Structural Semantics

Introduction

“Structural Semantics” (1966) became a founding text of French semiotics. Taking up Saussure’s distinction of signifier and signified and Louis Hjelmslev’s analysis of the plane of content, Greimas proposes to describe meaning as an articulation of minimal distinctive features, “semes”, which combine into “sememes”. The concept of isotopy explains how a text achieves coherence through recurring semantic features. In the later chapters he reformulates Vladimir Propp’s functions of the folktale and Étienne Souriau’s dramatic roles as an actantial model of six positions – subject, object, sender, receiver, helper, opponent – which has since been used in the analysis of literature, film and advertising. The book’s demanding terminology limited its readership but made it a reference for structural analysis of narrative.

Connections

Builds on

• Course in General Linguistics1916 · Ferdinand de Saussure

More works by Algirdas Julien Greimas

• 1970On Meaning