Theorist Algirdas Julien Greimas
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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- Debbeche 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-Levi 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 Levi-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 & Courtes 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.