the problems that such choices have entailed and stressing the perspectives they have opened , the article presents a panorama of the various trends in present semiotic research, from "standard" applications to recent propositions aiming at the inclusion of the sensitive dimension o f experience among the objects of semiotic analysis.