226 GREIMAS, A . J .
Germino, D. (1990). Antonio Gramsci: Architect of Greimas, A. J. a New Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. PAUL PERRON Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Note- Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917–92), long books (trans. and ed. Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith). New York: International Publishers. recognized as the leading authority in struc- Gramsci, A. (1985). Selections from Cultural Writ- tural semiotics, was born in Tula, Russia, in ings (ed. D. Forgacs & G. Nowell-Smith; trans. 1917 and studied law in Kaunas (Lithuania) W. Boelhower). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- before enrolling for an undergraduate de- versity Press. gree at the University of Grenoble (France) Gramsci, A. (1990). Selections from Political Writ- from 1936 to 1939, where he studied French ings, 1910–1920, and 1921–1926 (ed. Q. Hoare; medieval language and literature, specializ- trans. J. Mathews). Minneapolis: University of ¸c Minnesota Press. ing in Franco-Proven al dialectology. At the Gramsci, A. (1994). Letters From Prison, 2 vols. end of his studies in prewar France, he (ed. F. Rosengarten; trans. R. Rosenthal). New returned to Lithuania for his military ser- York: Columbia University Press. vice. His country was invaded, successively Gramsci, A. (1995). Further Selections from the by the Soviets and the Germans before being Prison Notebooks (ed. and trans. D. Boothman). reoccupied by the Soviets in 1944. At that Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. time, he escaped to France, enrolled for a Gramsci, A. (2000). The Antonio Gramsci Reader doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris under (ed. D. Forgacs). New York: New York Univer- sity Press. Georges Matore and defended his doctorat Guha, R., & Spivak, G. C. (eds.) (1988). Selected d’ etat with his primary thesis on fashion in Subaltern Studies. Oxford: Oxford University France in 1830, a lexicographical study of Press. the vocabulary of dress according to the Hall, S. (1980). Cultural studies: Two paradigms. journals of the time, and a secondary thesis Media Culture and Society, 2, 57–72. on various aspects of social life in 1830 based Hall, S. (1996). Gramsci’s relevance for the study of on a synchronic model of analysis, where race and ethnicity. In D. Morley & K. Chen (eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in language is considered as a system at a given Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, pp. moment in time. 411–440. Greimas began his university career Hebdige, D. (1981). Subculture: The Meaning of teaching the history of the French language Style. London: Routledge. in Alexandria, Egypt, where he met and Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and worked with Roland Barthes before taking Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic up a chair in French language and grammar Politics, 2nd edn. London: Verso. (Original work at the University of Ankara, Turkey, in 1958. published 1985.) Mouffe C. (ed.) (1979). Gramsci and Marxist The- By this time, he had abandoned lexicogra- ory. London: Routledge. phy, which he considered inadequate to Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage. describe semantic fields as he was coming Sassoon, A. S. (1987). Gramsci’s Politics, 2nd edn. to understand them. He was appointed to London: Hutchinson. the Istanbul University, and then the Uni- Simon, R. (1991). Gramsci’s Political Thought: An versity of Poitiers before being elected in Introduction, rev. edn. London: Lawrence and 1965 to the prestigious Ecole pratique des Wishart. hautes etudes in Paris, where he and Roland Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage. Barthes directed seminars in semiotics. Williams, R. (1983). Culture and Society 1780–1950. His seminar attracted a large number of New York: Columbia University Press. (Original students and professors from France work published 1958.) and abroad that became known as Paris
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. GREIMAS, A . J . 227
School Semiotics which continues today ten or oral chain whose values are defined in to meet monthly in Paris, some 17 years terms of the other elements of the system – after its founder’s death (see Perron & syntagmatic relations; and associative rela- Debb eche 1998). tions or relations between elements of the Though his original training was in phi- utterance and other elements absent from lology and lexicography, Greimas was also the utterance – paradigmatic relations (i.e., well versed in the tradition of anthropology the sign black takes on its value in terms of all that had its roots in comparative mythology the absent colors of the chromatic and grammar, which encompassed research paradigm). The phonological model, based undertaken, among others, by Claude-L evi on the premise of a fundamental parallelism Bruhl and Louis Hjelmslev, along with Ro- between these two planes of language (i.e., man Jakobson and Claude L evi-Strauss. His sound and concept), as well as the variable methodology, however, was totally dimension of signs, remains one of the reframed in the 1970s, thanks to his encoun- organizational principles of Greimassian se- ter with French phenomenology and the miotics. Since signs on the plane of expres- rethinking of Saussurean linguistics by sion signify in terms of differential gaps, and some of the leading humanists and social the gaps of the signifier correspond to the scientists of the time. Linguistics also con- gaps of the signified, which in turn are tributed greatly to this theoretical and meth- interpreted as features of signification, odological renewal, along with history, art visual, auditory, or tactile units can be ana- criticism, literary criticism, and sociology. lyzed and decomposed into minimal sub- Although the reframing in question focused units, or “semes,” considered as semantic mainly on the dimension of meaning and its features. formation into intelligible patterns, Grei- Although Greimas’s definition of sign mas explored a variety of topics, including depends in part on Saussure’s, he reconcep- the discourse of science, French commerce, tualized the latter’s theory in terms of the historical discourse, urban life, architecture, theoretical works of the Danish linguist literature, gesture, passions, and numerous Louis Hjelmslev. Under Saussurean influ- manifestations of intersubjective verbal and ence, the term “sign” was commonly linked nonverbal communication. with the minimal sign, the word, or the Greimas’s theory of the sign builds on the morpheme, the smallest element of signifi- theoretical works of the Swiss linguist cation in an utterance that cannot be divid- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). He be- ed into smaller units without moving on to gan with Saussure’s now classical definition the phonological level. It is in this sense that of the “sign” as an entity made up of some- language is defined as a “system of signs.” thing physical – sounds, letters of the alpha- But Hjelmslev and Greimas found bet, gestures, and so on – the “signifier”; and Saussure’s notion of sign to be too restric- the image or concept to which the signifier tive, because Saussure, by defining the sign refers, the “signified.” He designated the as a totality, was able to separate expression arbitrary relation between the two from content when establishing his analyt- “signification.” He considered that these ical procedures. To avoid this contradiction three dimensions of the sign were insepara- Greimas turned to Hjelmslev’s redefinition ble, and stressed that the linguistic system of the sign, according to which the semiotic was made up of differences so that the function “semiosis” is considered as the mechanisms of language rested on two types relation of reciprocal presupposition that of relations: groups of elements of the writ- exists between the expression-form and the
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 228 GREIMAS, A . J . content-form, whereby meaning is created be the essential dimension of language. at the moment of the linguistic act. Therefore, from this perspective one could Contrary to Anglo-American linguists for say that Greimas is a poststructuralist and whom the sign is a given, for Greimas the that he represents what could be called sign is first and foremost a construct that “scientific structuralism,” just as physics excludes the referent as a necessary condi- can be said to be structuralist. A further tion for the existence of linguistics (Greimas point to make is related to structure and & Court es 1982: 297). In an important meaning, since for Greimas meaning can article, he suggested that since signs can only be apprehended as articulated mean- be redefined as the conjunction of an ex- ing. In other words, meaning can only be pression-form and a content-form of vary- described in terms of signification, and his ing dimensions: “a word, a sentence are first priority was to come to grips with the signs, but they are also discourse insofar concept of meaning as structure. It was as they can appear as discrete units. Initially, necessary for him to think about the min- poetic discourse can be considered as a imal conditions for the appearance, appre- complex sign” (Greimas 1972: 10; my trans- hension, and/or production of meaning. lation). In his theoretical writings Greimas This led to the formulation of the elemen- attempted to work out an analytical meth- tary structure of signification that can be odology based on the relationship of recip- represented by what has been called the rocal presupposition between expression- “semiotic square” (see Figure 1). form and content-form. One of the main axioms of the Paris In Structural Semantics (1983[1966]), School is that a discourse universe can be Greimas elaborated on the elementary apprehended as meaningful only as a con- structure of signification and the notions sequence of its “differential” articulation. of semantic axes and semic articulation; he What this signifies is that meaning itself defined semes (minimal units of meaning at can best be framed in terms of semantic the semantic level comparable to phemes at oppositions such as being vs. seeming, along the phonetic level) in relationship to lex- with their logical negations not being vs. not emes (i.e., words, and substantive prefixes seeming; these oppositional pairs together and suffixes); and he postulated an isotopy form a “semiotic square,” a set of minimal that designates the text as such in the rep- etition of classemes (i.e., contextual fea- Contrarity S1 S2 tures) and the recurrence of semic thematic, (Life) (Death) abstract, or figurative categories. There does exist, however, a certain amount of ambi- guity linked to the concept of structuralism, which, as far as the Paris School is con- cerned, can be understood only in relation- ship to signification. For example, in North Contradiction
American structural linguistics, represented Complementarity by Leonard Bloomfield and distributional- ism (the objective description of the relations within language, excluding seman- tics), meaning exists but one can say nothing S2 S1 (Non-Death) (Non-Life) about it. However, as far as French struc- turalism is concerned, meaning happens to Figure 1
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. GREIMAS, A . J . 229 differences that constitute the most minute saussurisme,” in which he examined works units of meaning discernible within a given byMaurice Merleau-PontyandClaudeL evi- context. In this way, the existence of foun- Strauss. He concluded that: “the Saussurean dational values, or axiological structures – postulate of a structured world, apprehen- considered by Greimas as universals or sible in its significations can, indeed, indefinable – was postulated and provided contribute to the elaboration of a unified the framework for the elementary structure methodology for the Humanities and Social of signification. For the Paris School any Sciences” (quoted in Greimas 1989: 541). discourse presupposes a semantic universe This is a major breakthrough, for, in coun- theoretically made up of the totality of sig- terdistinction to the dominant trend of nifications, postulated as such prior to its distributionalism, Greimas’s theory extrap- articulation, which it actualizes in part. The olated concepts borrowed from Saussure’s microsemantic universe deploys elementary “system” and Hjelmslev’s “process.” These axiological structures, for example life vs. innovations,Greimasthought,wouldenable death (individual microsemantic universe) great progress toward reframing the social and nature vs. culture (collective microse- sciences and humanities. Nearly a decade mantic universe). These fundamental struc- later, in 1964, both Barthes and Greimas tures were considered to be ad hoc universals gave seminars based on Hjelmslev’s linguis- and served as starting points in the analysis tic and semiotic theory. Barthes later pub- of semantic universes, whether they happen lished his findings as Elements of Semiology to be individual or collective. and Greimas published his as Structural Though semiotics may be considered a Semantics. As Greimas himself has noted structural science, it is not a completed sci- on occasion, discourse analysis came about ence but rather an ongoing scientific proj- more or less by accident. Upon finding L evi- ect, a historical process. Current semiotic Strauss’s paradigmatic analysis of myth to theory rests on a number of fundamental have fallen short of discourse analysis, Grei- principles. First, semiotics is a coherent masturnedtoVladimirPropp’sworkonfolk description of the generation of significa- tales, which provided him with the syntag- tion as signifying objects produced in inter- matic or syntactic component of his theory. subjective communication. Second, the The principle consisted in positing that concept of generation makes it possible Propp’s function was not a function but a to introduce the notion of “hierarchical sentence, that is to say a verb and actants. levels” in the description of languages; the When analyzing Propp’s 37 functions Grei- number of levels of depth is heuristic and mas realized that they could be organized depends on the discovery strategy adopted. into four successive sequences, which corre- Third, the generative apparatus produces sponded to the syntagmatic unfolding of the “discourses,” that is to say, totality of mean- actantial model: a quest sequence (subject ings in terms of words or sentences. Finally, ! object) and a communication sequence semiotics borrows from linguistics the prin- (sender ! object ! receiver),inwhichtwo ciple of relevance or “pertinence,” which sequences of communication frame an ac- states that elements situated either at an im- tion sequence. Later, an attempt was made to mediately superior or inferior plane can be better formulate the elements of narrativity. used to describe a certain phenomenon. The advances in discourse analysis led to a Greimas’s leading role in the progressive third stage, beginning in the early 1970s. conceptualization of semiotics began in Greimas and his colleagues started from the 1956, when he published “L’actualit edu principle that the function, as a verb, is
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 230 GREIMAS, A . J . overdetermined by two elements: modali- widely generalized, extended, and applied ties and aspectualities. They described two to numerous disciplines in the humanities kinds of modality (i.e., modes of significa- and social sciences. tion): wanting and having-to, which virtual- A fourth stage, extending into the twenty- ize the process; being-able and knowing, first century, includes the development of a which actualize it. Similarly, an act consists discursive syntax, since a narrative syntax in a subject causing something to happen based on modalities is already in place. The or to be. But in order for something to be it Paris School found the need to construct an has to be realized; for it to be realized, aspectual syntax at the discursive level. conditions for realization must be met, When Greimas and his colleagues found that is to say, a subject has to be able to that axiological, or value, systems rested do or know how to do. Along with the act as either on modalities or on aspects, they a causing, they developed the notion of the began to study aspectual processes, that is, competence of a doing subject – causing-to- actions, cognition, and passions, which have be or to-do became performance. a beginning (inchoativity), a duration (dur- The Paris School discovered that the only ativity), and an end-point (terminativity). It way to construct a narrative grammar was as was a daunting task to study aspectualities, a modal grammar. On this view, commu- because unlike typical and stable binomial nication consists not in a knowing-how but categories in semiotics, they are tensive. in a causing-to-know, that is to say, causing Tension, tensitivity, and laxity define the can be either in a realizing or in a virtualiz- fundamental relation subject–object as ing position. In this new narrative grammar, seen by an observer. Moreover, during doing or causing and being are modalities; this last stage the Paris School has been what remains is content, or semantics. The attempting to give a semiotic interpretation group worked on discourse analysis and to the traditional theory of passions. adopted a strategy of treating texts as com- Greimas’s influence in semiotics has been plex signs; their aim was not simply to apply powerful; his work with the Paris Group has theory to texts by way of methodology but to enabled a number of new directions, includ- consider texts as living experiments for ing catastrophe theory, which is an attempt reconfiguring theory. Narrativity could to found semiotics in mathematics; and the thus be regarded as a syntactic form movement in post-Hjelmslev linguistics to- of the organization of the world. At this ward the elaboration of a semiotic typology time, Greimas abandoned the Proppian of languages, especially monoplanar lan- analysis of narrative and constructed a syn- guages, biplanar languages, and metalan- tax that functioned more or less as a calcu- guages, which challenges the typology of lus. Propp’s actors became purely function- signs put forward by Charles Sanders Peirce. al: for example, subject, object, antisubject, As far as these scholars are concerned, lin- conjunctions, disjunctions, transforma- guistic systems, and not signs, are critical. tions. The constants in Propp’s functional The modalization of communication theory analysis of folk tale were reconsidered in is another area under investigation that terms of an ideological narrative schema owes much to Greimas’s innovations in that corresponded more or less to a semiotics. Instead of the traditional schema, individual’s quest for the meaning of life, which includes a sender, a receiver, and a for the meaning of individual life, and for message, modalization posits two interact- the meaning of collective being. The new ing, modally competent subjects facing each model of the narrative schema was then other. Each subject, whether engaged in
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved. GREIMAS, A . J . 231 conversation or arguing or simply fighting, Greimas, A. J. (ed.) (1972). Essais de s emiotique has its own proper trajectory. Each has its po etique. Paris: Larousse. own modal history and their meeting brings Greimas, A. J. (1983). Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (trans. D. McDowell, about a form of polemic or “structure of R. Schleifer, & A. Velie). Lincoln: University trust,” a struggle or engagement between of Nebraska Press. (Original work published two competencies that can be considered as 1966.) a polemico-contractual intersubjective rela- Greimas, A. J. (1987). On Meaning: Selected Writings tion. In other words, we are dealing with a in Semiotic Theory (ed. P. Perron; trans. P. continuous tension between primitive con- Perron & F. H. Collins). Minneapolis: University frontation or contractuality. However, there of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1970.) never is a definitive struggle, which differ- Greimas, A. J. (1988). Maupassant: The Semiotics entiates pragmatists with their conversa- of Text (trans. P. Perron). Amsterdam: John tional or interactional structures from the Benjamins. (Original work published 1976.) Paris School and its narrative structures, for Greimas, A. J. (1989). On meaning (trans. P. whom there always exists a subject and an Perron & F. Collins). New Literary History, antisubject who are in a permanent conflic- 20, 539–550. tual relation. Greimas, A. J. (1990). The Social Sciences: A Semiotic Greimas’s foundational theories of semi- View (trans. P. Perron & F. H. Collins). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. otics continue to provide the impetus for (Original work published 1976.) Paris School researchers, who focus on three Greimas, A. J., & Court es, J. (1982). Semiotics and major areas of semiotic investigation: the Language: An Analytical Dictionary (trans. pathemic force of language, its ethical or L. Crist et al.). Bloomington: Indiana University moralizing dimension, and, finally, its aes- Press. (Original work published 1979.) thetical impact. The exploration and work- Greimas, A. J., & Fontanille, J. (1993). The Semiotics ing out of these three domains should enable of Passions: From States of Affairs to States of Things (trans. P. Perron & F. H. Collins). Min- them to construct the next phase of their neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. semio-narrative grammar. Hjelmslev, L. (1953). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (trans. F. J. Whitfield). Bloomington: SEE ALSO: Actant/Actantial Grammar; Indiana University Press. (Original work pub- Barthes, Roland; Discourse; Jakobson, lished 1943.) Roman; L evi-Strauss, Claude; Merleau-Ponty, Perron, P. (1996). Semiotics and the Modern Maurice; Peirce, Charles Sanders; Propp, Quebec Novel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Vladimir; Saussure, Ferdinand de; Semiotics; Perron, P. (2003). Narratology and Text: Subjectivity Semiotics/Semiology and Identity in New France and Quebecois Liter- ature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Perron, P., & Debb eche, P. (1998). Paris School. In REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED P. Bouissac (ed.), Encyclopedia of Semiotics. New READINGS York: Oxford University Press, pp. 467–470. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folktale, 2nd Barthes, R. (1979). Elements of Semiology (trans. edn. (trans. L. Scott). Austin: University of Texas A. Lavers & C. Smith). New York: Hill and Press. (Original work published 1928.) Wang. (Original work published 1964.) Saussure, F. de (1966). Course in General Linguistics. Greimas, A. J. (1956). L’actualit e du saussurisme. Le New York: McGraw-Hill. (Original work Fran¸cais Moderne, 24, 191–203. published 1928.)
(c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved.