A. J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning: Linguistics, Semiotics and Discourse Theory [Reprint 2017 ed.] 9781138693777, 9781315529219, 9781138684034, 9781138684058, 9781315538013, 0709944268, 0709944950

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Original Title
Original Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
1. The Analytical Dictionary: Language, Semiotics, and the Discourses of the Human Sciences
Introduction: The Duality of Language
Language
Semiotics
Discourse
Conclusion
2. Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics
The Functional Linguistics of the Prague School
Language without Meaning: The Linguistic Methodology of Bloomfield and Hjelmslev
The Linguistic Analysis of ‘Structural Semantics’: The Immanent Semantic Universe
3. Structural Semantics and Du Sens II: Actants, Functions, and the Semio-narrative Level
Linguistics and Semiotics
Actants
Actants and the Semio-narrative Level
Functional Analysis: Propp and Greimas
The Generative Trajectory of Discourse
4. Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales: Discourse and Narrativity
Greimas and Lévi-Strauss
Collective Corpus: Semiotics and the Social Sciences
Individual Texts: Semiotics of Literature
5. Avatars of Semiotics: Greimas and Poststructuralism
Semiotics in Crisis
Poststructural Semiotics: The Deconstruction of Jacques Derrida
Enunciation and the Surface of ‘Things’: Knowledge and Power in Lacan and de Man
Reference and Enunciation: Greimas and Poststructuralism
Bibliography
Works by A .J. Greimas
Cited Works by Other Authors
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: LITERARY THEORY

Volume 23

A. J. GREIMAS AND THE NATURE OF MEANING

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A. J. GREIMAS AND THE NATURE OF MEANING Linguistics, Semiotics and Discourse Theory

RONALD SCHLEIFER

First published in 1987 by Croom Helm Ltd This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1987 Ronald Schleifer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-1-138-69377-7 978-1-315-52921-9 978-1-138-68403-4 978-1-138-68405-8 978-1-315-53801-3

(Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 23) (hbk) (Volume 23) (pbk) (Volume 23) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

A .J. Greimas and the Nature ofM eaning: Linguistics, Sem iotics and Discourse Theory

RONALD SCHLEIFER

© 1987 Ronald Schleifer Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row, Beckenham, Kent, BR3 1AT Croom Helm Australia, 44-50 Waterloo Road, North Ryde, 2113, New South Wales British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Schleifer, Ronald A J . Greimas and the nature o f meaning: linguistics, semiotics and discourse theory— (Critics o f the twentieth century) 1. Greimas, A. J . 2. Semantics I. Title II. Series 412 P325 ISBN 0-7099-4426-8 ISBN 0-7099-4495-0 Pbk

Phototypeset by Sunrise Setting, Torquay, Devon

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Ltd, Kent

This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents Oscar and Mary Schleifer and Sophia and John Szozkida who worked all their lives so their children could think about meaning

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Contents

Preface

1. T h e Analytical Dictionary: L an gu age, Semiotics, and the D iscourses o f the H um an Sciences Introduction: T h e Duality o f L an gu age L an gu age Sem iotics D iscourse Conclusion

2. Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics T h e Functional Linguistics o f the Prague School L an gu age without M eaning: T h e Linguistic M ethodology o f Bloom field and Hjelm slev T h e Linguistic Analysis o f ‘Structural Sem antics’: T h e Im m anent Sem antic U niverse

3. Structural Semantics and Du Sens II: Actants, Functions, and the Sem io-narrative Level

vii

1 1 7 14 33 40

44 46 56 66

82

Linguistics and Sem iotics Actants Actants and the Sem io-narrative Level Functional Analysis: Propp and G reim as T h e G enerative T rajectory o f D iscourse

82 87 100 110 126

4. Maupassant and Sémwtique et Sciences Sociales: D iscourse and N arrativity

130

G reim as and Lévi-Strauss

131

Contents Collective C orpu s: Sem iotics and the Social Sciences Individual T exts: Sem iotics o f Literature

5. A vatars o f Sem iotics: G reim as and Poststructuralism Sem iotics in Crisis Poststructural Sem iotics: T h e D econstruction o f Ja cq u e s D errida Enunciation and the Su rface o f ‘T h in g s’: K now ledge and Power in Lacan and de M an R eference and Enunciation: G reim as and Poststructuralism

Bibliography W orks by A .J. G reim as Cited W orks by O ther A uthors Index

140 147

164 164 168 182 201

209 209 210 217

Preface T h is book attem pts to describe the project o f the career o f A .J. G reim as in linguistics, semiotics, and discourse theory, his overriding attem pt to ‘account fo r’ or ‘m ake sense’ o f the phenom enon o f signification in hum an affairs. As G reim as says at the beginning o f Structural Semantics, T h e problem o f signification is at the center o f the preoccupations o f ou r time . . . T h e hum an world as it app ears to us is defin ed essentially as the world o f signification. T h e world can only be called ‘h u m an ’ to the extent that it m eans som ething. T h u s it is in research dealin g with signification that the hum an sciences can find their com m on denom inator. In deed, if the natural sciences ask questions in ord er to u nderstand how man and the world are, the hum an sciences pose the question, m ore or less explicitly, o f what both o f them signify .(SS: 1) T h u s within contem porary semiotics G reim as’s project is one that focuses on the nature o f m eaning or signification rather than on the function o f com m unication. His work, as Daniel Patte has argu ed , ‘studies the systems o f significations as m anifest in the encoded m essages, such as texts, without p resu p p o sin g a m odel for the structure o f the com m unication process’; ‘it aim s merely at establishing the conditions o f possibility o f the com m unication process.’ (1980: 11) In a distinction that H erm an Parret has developed, G reim as’s focus on m eaning situates him within the tradition o f ‘sem iotics’ defined by Louis Hjelmslev rather than that o f ‘pragm atics’ defin ed by C harles San ders Peirce (Parret 1983). T h e phenomenon o f m eaning is what I am calling the ‘n atu re’ o f m eaning. G reim as him self notes that ‘the word “ m ean in g” m ust be understood as “ m eaning effect,” the sole graspable reality, but one which cannot be ap p reh en d ed directly.’ ‘M eaning effect,’ he says earlier in this article from the Analytical Dictionary, ‘is the im pression o f “ reality” prod uced by ou r sense in contact with m eaning, that is to say, with an u n d erlying semiotic system .’ (SL: 187) M eaning, then, is the ‘given’ with which G reim as begins; it is a phenom enon o f the vii

Preface reception rather than the expression o f lan gu age: the originality o f structural linguistics, as op p osed to historical linguistics, he noted early in his career, is its conception o f itself as ‘a linguistics o f perception and not o f e x p ression ’ (1962/63: 57; see 1956: 192). Even in the discussion o f the arran gem en t o f definitions o f polysémie words in the Dictionnaire de UAnçien Français — his m ajor nonsem iotic work — G reim as notes that he chose the ‘pragm atic approach o f gro u p in g m eanings according to affinities in o rd er to facilitate the appearan ce (apparition) in the m ind o f the read er o f the global signifying character o f a polysémie w ord.’ (AF: viii) F or G reim as, then, the ‘n atu re’ o f m eaning is phenomena/; it ‘exists’ as the felt sense o f its presence, a signifying whole beyond the limits o f the sentence, or the felt sense o f its negated presence, the ‘nonsense’ and ‘bew ilderm ent’ o f fragm ented sense. M oreover, it ‘exists’ on what I call in C hapter 2 the ‘su rface’ o f things: ‘before its m anifestation in the form o f an articulated signification,’ G reim as notes, ‘nothing can be said about m ean in g.’ (S L : 187) It is his project to account for this ‘presen ce’, not in term s o f underlying ‘m etaphysical presu pposition s’, but in term s o f the fact that m eaning-effects, negative as well as positive, are simply, phenom enally, experien ced. Even the lack o f u n d erstan din g (‘bew ilderm ent’) com es u n d er the project o f accounting for phenom enal signification, as does the ph enom enon o f ‘piecing together’ m eaning, what G reim as calls ‘fin din g’ and ‘losin g’ discursive m eanings (1973c: 29—30; see C hapter 3). In these term s G reim as creates the possibility o f a literal as well as a figurative conception o f lan gu age; he creates the possibility o f reconceiving the referential aspect o f lan gu age (see C h apter 5). T h u s his sem iotics o ffers an antidote to — or, at least it com plem ents — poststructuralist form ulations o f the ‘ap o rias’ o f discourse, the m aking and unm akin g o f m eaning in the ‘deconstruction’ o f signification, the ‘undecidability’ o f the contexts and levels in and on which signification is ap preh en d ed . T o conceive o f m eaning as phenom enal is to m ake these ‘conclusions’ about signification them selves subject to accounting in term s o f what he calls ‘determ inable and, in large m easure, d eterm in ed’ connections am on g the phenom ena o f signification (S S : 65). T his is probably m ost clear in a central assum ption o f this book, the ‘concrete’ or ‘sem antic’ (as op posed to the ‘logical’) viii

Preface description o f G reim as’s ‘semiotic sq u are’ (carré sémiotique) in C hapter 1 based upon its ‘sem antic’ developm ent in G reim as’s analysis o f V ladim ir P ro p p ’s Morphology of the Folktale (see C h apter 3). T h e semiotic square has a curious genesis. It was first explicitly form ulated in ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’, an article by G reim as and François Rastier, published in 1968 (originally in English). But in that article the authors claim that it ‘is only an adapted form ulation o f [a m odel] form ally p ro p o sed ’ by G reim as in Structural Semantics which \ . . m akes it isom orphic to the logical hexagon o f R. B lanch é.’ (1968a: 88) What the semiotic squ are is, then, is a ‘crossin g’ o f logic and linguistics, a logical form ulation o f a m odel for semantics. But in an im portant way logic and linguistics are not com patible: logic deals with propositions and their truth value while linguistics deals with the ‘self-evident’ phenomenon o f signification (1970a: 12). T h at is, as B ern ard Jack so n dem onstrates in his description o f G reim as’s semiotics, his use o f the semiotic square describes ‘the discursive effect’ o f signification, ‘not an account o f the logical operation through which it is achieved.’ (1985: 82—83) T h u s, Jack so n add s later, ‘G reim as and Rastier ( 1968) use the lan gu age o f sem antics, rather than that o f logic.’ (1985: 96) At the end o f ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’ G reim as and Rastier o ffe r the sam e exam ple I develop in C h apter 1 — the opposition between ‘black vs white’ — to develop a semiotic square. But they cannot be sure if its ‘com plex term ’ conjoins ‘white’ + ‘black’ or ‘white’ + ‘non white’ (1968a: 104). Jack so n , and m ost followers o f G reim as, use the second, abstract designation. But the differen ce is crucial: the second is a ‘logical’ abstract category which subsum es its concrete exam ples from a hierarchically differen t level, a level which m ight be called ‘d e e p ’. As Jack so n says, ‘fo r the logician, this may be no m ore than a proced ure o f den om ination, attaching a d ifferen t (arbitrary) nam e to the sam e [underlying] process.’ (1985: 104) B ut in semiotics, as G reim as says, ‘the proced ure o f den om ination consists in what could be called nom inalisation, that is to say, in the conversion o f a verbal form ulation into a nominal form ulation which transform s the modal predicate into a modal value' (1976a: 78) In C hapter 3 1 will discuss the place in G reim as’s work o f the modalities o f language. But here what is m ost im portant is the term value. Ferdinand de Sau ssu re introix

Preface duced the term value to linguistic studies with a m eaning that is wider than its English cognate (1959: 111-22; see Parret 1983: 116). Specifically in linguistics, value carries the sense o f ‘p u rp o rt’ so that m eaning includes a kind o f direction and force: perh aps its best English ren d erin g would be ‘valence’. T h u s, G reim as argu es that in semiotics the propositions o f logic are replaced by the force o f the significations o f langu age, m eaning-effects about which nothing can be said before their m anifestations. T h e Analytical Dictionary makes the sam e point: ‘semiotic proced ure is somewhat differen t [from that o f logic], since it is based first o f all on a rather large num ber o f concrete analyses which, m oreover, are situated on the narrative plan e.’ (SL: 194) T h at is, unlike logic, semiotics begins with concrete significations; it begins with given m eanings and attem pts to account for or m ake sense o f their existence and force, not their sense. B egin nin g with such concrete phenom ena, the semantic (rather than logical) u n d erstan din g o f the semiotic square inscribes the ideology o f ‘p u rp o rt’ within the elem entary structure o f signification (which is why G reim as is so im portant to a M arxist critic like Fredric Jam eso n ). In ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’ G reim as and Rastier give both a logical and a sem antic investm ent o f ‘the social m odel o f sexual relations’ (the latter being the sem antic investm ent o f ‘traditional French society’ o f the logical positions on the square (1968a: 94)). In Figure 0.1 I am m odifying G reim as’s and R astier’s sem antic investm ent o f the square, so that the second level articulates patriarchal ideology by situating male adultery in the position which defin es sexual relations altogether — the position which, as I will argu e in C hapter 1, articulates the axis upon which the opposition ‘prescribed relations vs forbidden relations’ is situated. ‘N ot prescribed natural relations’ — the position o f the m ale adultery in my m odified sem antic assessm ent — defines the ‘social value’ o f sexuality. As G reim as and R astier note, ‘whatever the investm ent in the m odel, it is a question, in the case o f nature as in that o f culture, o f social values (and not o f the rejection o f nature outside m ean in g).’ (1968a: 94) T h at is, the square articulates what Jam eson calls the ‘political unconscious’ by describing the unspoken sem antic investm ent o f seem ing ‘n atural’ and self-evident (‘ideological’) truths. N ot only does this square su ggest that m ale adultery is ‘n atu ral’ as op posed to culturally determ ined sexuality, and as such that it x

Preface Figure 0.1 LOGICAL MODEL Permitted relations (Culture)

Unacceptable relations (Nature)

Matrimonial relations (prescribed)

'Abnormal' relations (forbidden) c2

Cl

C2 ^ -------- ---

Cl

'Normal' relations (not forbidden)

Non-matrimonial relations (not prescribed)

(1968a: 93-94)

SEMANTIC MODEL (patriarchal m o d el of se x u a l relations) conjugal love

incest, homosexuality

adultery by the woman

adultery by the man

defin es sexuality altogether. But it also situates fem ale sexuality in what I will describe (following G reim as) as the ‘explosive’ position on the square, a position which positions fem ale sexuality — which reconceives it — as both unnatural and a constant threat to conjugal love. In this way the value o f the semiotic square is that it articulates and relates signifying and ideological values. Such ‘articulation’ is what I m ean by G reim as’s attem pt to ‘account fo r’ the phenom enon o f signification in hum an affairs; it is what Parret calls the goal o f G reim as’s work, the ‘descriptive articulation’ o f m ean in g .(1983: 54—55) M oreover, Parret argu es, such articulation is semiotics itself: ‘m eaning is transform ed by semiotic production into articulate and d eterm ined signification.’ (1983: 45) For this reason G reim as xi

Preface describes actantial analysis o f narrative as ‘an initial articulation o f the im agination’ (1973a: 51) — a ph rase which can stand m ore generally fo r his semiotics as a whole. B ut ‘articulation’ goes beyond this description to circum scribe an u n d erstanding o f discursive relational articulation such as Michael Ryan describes. ‘ “ Critical articulation,’” he writes, ‘neither m akes similarities into identities nor rigorously m aintains distinctions’; ‘it is m ore akin to the weaving together o f heterogen eous threads into a new product than to the scholarly and disinterested com parison o f h om ogen eous m asses whose distinction is respected.’ (1982: xiii) And finally, it touches upon a central concept o f linguistic analysis which runs like a particular thread through all the levels o f G reim as’s work, the concept o f ‘double articulation’. In fact, G reim as begins his ‘account’ o f m eaning in term s o f the exam ple o f structural linguistics and its double articulation; in this way he sees semiotics as a subset o f linguistics (see C h apter 2). T h is is why he defin es ‘lan gu ag e’ (langage) as ‘semiotic system and/or process’ (S L : 285) and acknow ledges ‘the com m on-sense truth that all which is o f the dom ain o f lan gu age is linguistic, that is to say, possessing an identical or com parable linguistic structure, and m anifested because o f the establishm ent o f determ inable and, in large m easure, d eterm ined linguistic connections.’ (SS: 65) T h e aim o f linguistics is to give ‘an account o f [the] elem entary com position’ o f linguistic phenom ena. In the sam e way, the aim o f semiotics is to give a relational articulation o f the elem entary com position o f the phenom ena o f m eaning within and beyond ‘lan gu ag e’ narrowly conceived. For this reason G reim as and Rastier begin by suggestin g ‘we can im agine that the hum an m ind, in o rd er to achieve the construction o f cultural objects (literary, mythical, pictoral, etc.) starts with sim ple elem ents and follows a com plex cou rse.’ (1968a: 86—87) Yet for all its com plexity, such a course — the ‘cou rse’ o f ‘discursive’ m eanings — articulates the interwoven ‘su rface’ o f things on the level o f discourse. In ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’ G reim as and Rastier cannot choose between abstract and concrete fo rm u lations o f com plexity because they are attem pting to form ulate the semantic model o f Structural Semantics in term s o f the ‘logical h exagon ’ o f Blanché. Yet as I hope this book m akes clear, the power o f the semiotic square is its ability to account for signification in a structure that, as G reim as says o f narrative xii

Preface discourse itself, is ‘neither pure contiguity nor a logical im plication.’ (S S : 244) Such a form ulation might, in fact, characterise the hierarchical structures o f linguistics as such. Linguistics is usually divided into three general areas, m orphology, syntax, an d sem antics (see C alloud 1976: 7) in the sam e way that this book divides G reim as’s account o f m eaning into linguistics, sem iotics, and discourse theory. (‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’ divides the ‘cou rse’ o f the ph enom ena o f m eaning into ‘deep structures’, ‘superficial structures’, and ‘the structures o f m anifestation’ (1968a: 97)). In the m iddle chapters o f this book I attem pt to present G reim as’s semiotics in an alogous term s. C h apter 2 describes the relationship between G reim as’s sem antics and other linguistic schools and attem pts to describe an inventory (or, as Propp says, a ‘m orph ology’) o f the elem ents o f his conception o f the n ature o f m eaning beyond the limits o f the sentence. In that chapter I exam ine the m ajor ‘schools’ o f structural linguistics and show how G reim as uses m ethods and assum ptions o f them all in his early m ajor work, Structural Semantics. C hapter 3 describes the syntax and gram m ar o f discourse on what G reim as calls the ‘Semionarrative Level’ o f signification. T h ere I begin by distinguishing between the focus on im m anence in linguistics as op posed to the wider focus in semiotics, which includes m anifestation, in ord er to develop a description o f G reim as’s actantial and m odal analyses o f discourse. A nd C hapter 4 describes the ‘sem antics’ o f discourse, what G reim as calls ‘narrativity’. In this chapter I explore the ‘interw eaving’ o f G reim as’s discourse theory, what he calls the ‘generative trajectory’ o f discourse which allows for the weaving together o f heterogen eous semiotic threads to account fo r m eaning. T h e first chapter sets forth the basic assum ptions and concepts that inform G reim as’s semiotics by looking closely at Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. A nd finally the last chapter exam ines an area o f semiotics that G reim as circum scribes but least fully develops, that o f ‘enunciation’, in term s o f poststructuralist work in the hum an sciences, that o f Ja cq u e s D errida, Ja cq u e s Lacan, and Paul de Man. But the book’s overall aim is m ore ‘com plex’ than sim ple (and ‘ph enom en al’) description. R ather, in its attem pt to describe G reim as’s great achievem ent it o ffers, I hope, its own m odest contem plation o f the nature o f m eaning in the context o f contem porary semiotics. Finally, I should add a note about the book’s exposition. O ne xiii

Preface o f the great difficulties in presenting G reim as’s work is that his theory is always in process and, as I note in C hapter 4, his research has a ‘collective’ character. (In fact, his latest ‘work’ — one which ap p eared after I com pleted this study — is V olum e II o f the Analytical Dictionary, Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Tome 2, which is ‘by’ the ‘G rou p de Recherches Sém io-Linguistiques’ and simply ‘edited’ by G reim as.) O ne great strength o f his work, I believe, is his constant ability to revise and refine its on goin g theoretical form ulations. T h u s his work is as much an articulating interw eaving o f his own and oth ers’ works as it is the linear developm ent from the double articulation o f linguistics to the structural articulations o f semiotics to discourse theory that the subtitle o f this book describes. M ore generally, this strength creates the particular expository difficulty o f balancing the conceptions and reconceptions o f G reim asian semiotics. \n A .J. Greimas and the N ature o f Meaning I have attem pted to do ju stice to both the developm ent and achievem ent o f G reim as’s work.

A ckti ou >ledgements T h is book has benefited from the work and com panionship o f many. First o f all, I would like to thank my family, my wife Nancy M ergler, and Cyrus and Benjam in, who have given me com fortable time to work, and consistently sensible com m ents. Nancy read much o f the m anuscript and even subm itted to an oral presentation o f the last chapter; whatever clarity I have achieved has benefited from her patient response in time away from her own work. A nd even the conversation o f Cy and Ben, who are only fou r and two respectively, has been useful: Cy convinced me o f the reality o f sem antic neutralisation in his refusal to let me call his sandals ‘sh oes’; and B en ’s general cheerfulness has shown me that work is fun. But many others have contributed to this book. Parts or all o f the m anuscript were read by Ja m e s Com as, Je ffr e y C rane, R obert Con Davis, L au rie Finke, David G ross, R obert M arkley, Robert Schleifer, Kathleen Welch, and my co-translator o f Structural Semantics, Alan Velie. All have kept me honest and clearer than I would otherwise have been. Daniel Patte has o ffered im portant detailed suggestions at a late stage o f my writing. M ore generally, the m anuscript has benefited from xiv

Preface friendship and conversation with Ray Male over many years. My first encounter with linguistics cam e in an u n d ergrad u ate course taught by S. Ja y K eyser, and although it took me many years to return to linguistics, it is a return for which I had been p rep ared by a fine teacher. M elanie W right carefully com piled the Index on short notice. Finally, I would like to thank the editor o f Criticism for perm ission to use parts o f a review essay in C h apter 1 ; and the Jo h n s H opkins University Press and the University o f O klahom a Press for allowing me to use parts o f essays ap p earin g in Lacan and Narration and Rhetoric and Form: Deconstrnction at Yale in C hapter 5. Som e pages from C h apter 2 and a substantial section o f C h apter 5 ap p e ared in College English. In that C h apter 5, I also reprod uce a p arag rap h from my In troduction to Structural Semantics published by the University o f N ebraska Press.

xv

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1 The Analytical Dictionary: Language, Semiotics, and the Discourses o f the Human Sciences

Introduction: the duality of language Linguistics, structure, an d the hum an sciences Early in the Course in General Linguistics Ferdin and de Sau ssu re defines the ‘object’ o f linguistic science as phenom enon which ‘always has two related sides, each deriving its values from the oth er’. (1959: 8) As exam ples, Sau ssu re lists differen t aspects o f the dualities o f lan gu age: the duality o f vocal organ s and ear, o f sound and idea, o f individual and social m anifestation, o f the synchronic system o f lan gu age and its history (‘at every m om ent it is an existing institution and a prod uct o f the p ast’) (1959: 8). But what is most striking about S au ssu re’s conception o f lan gu age — what governs all the oppositions Saussure describes in lan gu age and leads to the possibility, realised throughout twentieth-century linguistic studies, o f the analysis o f lan gu age into structures o f signification — is the duality in langu age between contrast and com bination. T h is duality is what Jo n ath an C uller describes in his study o f Saussure as ‘the basic structural principle, that items are defined by their contrasts with other items and their ability to com bine to form higher-level item s.’ (1976: 50) T h at is, the elem ents o f language, Sau ssu re perceived, are the product o f linguistic opposition, o f contrast, yet its elem ents combine to create com plex units which, in turn, constitute contrasting, differential elem ents on a d ifferen t level o f language. ‘In effect,’ A .J. G reim as has written, ‘in linguistics units are defined as “constituents,” that is, solely by the fact that they

1

The Analytical Dictionary enter into the constitution o f other, hierarchically superior units or that they decom pose them selves into inferior units.’ (1976d: 16; see SL 17) ‘L an gu age, in a m anner o f speakin g,’ Saussure notes, ‘is a type o f algebra consisting solely o f com plex term s.’ (1959: 122) T h is ‘com plexity’ is the m ode o f existence o f m eaningful lan gu age; as such, as Rom an Jak o b so n has argu ed (1963), it is hierarchic an d thus articulable into structural relationships on all levels. For exam ple, ‘distinctive featu res’ com bine in ‘b u n dles’ to constitute phonem es; distinguishable words com bine to form sentences; sentences com bine in discursive utterances. In each instance, the whole is greater than the sum o f its parts. ‘A linguistic unit,’ Elm ar H olenstein writes, ‘can be identified only in term s o f its two-fold dependence upon the elem ents o f which it is constituted and upon the larger context into which it is in tegrated.’ (1976: 167) T h e dualities o f lan gu age create what G reim as calls the essentially ‘bi-isotopic’ nature o f discourse, the superposition o f two ‘m essages’ (SS : 286); they create what Jak o b so n calls the ‘d u plex structu re’ o f lan gu age, the fact that its elem ents ‘may at once be utilized and referred to (= pointed at).’ (1957: 130) T h at is, lan gu age, in a ‘d u p le x ’ m anner, both com m unicates a m essage and also com m unicates its own code: in this way we can learn lan gu age (i.e. the ‘code’ o f a particular language) by listening to m essages inscribed in that code; and, in a larger context, we can learn about a speaker from what he says, even when he isn’t speaking ‘ab ou t’ himself. T h e im plications o f this ‘d u p lex ’ conception o f lan gu age — and especially the possibility, created by this structure, o f integrating its elem ents into ever-w idening contexts — are issues I will exam ine in this chapter. W hat is most im portant here is that the ‘duplexity’ o f language, as Jak o b so n describes it, is another version o f the com bination (its ‘utilization’) and contrast (its existence as a referent) o f language. Its elem ental ‘wholes,’ which can be ‘pointed at’ in any discourse, are functions o f contrasting oppositions, while its com m unicative function, the sum o f its elem ents conceived as ‘p arts,’ is a function o f its com binations. What this allows, as Jak o b so n and Culler suggest, is the conception o f lan gu age as a structure — structure in which the relationship between its parts and wholes are reciprocally constitutive (as contrasting wholes) and essentially com plex (as both wholes and parts). T h is is the basic insight into the nature 2

The Analytical Dictionary o f lan gu age upon which structural linguistics has been established. It constitutes, as we shall see, G reim as’s basic conception o f lan gu age and in form s what he describes as ‘the elem ental structure o f signification.’ M oreover, such a ‘structu ral’ conception o f lan gu age creates the possibility o f the ‘science’ o f signification in general, a science which attem pts to account for the nature o f m eaning, what Sau ssu re called ‘sem iology’ and what G reim as calls ‘sem iotics’ (S L : 282, 287f). T h e work o f A .J. G reim as, in structural sem antics, narratology, and finally discourse theory in general, as I hope to dem onstrate, presents both an exam ple o f and the theoretical basis for the farreaching implications that a structural conception o f lan gu age has fo r the ‘sciences’ o f man, disciplines such as linguistics, philology, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, and so forth. T h ese disciplines, the human sciences, are related in that their ‘objects’ are constituted by the com plexity o f hum an discourse; they are, in fact, simply differen t ‘contexts’ whose elem ental constituents are signifying form s and structures which linguistics and sem iotics attem pt to describe. Traditionally, these disciplines have been called the ‘hum anities’ and were not, as Louis H jelm slev has noted, considered ‘sciences’ at all (1961: 8 -1 0 ; see Schleifer 1983). In ou r century, however, structural linguistics and semiotics have developed concepts and m ethods which allow the reconception o f the hum anities as the hum an sciences. T h e hum an sciences, like the ‘objects’ o f linguistic and sem iotic ‘science’ in general, can be seen as both d ifferin g (contrasting) disciplines and as a single (com bined) object o f semiotics. In the latter case, the linguistic approach to the hum an sciences would be semantics globally conceived. A nd this is why G reim as is such an im portant figure. His m ajor early work, Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966), attem pts such a global approach to signification; it attem pts to articulate a science o f signification, the ‘science’ o f the hum an sciences. His m ore recent work, however, has attem pted m ore ‘elem ental’ approach es to the exploration o f the nature o f signification — approach es that include forays into literary criticism {Maupassant 1976), sociology (Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales 1976), and essays dealing with anthropology, poetics, ethnology, philosophy, history, etc. (Du Sens, I and II 1970; 1983). C h apter 2 will exam ine the linguistic b ackgrou nd to his work in relation to the ‘m ethod’ o f his ‘global’ sem antics, and 3

The Analytical Dictionary C h apter 3 will exam ine the conception o f discursive signification found in Structural Semantics and elsewhere. T h e final chapters will explore the im plications o f this work for the hum an sciences in general. In this chapter, however, I will focus on his most recent m ajor project, the Analytical Dictionary — a ‘dictionary’ o f what he and Jo se p h C ourtés call ‘all aspects o f language in its very b roadest sen se’ (SL\ xi) — in ord er to present a discursive taxonom y o f the term inology and u n d erlying assum ptions o f G reim as’s semiotics. In so doing, I will attem pt to define the relationships am o n g language, semiotics, and discourse that govern G reim as’s semiotic project.

The ‘A nalytical’ D ictionary: scientific discourse It is ap p ro p riate to begin a study o f A .J. G reim as and the nature o f m eaning with the Analytical Dictionary for two reasons. First o f all, in its very ‘analytical’ form as a com pendium o f cross-referenced definitions, the Analytical Dictionary o ffers an exam ple o f the essential duality o f discourse I am speaking of, the structural conception o f lan gu age as sim ultaneous contrasts and com binations, and it does so in a way that will allow me to present the term inological and conceptual foundation for m uch o f what follows. T h is presentation will follow the ‘cou rse’ the translators o f the Analytical Dictionary suggest: ‘the m ost profitable way o f using the dictionary,’ they say, ‘is perh aps to plun ge in, according to on e’s own needs, curiosity, or sim ple hazard, and then follow the au th o rs’ suggestions concerning their system o f crossreferen ce’ (S L : ix). Such a ‘cou rse’ com es close to G reim as’s definition o f narrative discourse, a path that is ‘neither pure contiguity nor a logical im plication.’ (SS: 244) T h e second reason for its appropriaten ess is m ore subtle. At the m om ent o f its publication the Analytical Dictionary faced the on goin g critique o f structuralism that has come to be known, in the U nited States at least, as ‘poststructuralism .’ T h is critique — whose relationship to semiotics will form an underlying counterpoint to the argu m en t o f this book — is a function, like ‘structuralism ’ itself, o f langu age conceived as a structure o f contrasts and com binations; but it is a function that em phasises the always-present possibility o f ever-widening contexts that the structure o f language creates, possibility that underm ines the 4

The Analytical Dictionary scientific goal o f the hum an sciences. T h at is, poststructuralist critique o f structuralism opens up the structural possibility o f ever-new levels o f signifying com binations in lan gu age which create the heterogeneity, uncertainty, and even incoherence o f discourse. T h u s in 1978, in the year b efore the appearan ce o f A .J. G reim as’s and J . C ou rtés’s Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage, Wlad Godzich wrote that ‘although sem iotics aspires to be a science, i.e., a h om ogen eous and coherent discourse capable o f self-correcting and increm ental developm ent, sem ioticians know that its m edium is lan gu age, the locus o f uncertainty, lies, heterogeneity, and incoherence.’ (1978: 389) G reim as’s and C o u rtés’s Dictionnaire, translated as Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary, is an am bitious project. It is, as I am suggesting, if not a culm ination, at least a m ajor articulation o f the scientific am bition o f the structuralist project which aim s at the hom ogeneity, coherence and self-correction that Godzich speaks o f in its h u n dreds o f cross-referenced definitions and articles. T h e English translators defin e this am bition in explainin g why they refrain ed from using current English equivalents to many o f the concepts defin ed in the Dictionary. Semiotics and Language, they write, brings together in a consistent theoretical fram ew ork many very d isparate partial theories and proposals stem m ing from a great variety o f fields, which until now have been perceived as discrete or even divergent aspects o f sem iotic research. But to do so it was necessary fo r the authors to establish a term inology that would transcend all these projects, a term inology that is tantam ount to a m etalanguage. (SL: viii) T h e establishm ent o f a term inological m etalanguage leaves out the discursive aspect o f G odzich’s definition o f the ‘asp iration’ o f semiotics, although the elaborate system o f crossreference which G reim as and C ourtés o ffe r in the Dictionary begins to approach a sense o f discourse (which, as I shall argu e, it was the analytic project o f G reim as’s earlier Structural Semantics to erase). In fact, it is the relationship o f the project o f G reim as’s career — the project o f structuralism and semiotics — to disc ou rse as such and to the general theory o f discourse 5

The Analytical Dictionary m ore or less explicit in his semiotics that I hope to describe in this volume. For this reason the Analytical Dictionary is an im portant statem ent in the history o f structuralism and in the intellectual history o f ou r time. I f the Dictionary does not create the kind o f coherent and hom ogen eous m etalanguage both its authors and its translators hope for, it still provides at least the locus o f com m on denom ination — the ‘com m on g ro u n d ’ G reim as and C ourtés speak o f — which can aid u n d erstan din g in im portant ways. In its denom inations the Analytical Dictionary clearly articulates the scientific am bition o f semiotics. T h e aim o f Semiotics and Language, as G reim as and C ourtés write in their ‘P reface’, is the establishm ent o f ‘a com m on gro u n d upon which [many diverse contem porary semiotic] theories could be b rou gh t together, com pared and evaluated.’ (S L : xi) As such the aim o f the Dictionary is that o f taxonom y rather than the construction o f a global theory, which, the authors write, ‘would have required an effort o f discoursive strategy all out o f proportion with our present go al.’ (SL: xii) Semiotics and Language defines taxonomy as ‘classification itself, i.e., the p ro cedures o f systematic organization o f observed and described d ata’ (SL: 336), and the whole o f the Analytical Dictionary, with its arbitrary alphabetical listings and its elaborate structuration o f cross-references, attem pts this kind o f taxonom y. C entral to the ‘systematic organization ’ o f taxonom y is the scientific nature o f its ‘taxonom ic d o in g’ in the social sciences: T h e analysis o f discourse with a scientific goal (in the social sciences) has revealed that the cognitive activity found therein consists mainly in taxonomic doing. T h is sort o f doing involves constructing semiotic objects (elements, units, hierarchies) with the help o f recognized identities and alterities. T his taxonom ic construction constitutes a genuine prerequisite for the developm ent o f a scientific m etalanguage. (SL: 336) T h e link between taxonom y and science can help to delim it the structuralist project altogether. Above all, structuralism possesses a ‘scientific go al’: it assum es the ph enom en a o f hum an experience are recurrent, systematic, and susceptible to rational explanation — susceptible to description in a lan gu age which is systematic, exact, and generalisin g (Schleifer 6

The Analytical Dictionary 1983: xv-xxiii). It is a ‘com m on-sense truth,’ G reim as writes in Structural Semantics, that all which is o f the dom ain o f lan gu age is linguistic, that is to say, possessing an identical or com parable linguistic structure, and m anifested because o f the establishm ent o f determ inable and, in a large m easure, d etermined linguistic connections . . . It may be — it is a philosophic and not linguistic question — that the phenom enon o f langu age as such is m ysterious, but there are no mysteries in language. T h e ‘piece o f w ax’ o f D escartes is no less m ysterious than the symbol o f the m oon. It is simply that chem istry has succeeded in giving an account o f its elem entary com position. It is tow ard an analysis o f the sam e type that structural sem antics m ust proceed. (SS: 65) T h e ‘account’ o f chemistry, G reim as notes, is a ‘semiotic form which must, across all kinds o f lan gu age, serve to express its m ean in g.’ (1969: 42) Such a m etalanguage, C laude LéviStrauss argu es, can describe the ‘unconscious activity o f the m ind’ in culture ( 1963a: 21), and G reim as’s sem iotics is a ‘scientific’ attem pt to describe this activity in the broadest cultural and ‘hu m an ’ phenom enon, m eaning itself.

Language The elemental structure o f signification T his attem pt is fou nded upon the basic assum ption o f structuralism , namely that the m eaning-effects o f lan gu age, particular ap p reh en d ed m eanings that occur in hum an affairs, are not simply intuited in som e ‘m ysterious’ way, but are generated and appreh en ded by m eans o f a systematic ‘unconscious activity o f the m in d’ — or systematic activities — su sceptible to scientific analysis and ‘accounting.’ Such systematic activities em ploy a basic system o f relations — relations o f contrariety, contradiction, and presupposition — which, as relationships, create the sim ultaneous possibilities o f contrast and com bination (see Jack so n 1985: 98). T his is why in ord er to 7

The Analytical Dictionary follow the argum ent and shape not only o f the Analytical Dictionary, but o f G reim as’s contribution to the hum an sciences as a whole, it is necessary to exam ine his attem pt at articulating these relationships in a scientific m etalanguage, what the Analytical Dictionary calls rather inelegantly ‘taxonom ic d o in g’. Such ‘d o in g’ is m ore than developing a scientific term inology, a ‘m etalan gu age’; it develops what the dictionary’s translators call a ‘transcen den tal’ term inology which allows for the com binational cross-references o f its elem ents. T a x onom y and cross-reference brings together the dictionary’s ‘elem ents, units, hierarchies’ in o rd er to defin e langu age globally conceived, the French langage o f the Dictionary's title, as op posed to langue, lan gu age conceived as system or, as the Dictionary says, as ‘an im m anent structural organization ’ (S L : 169), and as op posed to parole, lan gu age conceived as speech or, as the Dictionary says, as ‘discou rse’ (SL: 307). T h u s even in the French edition (in which term s are presented in English as well as French) the Dictionary translates langage as ‘semiotic system and/or process’ (SL: 285), and in so doin g it defin es lan gu age globally conceived in term s o f contrasts and com binations. Following Saussure, Emile Benveniste defines lan gu age in term s o f this duality. In linguistics, he says, ‘each one o f the units o f a system is thus defined by the relations which it m aintains with other units and by the oppositions into which it enters; as Saussure says, it is a relating and op posin g entity.’ (1971: 19) T h e contrasts and com binations o f lan gu age — its oppositional system and relational process — create and inhabit d ifferen t levels o f language, ‘in such a way,’ Benveniste says, ‘that each unit o f a specific level becom es a subunit o f the level above.’ ( 1971: 21 ) H ere again, we are at the heart o f structuralism . At all levels, Benveniste says, lan gu age is a system in which nothing is significant in and o f itself, but in which everything is significant as an elem ent o f the pattern; structure confers upon the parts their ‘m ean in g’ or their function. T his, too, is what perm its unlimited com m unication; since language is organized systematically and functions accordin g to the rules o f a code, the speaker, can, with a very small n um ber o f basic elem ents, com pose signs, then gro u p s o f signs, and finally an unlimited num ber o f utterances, all 8

The Analytical Dictionary identifiable for the hearer since the sam e system exists in him. (1971: 21) T h e focus on the relational pattern is a direct result o f S a u ssu re’s ‘d u al’ sense o f language. O ne o f S au ssu re’s dualities, as we have seen, distinguishes between two m ethods o f studying langu age, diachrony, the developm ental and historical study o f lan gu age, and synchrony, the relational study o f the elem ents o fla n g u a g e taken at any particular m om ent in that la n gu ag e’s history within and across the levels o f that language. T h e synchronic study o f lan gu age focuses upon contrast and com bination in lan gu age, its contrasting system and/or its com binational processes. M ost im portantly, m oreover, this approach led Sau ssu re to conceive o fla n g u a g e as a ‘system ’ — a whole greater than the sum o f its parts — in which differen ces (contrasts) and their com binations in lan gu age each p resu p p o sed the other. ‘T o consider a term as simply the union o f a certain soun d with a certain concept,’ Saussure asserted, ‘is grossly m isleading. T o define it in this way would isolate the term from its system ; it would m ean assum ing that one can start from the term s and construct the system by ad d in g them together when, on the contrary, it is from the in terdepen den t whole that one m ust start and through analysis obtain its elem ents.’ (1959: 113) ‘In lan gu ag e,’ he wrote, ‘there are only differences. Even m ore im portant: a differen ce generally im plies positive term s between which the differen ce is set up; but in lan gu age there are only differen ces without positive terms.1(1959: 120) T h e in terdepen den ce Sau ssu re is speaking about is what G reim as calls the ‘reciprocal p resu pposition ’ o f the elem ents o f language, and m ore than anything else this is what characterises ‘structuralism ’. From this follows the ‘diacritical’ or ‘differen tial’ definition o f lan gu age’s elem ents upon which G reim as bases what he calls ‘the elem entary structure o f signification’: cat, for instance, is recognised not because o f any inherent quality o f the sound [kæt], but because it exists within a system or structure o f differen ces with other signifying term s in English such as cut, caught, cot, sat (and in which it is recognised as the ‘sam e’ as cat pron oun ced with an elogated vowel [kæ:t]). T h is is what Benveniste calls the ‘p attern ’ o f relational differen ces that m akes particular elem ents or features distinctive and signifying. As G reim as notes in Structual Seman9

The Analytical Dictionary tics, ‘the elem ents o f signification . . . are designated by Rom an Ja k o b so n as distinctive features and are for him simply the English translation, retranslated into French, o f Sau ssu re’s differential elements ' (S S : 23) B u t what is equally im portant is that the recognition o f such differen ces presu p p o ses similarities and vice versa: contrast and com bination are in a relationship o f reciprocal p resu p p o sition. T h at is, the elem ental structure o f signification is ‘present in a double asp ect’ (S L : 314); it is a structure o f (1) contrasts and (2) com binations. ‘We perceive differen ces,’ says G reim as, and, thanks to that perception, the world ‘takes fo rm ’ in front o f us and for us. B ut on the linguistic plane, what does the expression ‘to perceive differen ces’ m ean exactly? 1. T o perceive differen ces m eans to grasp at least two object-term s as sim ultaneously present. 2. T o perceive differen ces m eans to grasp the relationship between the term s, to link them together somehow. (SS: 19) T h u s the great oppositions (‘d ifferen ces’) o f S au ssu re’s work and structural linguistics — lan gu age conceived as a system (‘langue ) vs the m anifestation o f lan gu age in particular utterances (‘parole’); synchrony vs diachrony; paradigm atic vs syntagm atic aspects o f lan gu age; identity vs alterity; the signified vs the signifier; the intelligible vs the tangible; etc. — all exist in relationships o f reciprocal presupposition. (T hese are the planes o f lan gu age as op posed to the levels o f lan gu age; elem ents o f one plane do not com bine to form elem ents o f the other.) In fact, by erasin g tem poral, developm ental aspects o f its study, the synchronic study o f signification requires the notion o f reciprocal presupposition since ‘p resu ppo sitio n ’ itself im plies a kind o f tem porality, a ‘before and after’, which ‘reciprocal’ presupposition erases. T h e way to articulate such reciprocity is to develop a vocabulary which sim ultaneously articulates differen ces and implies similarities, a vocabulary o f elem ents which are well defin ed, unequivocal, yet exist within a com binatory system o f ‘sim ilar’ distinctions. Such a vocabulary is a system atic m etalanguage: a taxonom y susceptible to crossreference. 10

The Analytical Dictionary Knowledge vs power: Greim as's conception o f lan gu age L an gu age, in G reim as’s conception o f it, as in S a u ssu re’s, is essentially double; as he says in the Analytical Dictionary, semiotic systems (langage) are always ‘bi-planar, which is to say that the m eans by which they are m anifest is not to be con fused with what is m an ifested.’ (S L : 285) In this, G reim as is again following Saussure, who wrote that ‘the absolutely final law o f language is, we dare say, that there is nothing which can ever reside in one term .’ (cited in Benveniste 1971: 36) Benveniste calls this the basic principle o f Sau ssu re’s ‘total intuition o f lan gu ag e’: ‘that human speech, no m atter from what point o f view it is studied, is always a double entity, form ed o f two parts o f which the one has no value without the oth er.’ ‘Everything in lan gu ag e,’ Benveniste continues (again echoing Saussure), is to be defin ed in double term s; everything bears the im print and seal o f an op posin g duality: — the articulatory/acoustical duality; — the duality o f sound and sense; — the duality o f the individual and society; — the duality o f langue and parole; — the duality o f the m aterial and the im m aterial; — the duality o f the ‘m em orial’ (paradigm atic) and the syntagm atic; — the duality o f sam eness and opposition; — the duality o f the synchronic and the diachronic, etc. (1971: 35-6) G reim as invests this duality in the actantial analysis o f Structural Semantics when he distinguishes between levels o f ‘knowledge’ and ‘pow er’ in discourse. T h is actantial distinction is based upon his most global description o f language in Structural Semantics. Linguistic activity, creative o f m essages, ap p ears first as the setting up o f hypotactic relationships between a small num ber o f sem em es: functions, actants, contexts. It is thus essentially m orphem ic and presents a series o f m essages as algorithm s. However, a system atic structure — the distribution o f roles to the actants — is su perim posed on this hypotaxis and establishes the m essage as an

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The Analytical Dictionary objectivizing projection, the sim ulator o f a world from which the sen der and the receiver o f a com m unication are excluded. (SS: 134) T h e aim o f ‘linguistic activity’ is to create m essages, which G reim as defin es as ‘rem arks about the world or a narrative o f events o f the w orld.’ (SS: 134) First, he claims here, such activity can be seen as ‘essentially m orph em ic’; that is, a series o f ‘acts’ related only algorithm ically to its single constant, its ‘sen d er’ (the speaking ‘actor’ o f linguistic activity). Such acts are related ‘hypotactically’ in sofar as the elem ents so related are categorically differen t: m orphem ic m essages can exist on differen t hierarchic levels o f developm ent (e.g. m ain vs su b ordinate clauses). System s, however, exist on a particular level in relations o f reciprocal presupposition — either hierarchical relationships (between parts and wholes) or those o f conjunction or disjunction (com bination and contrast), but in either case in relationships that relate to the internal organ isation o f a totality. It is here, in ‘system atization,’ that the concept o f ‘structure’ arises (requiring a ‘scientific m etalang u a g e ’ to describe that structure). ‘Structure is, indeed, a totality considered as an axis divisible into sem es [minimal units o f signification], the relationships which characterize its internal organization are either antonym ie (relations o f conjunctions and disjunctions) or hyponymic [hierarchical relations o f ‘division’ between totality and its elem ents].’ (SS: 119) A ‘system ’ o f lan gu age can only be analysed (synchronically) in term s o f the ‘structu re’ o f that system (see Benveniste 1971: 79—83). Such an analysis, as G reim as says, will produce ‘a new term inology . . . which must, across all kinds o f language, serve to express its m ean in g.’ (1969: 42) T h e ‘su perim position ’ o f a systematic structure on the m orphem ic elem ents o f linguistic activity, then, allows the ‘activity’ o f linguistics to ‘exclu de’ both its nature as an act and the agency o f its action, and app ears to be simply a description o f the world, o f what is. N o longer are m essages ‘rem arks’ or im posed narratives; here, the m essage becom es a description, a form o f ‘know ledge’ o f the world. E m bedded in this idea o f knowledge is a sense o f the logic and intelligibility o f the world: as C laude Lévi-Strauss says in ‘Structure and Form : R eflections on the W ork o f V ladim ir P ro p p ’ — a text, as we shall see, o f central im portance to G reim as’s sem antics — as op posed to 12

The Analytical Dictionary \form,’ ‘structure has no distinct content; it is content itself, and the logical organization in which it is arrested is conceived as a property o f the real.’ (1984: 167; see Jak o b so n 1956: 27—28). Such an assum ption o f intelligibility is, as I have argu ed , the governing axiom o f ‘scientificness’. T h u s even though G reim as’s description o f ‘linguistic activity’ has, inscribed within it, the tem porality o f a narrative — ‘first’ one type o f relationship, ‘then’ the superim position o f an other type — he is still describing lan gu age in the synchronic and ‘scientific’ term s o f reciprocal presu pposition: the Analytical Dictionary defines message itself as a ‘rein terpretation ’ o f parole in Sau ssu re’s opposition o f reciprocal presupposition between langue and parole (SL: 188). In the actantial readin g o f ‘linguistic activity’ in Structural Semantics G reim as describes two levels o f lan gu age, a first level, govern in g the subject o f discourse played upon, nonsyntactically, by what he calls ‘the will to act and the im aginary resistance’ to such action, and a second level that ‘describes,’ in correct syntactic form ation, ‘know ledge’ about the world (SS: 206). In this distinction G reim as is utilising an im portant opposition in French between enunciation (énonciation) and utterance (énonce) (D ucrot & T o d o ro v 1979: 323—24). Enunciation calls attention to the act and situation oflin gu istic activity, to what Benveniste calls ‘the instances o f d iscou rse’, while utterance (som etim es translated ‘statem ent’) is simply what is stated, an ‘assertion o f fact’ (Benveniste 1971: 217, 233). T ogeth er, enunciation and utterance com prise what G reim as calls the ‘double asp ect’ o f speech which can be considered sim ultaneously ‘as a bodily act in au gu ratin g verbal behaviour and as the im m ediate appearan ce [début] o f verbal com m unication.’ (M: 173; see also 1976b) T h e first aspect, correspon d in g to a ‘m orph em ic’ conception o f linguistic m essages, G reim as appropriately calls the level o f ‘pow er,’ while the second, correspon d in g to the systematic, structural aspect o f m essages, he calls that o f ‘know ledge’. K now ledge ‘exclu des’ the sen der and receiver o f m essages, and attem pts a discourse, such as found in the Analytical Dictionary, that is ‘clean’ and, as pu re description, is not contam inated by a speaker at all: a logical organisation conceived as a property o f the real.

13

The Analytical Dictionary

Semiotics 'Scientificness : M etalinguistic style Such a definition o f ‘know ledge,’ which brackets and d isrega rd s the enunciatory ‘pow er’ o f discourse, characterises the style o f G reim as’s writing and, in fact, o f his semiotic project. In Structural Semantics he develops ‘proced ures o f description ’ to elim inate such ‘noise’ and ‘abolish’ discourse (SS: 158). T h u s his system atic or scientific m etalanguage, like symbolist poetry, attem pts to articulate lan gu age without a subject. It attem pts to effect what G reim as calls the ‘objectification’ o f the text, that is, the elim ination o f all linguistic categories that d ep en d (and indicate) the ‘nonlinguistic situation o f discou rse’ within the text (SS: 175). Earlier G reim as, follow ing the D anish linguist Louis Hjelm slev, distinguishes between nonscientific and scientific m etalanguages. T h e form er is ‘n atu ral’ — that is, it develops term inology from the lan gu age it is exam in ing (as in dictionary definitions) to discuss ‘objective’ linguistic facts (hence it is ‘m etalinguistic’). As an instance o f a natural m etalanguage describing a particular semiotic system, G reim as notes that ‘the lan gu age o f pictorial criticism, the collective work o f several generations o f art critics, is presented as an already existing subensem ble’ o f the French language. On the other hand, ‘a scientific m etalanguage is constructed: that is, all the term s com posing it constitute a coherent corpu s o f definitions.’ (SS: 14) T h is ‘scientific’ project is the aim o f the Analytical Dictionary (and, m ore generally, o f the hum anities conceived as the ‘hum an sciences’): the authors define Metalanguage in term s o f such a ‘scientific’ aim, and then defin e Scientific ness as giving scientific discourse such a form that the scientific subject, having a place within the uttered discourse, may function as any subject w hatsoever . . . : it may eventually be capable o f being replaced by an autom aton. In ord er to do this, the subject m ust im plem ent a ‘clean’ lan gu age (or m etalanguage) the term s o f which are well defin ed and unequivocal . . . (SL: 269) E m bedded in these conceptions o f ‘coherence’ and ‘scientific14

The Analytical Dictionary ness,’ however, is the assum ption that ‘know ledge’ can be purely ‘linguistic’; that it can be governed solely by linguistic and sem iotic relationships, voicelessly yet discursively. T h e language o f the Analytic Dictionary attem pts this voicelessness by attem pting a kind o f scientific objectivity: the passive constructions o f its definitions, the cross-referencing, the neologism s, typographical m arkers — all attem pt to elim inate the categories im plying ‘nonlinguistic’ situations o f discourse without elim inating discourse itself. As G reim as notes in Structural Semantics, Lovers o f beautiful lan gu age will continue to discredit these often b aroqu e and absu rd neologism s: they are not aware o f the fact that denom inative lexem es are not a part o f natural lan gu age, but o f a second descriptive language, and that they are no m ore English than algebraic signs . . . (SS: 180) T h u s the style o f G reim as’s sem iotic project correspon d s to its central scientific aim. ‘Structural p ro ced u res,’ he argu es in M aupassant, ‘set forth a general scientific approach , and not a “ structuralist philosophy,” which is only its awkward and ephem eral extrap olation .’ (M: 199)

Structuralism ; or, taxonomic doing T h e m ethod o f such a ‘scientific ap p ro ach ’ is to bracket what is deem ed to be ‘irrelevant’ in o rd er to analyse its data and effect a ‘taxonom ic d o in g’. Such analysis, however, like the style in which it is presented, assum es the ‘transparency’ o f its own discourse, for to posit a ‘m etalan gu age’ is to assum e the fact that lan gu age can function in a naively referential way: thus ‘sem e’ will designate the minimal unit o f significance in signification. I will have occasion to exam ine m ore fully the im plications o f G reim as’s semiotics for the notion o f referentiality in a later chapter. M ore im portantly, however, such discrim ination between features which are relevant and irrelevant to an analysis is central to G reim as’s taxonom ic project — his ‘taxonom ic d o in g’ — because at the centre o f this project is the elaboration o f structuralism as such. Because the ‘distinctive featu res’ and ‘differential elem ents’ o f structuralism

15

The Analytical Dictionary determ ine a particular synchronic level o f analysis, they lend them selves to taxonom y. As I have already su ggested, taxonom y is not the sole aim o f structuralism . Rather, ‘taxonom ic d o in g’ em phasises the contrastive aspect o f structure even while the term ‘structuralism ’ im plies the ‘structural whole’ o f combination (Jakobson 1929: 711). T h e term itself has a curiously bifurcated history. It was first used by Rom an Jak o b so n in an attem pt to define the m ethod o f the structural linguistics o f the P rague School based upon the work o f Sau ssu re (1929: 711 ; H olenstein 1976: 1), yet in recent intellectual history it has been seen ‘as a brain-child o f French literary theoreticians o f the sixties’ (Steiner 1982: x) in its extrapolation (and ‘eph em eralisation ’ (see SS: 3—4)) beyond linguistic science. T h e link between the two is Lévi-Strauss’s structural study o f cultural discourse. Lévi-Strauss’s work itself uses the m ethodology o f linguistics to study social anthropology: perh aps one o f the great m eetings o f the twentieth century was that between Jak o b so n an d Lévi-Strauss, both exiles teaching at T h e New School in New York City du rin g W orld W ar II. With the work o f Lévi-Strauss in the fifties, structuralism was focused on discourse in general and becam e a m ethod which attem pted to app ro p riate the diacritical, synchronic analysis o f linguistic ph enom en a to other disciplines. T o m ake this leap, as I have su ggested, LéviStrau ss was forced to extrapolate the self-evident intelligibility o f lan gu age to the far from self-evident assum ption that ‘logical organization’ could be conceived ‘as a property o f the real’ (1984: 167). Such an extrapolation tran sform ed descriptive ‘taxonom y’ into ‘structu rin g’ the real into intelligible form s. T h u s, it is an irony o f contem porary intellectual history that G reim as chose to entitle his attem pt at articulating a m ethod for essaying the diacritical taxonom ic description o f m eaning in language Structural Semantics, a title that echoed Lévi-Strauss’s appropriation o f the linguistic term to the hum an sciences in Structural Anthropology. Still, the en largem ent o f the object o f structural analysis beyond linguistics created the im pression that taxonom ic contrasts, rather than contrast and com bination, defin ed it. T h is is perh aps because the ‘whole’ o f other sem iotic systems are not as readily delineated as that o f natural languages. T h u s G reim as and C ourtés note in the Analytical Dictionary that structuralism ‘is presented especially (and perh aps wrongly: see 16

The Analytical Dictionary L an gu age, natural) as a taxonom y.’ (S L : 312) G reim as and C ourtés suggest that this is p erh ap s w rong because ‘natural languages (langue) are to be distinguished from other semiotic systems by their com binatory power which is du e to what is called double articulation and the processes o f d isen g agem ent.’ (SL: 169) ‘D ouble articulation,’ a term developed by A ndré M artinet, is the presence — the reciprocal p re su p p o sition — o f both com bination and contrast. In this conception, langu age presents two distinct planes o f analysis. Each o f the ‘units o f the first articulation,’ M artinet argu es, ‘presents a m eaning and a vocal (or phonic) form . It cannot be analysed into sm aller successive units endow ed with m eaning . . . But the vocal form itself is analysable into a series o f units each o f which m akes its contribution to distinguishing tête from other units such as bête, tante, or terre.9 (1964: 24) In traditional linguistics, the first articulation is the com binatory o f gram m ar (or m orphology) while the second is that o f phonology. O ther semiotic systems, G reim as and C ourtés suggest, do not possess the delineation o f the second articulation: mythology and folktales, for instance, have a gram m ar and m orphology, but the elem ents o f this gram m ar are what Lévi-Strauss calls a bricolage, com prised o f whatever is at hand (1966: 17—20) — which is why taxonom y seems to take precedence. With the term combinatory we reach a central term in the structuralist en terprise and a concise definition o f the proced ure o f G reim as’s taxonom y, the Analytical Dictionary with its double taxonom ic proced u re o f constructing and defin ing semiotic objects by defin ing the relationships between them. Combinatory jo in s com bination and contrast together in a structure o f articulation: 1. Derived from the m edieval ars combinatoria, the combinatory principle is seen as a discipline, or rather a m athem atical calculation, which enables a large num ber o f com binations o f elem ents to be form ed from a small num ber o f sim ple elem ents . . . 2. T h e concept o f a com binatory principle is in som e way related to that o f principle generation, since it d esignates a proced ure whereby com plex units are generated from sim ple units . . . (SL: 36) A com binatory, then, is a kind o f analytical dictionary, one that 17

The Analytical Dictionary com bines taxonom y with relationship. Such a com binatory, like the Analytical Dictionary, can ‘gen erate’ discourse in ju st the way I am generatin g discourse here by follow ing the crossreferences o f the dictionary. Such a project o f cross-reference is what Lévi-Strauss calls ‘the search fo r a m iddle way between aesthetic perception and the exercise o f logical thought’ which is the result o f the ‘com binatory’ called music (1975: 14). T h is is the heart o f the structuralist activity. T h u s, Lévi-Strauss writes, I had tried to transcend the contrast between the tangible and the intelligible by op eratin g from the outset at the sign level. T h e function o f signs, is, precisely, to express the one by m eans o f the other. Even when very restricted in num ber, they lend them selves to rigorously organized com binations which can translate even the finest shades o f the whole range o f sense experience. We can thus hope to reach a plane where logical properties, as attributes o f things, will be m anifested as directly as flavors or perfum es; perfu m es are unm istakably identifiable, yet we know that they result from com binations o f elem ents which, if subjected to a differen t selection and organ ization, would have created aw areness o f a differen t perfum e, (1975: 14) T h is description presents the central assum ption o f structuralism , the definition o f structure, as op posed to form , as ‘a logical organization . . . conceived as a property o f the real.’ (It also presents the essentially functional definition o f structure — a m atter to which I will return in the next chapter.) In this definition Lévi-Strauss o ffers a basic m odel for G reim as’s sem antics, and a considerable n um ber o f articles in the Analytical Dictionaiy describe concepts developed in G reim as’s Structural Semanties. Still, in the dozen years between the Analytical Dictionary and Structural Semantics G reim as (and Lévi-Strauss as well) had to reconceive his project: u nder structural semantics, the Dictionary notes that ‘the great illusion o f the 1960s — i.e., the possibility o f providing linguistics with the necessary m eans for an exhaustive analysis o f the content plane o f natural languages — had to be aban don ed, since linguistics had gotten en gaged, often without realizing it, in the extraordin ary project o f the 18

The Analytical Dictionary com plete description o f all cultures, even em bracing all o f hum anity.’ (SL: 273) In 1966 G reim as’s claims were even larger than these: ‘su p p o sin g,’ he writes in Structural Semantics, ‘the main axiological m odels o f ou r universe were d e sc rib e d ;. . . we could foresee the possibility one day o f constructing and setting in place functional m odels capable o f bending individuals and collectivities tow ard new axiological structu res.’ (SS: p. 160) In the Analytical Dictionary (1979), the form ulations are m ore tentative and the am bitions less global. U n der semiotic theory, the Dictionary notes: its first concern, therefore, is to ren d er explicit the conditions for the appreh en sion and production o f m eaning . . . C on sidering structure as a network o f relations, sem iotic theory will have to form ulate a semiotic axiom atics that will be presented essentially as a typology o f relations (presupposition, contradiction, etc.). T h is axiom atics will perm it the constitution o f a stock o f form al definitions, such as, fo r exam ple, semantic category (minimal unit) and semiotics itself (m axim al unit). T h e latter includes, follow ing H jelm slev, the logical definitions o f system (the ‘either . . . o r’ relation) an d o f process (‘both . . . an d ’), o f content and expression , o f form and substance, etc. T h e next step consists in setting up a m inimal formal language . . . (SL: 292) As this suggests, the logic o f G reim as’s ‘structuralism ’ — his sem antics and semiotics — requires a dictionary, the kind o f com binatory G reim as and C ourtés o ffer in their Analytical Dictionary: ‘these few rem arks,’ the p arag rap h on semiotic theory concludes, ‘are m eant to give only a general approach that ap p ears to be necessary for the construction o f semiotic theory. T h e elem ents o f our semiotic project are scattered throughout this w ork.’ (SL: 293)

The Sign ified; or the p la ne o f the content: the hum an sciences H ere we see in G reim as’s career that taxonom y has replaced the discursive exposition o f theory, the Analytical Dictionary the ‘attem pt at a m ethod’ o f Structural Semantics. What h appen ed? 19

The Analytical Dictionary Structuralism has its origin, as I have noted, in the reciprocal presupposition o f binary opposites: synchrony/diachrony, langue/par ole, signifier/signified, m arked/unm arked. T h e Analytical Dictionary notes u nder binarity that ‘a set o f historical and pragm atic factors has given binary structures a privileged place in linguistic m ethodology.’ (S L : 25) Yet from the beginning these oppositions have always seem ed to generate m iddle term s: by defin ing differen ce ‘without positive poles,’ Sau ssu re m akes this ‘m iddle’ essential to his definition o f lan gu age by im plying that the axis — the com bination — in which the opposition is inscribed is in a relationship o f reciprocal presupposition with the oppositions: the ‘either/or’ o f contrast implies and dep en d s upon the ‘both/an d’ o f com bination. T h e excluded m iddle o f contrast can never be excluded altogether because the act o f exclusion im plies a com bination which underm ines the exclusion itself. What is excluded on one level is included on another level. Even Jak o b so n asserted late in life that the concept o f the ‘compatibility between the two aspects o f time, sim ultaneity and succession’ creates the ‘possibility o f viewing the phonem e as a bundle o f concurrent distinctive characteristics.’ (1983: 59) Sim ultaneity and succession are the tem poral aspects o f contrast and com bination. In other words, what G reim as and C ourtés m ean by the ‘historical and pragm atic factors’ is that the binary m odel was adequate to S au ssu re’s project o f structurally describing the system o f lan gu age (‘langue’) rather than describing particular utterances (‘parole’), and subsequently it was adequate to the com binatory o f phonological ph enom en a that Jak o b so n and the P rague School o f linguistics were able to develop in term s o f bundles o f distinctive features (described in binary op p ositions such as voiced vs unvoiced). T h e ‘m iddle’ that is excluded in both these cases is the m iddle o f m anifested phenom ena: it is as if the binary model is adequate only for the description o f an abstract, im m anent com binatory (see Benveniste 1971: 3 5 37). In these instances, linguistics is describing M artinet’s ‘second articulation’ o f the physical properties o f sound, not the first articulation o f m eaning. Hjelm slev form alises this distinction as that between ‘the expression plan e’ which he op poses (in a relationship o f reciprocal presupposition) to ‘the content plane’ ( 1961: 59). T h is is his transcription o f Sau ssu re’s opposition between ‘sign ifier’ and ‘signified’. T h e linguistic 20

The Analytical Dictio?iary sign, Sau ssu re wrote, is an arbitrary unit which com bines (in a relationship o f reciprocal presupposition) a ‘signified’, which he un d erstan ds as a mental conception, and a ‘sign ifier’, a particular com bination o f sounds (or inscriptions or any other ‘tangible’ m anifestation linked to a signified). Sau ssu re is at greatest pains to describe, structurally, the linguistic unit as signifier, and, as I shall argu e in the next chapter, the phonological work o f the Prague School and the m orphological and gram m atical work o f the C open h agen School followed in this bias. T h e distinction between the expression plane and the content plane is essential to the definition o f langue which is translated as ‘natural lan gu ag e’ in the Analytical Dictionary. In that definition natural lan gu age is distinguished from other semiotic systems not only by m eans o f its ‘double articulation’, but also by its ‘processes o f d isen gagem en t’. D ouble articulation, as we have seen, distinguishes between the content and expression planes o f language. Disengagement, however, takes place solely on the content plane o f language. T o parap h rase the Dictionary, en gagem en t/disen gagem en t creates differen ces between the situation o f enunciation — ‘I-here-now’ — and the representations o f the utterance: ‘the lan gu age act thus ap p ears as a split which creates, on the one hand, the subject, the place, and the time o f enunciation and, on the other, the actantial, spatial, and tem poral representation o f the u tterance.’ (SL: 88) ‘E n gagem en t’ articulates the subject — the ‘sen d er’ — o f a m essage, while ‘d isen gagem en t’ articulates the ‘represen tation ’: it establishes the m essage ‘as an objectivizing projection . . . from which the sen der and the receiver o f a com m unication are exclu ded .’ (SS: 134) T h is form alises the opposition enunciation vs utterance. In his description o f ‘linguistic activity’ in Structural Semantics G reim as describes the en gagem en t/disen gagem en t o f lan gu age in term s o f m orphem es and systems. As m orph em es linguistic activity presents a situation: it is essentially a speech act presenting ‘a series o f m essages as algorith m s.’ (SS: 134) As a system, however, language represents a world excludin g the sen der and receiver. It is this ‘system atic,’ representative aspect o f lan gu age which led Lévi-Strauss to study myth as a privileged content o f discourse — myths by their very nature are collective, anonym ous discourses which m ake disengagement an essential 21

The Analytical Dictionary attribute — and led him to criticize V ladim ir P rop p ’s morphology o f the folktale. ‘Like all discou rses,’ Lévi-Strauss writes, folktales naturally em ploy gram m atical rules and words. But another dim ension is add ed to the usual one because rules and words in narratives build im ages and actions that are both ‘norm al’ signifiers, in relation to what is signified in the discourse, and elem ents o f m eaning, in relation to a supplem en tary system o f m eaning fou nd at another level. (1984: 186—87) T h e structuralist en terprise op poses com binations to contrasts, systems to m orph em es, level to level, in a binary opposition that apparently presents no m iddle term. It opposes the logic o f system to the grammar o f m orphem ic language. However, the project o f structural semantics — m ore widely conceived, the project o f semiotics — creates problem s for binarity precisely because it is attem pting to articulate the content plane, to structure the signified: sem antics requires m ore than the (abstract) opposition between presence and absence that the analysis o f the signifier allows, what G reim as calls ‘negative m ean in g’ and S a u ssu re calls the ‘plexus o f eternally negative differen ces’ (cited in Benveniste 1971: 36). In ‘C onsidérations su r le lan gage’ G reim as notes this differen ce when he distinguishes between ‘cosm ological sem iotics’ which describes natural objects and ‘anthropological sem iotics’ which describes a ‘h u m an ’ object. cosm ological semiotics satisfies itself with a sim ple statem ent o f what is, attentive to the articulations o f the object which it analyses, while anthropological semiotics concentrates itself on the m eaning invested in the categories that make this articulation possible. It is only in this way that we say that discrim inations, the sources o f differences, are ‘n atural’, while the m eaning, ap p reh en d ed by m eans o f these differen ces, is ‘h u m an ’. We can see, then, that the natural sciences are com p arable, in their procedures, to descriptions given to the linguistic plane o f expression where the phonological system s can be constructed with the aid o f a small num ber o f relevant features by virtue o f their single dis22

The Analytical Dictionary crim inatory character, while the hum an sciences correspond to descriptions o f the plane o f content whose relevant features are simultaneously distinctive and significant. (1966a: 33) T h e only opposite to the existence o f som ething is its nonexistence; in the natural sciences the single discrim inatory agent is presence vs absence. T h ese are the term s with which Ja cq u e s Lacan distinguishes between the ‘real’ and the ‘sym bolic’: ‘what is hidden is never but what is m issing from its place, as the call slip puts it when speaking o f a volum e lost in a library . . . For it can literally be said that som ething is m issing from its place only o f what can change it: the symbolic. For the real, whatever upheaval we subject it to, is always in its place.’ (1972: 55) T h e ‘real’ is always in its place because the only alternative to its ‘nonsignifying reality’ is the absence o f that reality. In the ‘real’, as Paul de Man suggests, ‘nothing . . . ever h appen s in relation, positive or negative, to anything that precedes, follows or exists elsewhere, but only as a random event.’ (1979b: 69) I f ‘h idden ness’ is the m ediating ‘m iddle’ between presence and absence, ‘reality’ cannot be ‘h idden ’ because ‘hidden n ess’ is a signification, distinctive and significant, both present and absent. As G reim as suggests, Rom an Ja k o b so n ’s phonology is based on the ‘n atu ral’ opposition o f presence vs absence in its exam ination o f the expression plane (phonological signifiers). T h u s in Structural Semantics he takes great pains to show that the absolute opposition between m arked vs unm arked (present vs absent) distinctive featu res in Ja k o b so n ’s phonology has to be m odified in sem antics to include oppositions which are not simply the presence or absence o f som e immanent feature, but oppositions which exist between positive elem ents which are op posed on a particular ‘axis’ o f (positive) sem antic content, such as m an vs woman on the ‘ax is’ o f sexuality. In phonology Jak o b so n distinguishes between ‘two kinds’ o f phonological oppositions: the first, ‘oppositions o f contradictory term s, is a relationship between the presence and absence o f an identical elem ent’; the second, ‘oppositions o f contrary term s, is a relationship between two elem ents “ which are a part o f the sam e genus and which d iffer the most from one another . . . ” .’ (1939: 273) An exam ple o f a contradictory relationship Jak o b so n o ffers is ‘long vowels o p p osed to short vowels (voyelles sans longueursY (1939: 273); his exam ple o f a contrary 23

The Analytical Dictionary relationship is grave vs acute vowels (which are prod uced the widest vs the narrow est opening o f the vocal organs). In Fundamentals o f Language Jak o b so n categorises these im m anent phonem ic features differently: the opposition between long and short vowels prod uce ‘prosaic’ features o f phonem es dep en d en t upon particular contexts o f realisation while that between grave and acute vowels prod uce ‘inherent’ features o f phonem es in which ‘no com parison o f the two polar term s occuring within one context is involved.’ (1956: 38) In other w ords even in Jak o b so n ‘absen ce’ (such as the ‘absence’ o f length in a particular vowel) can only signify in context; otherwise it is m ere ‘cosm ological’ absence, nonsignifying nonpresence. T h u s a contradictory relationship is a double relationship involving both an opposition and a context; in Benveniste’s words, it involves data ‘which have the characteristic that they can never be taken as sim ple data or defin ed in the o rd er o f their own nature but m ust always be u nderstood as double from the fact that they are connected to som ething else.’ (1971: 39) In his study o f Jak o b so n , Elm ar H olenstein o ffers ‘black vs white’ as an exam ple o f a contrary relationship (1976: 123), and this exam ple can help delineate the problem o f the opposition o f presence vs absence for the plane o f the content. Sim ply put, on the content plane all elem ents are ‘positive.’ On a ‘n atural’ or ‘cosm ological’ level black vs white opposes the absence vs the presence o f light; black is ‘u n m ark ed’ and white is ‘m arked’. But on the level o f the hum an sciences, as ‘simultaneously distinctive and signifying,’ black vs white op poses the absence vs the presence o f colour (what I will describe in the next chapter as the semantic categories unm arked vs m arked). In this case the opposition presents a contrary relationship because im m anent semantic elem ents — G reim as calls them ‘sem es’ — by definition can only be ‘presen t’ (even when the signifier is an ‘absence’). T h e absence o f m eaning is unthinkable in the science o f m eaning: as Ja cq u es D errida says, in lan gu age even the ‘sem antic void signifies'. (1981b: 222) In this exam ple, for instance, the absence o f colour is a colour: namely black. T h u s G reim as says, the ‘nonexistence o f a sem e is not a sem e’ in the way that the absence o f voicing is a signifying differen ce (SS: 25). For this reason the sem antic contrary o f ‘black’ is ‘white’ because both are conceived o f as extrem e elem ents on the ‘sem antic axis’ o f colour; both ‘black’ and its contrary, ‘white’, 24

The Analytical Dictionary are conceived o f as colours. But the contradictory o f ‘black’ conceived as the absence o f colour is not ‘white,’ but ‘colou redness’ as such. In sem antics the unm arked term is ‘d u p lex ’: it im plies a contrast (a sem antic contrary) and a com bination (a sem antic contradictory): the opposites to ‘black’ are ‘white’ and ‘colou redn ess’. (See ‘M arkedness and N eutralisation ’ in C hapter 2 for m ore detailed discussion o f this issue.) T h is sem antic duplexity creates what G reim as calls ‘a zone o f entanglement'’ ‘on the plane o f the content’ (SS: 194) and leads to one o f the great achievem ents o f his sem antics, the articulation o f what has com e to be known as the ‘semiotic sq u are’. T h e semiotic square allows for the reconception o f Ja k o b so n ’s phonological oppositions in a semantic context — it allows for the u n d erstan din g o f phonology as a ‘hum an science’ in the context o f m eaning — and as such it allows the reconceiving o f the hum an sciences altogether. The semiotic square His work in sem antics and especially the concept o f ‘en tanglem ent’, led G reim as to postulate ‘the existence, beyond the realm o f binarity, o f a m ore com plex elem ental structure o f signification.’ (SL: 25) T h e final form this com plex elem ental structure assum ed was that o f the semiotic square. T h at this is a structure o f signification is most im portant: the Analytical Dictionary goes on to note that the semiotic square ‘is distinguished from logical or m athem atical constructions, which are independent, as form ulations o f “ p u re syntax,” from the sem antic com ponent’. (SL: 311; see the Preface below; Jack so n 1985: 82) As I have su ggested, the semiotic squ are goes beyond the ‘pure syntax’ o f binarity to attem pt,to account fo r signification. Figure 1.1 is an abstract semiotic square. Figure 1.1 S

S 2 (negative complex term) (neither s nor non s)

S

contrary

S

25

^2(non s)

St (positive complex term) (both s and non s)

The Analytical Dictionary T h e semiotic square is a representation o f the elem entary structure o f signification in the form o f ‘a double relation o f disjunction and conjunction.’ (1968a: 88) What ‘dou bles’ the relationship are the ‘com plex’ term s on axis S: the positive and negative com plex term s (G reim as also describes them as the ‘com plex term ’ and the ‘neutral term ’). T h ere are two aspects o f the sem iotic square that constitute its im portance. T h e first is that it exhausts, logically, the possibilities o f opposition in a schem a which m aps out the com binational relationships o f those possible oppositions. Like language, as Sau ssu re describes it, itjoin s contrast and com bination. F re d ric jam e so n has noted that the sem iotic square describes what G reim as ‘takes to be the logical structure o f reality itself,’ that it presents ‘fun dam en tal categories o f that reality.’ (1981: 46) Its second feature is that it sim ultaneously inscribes, within this ‘logic’, a ‘sem antic’ com ponent which, as we have seen, G reim as distinguishes from the ‘p u re syntax’ o f logical or m athem atical constructions. We could say it ’contam inates’ the purity o f logical syntax with its zones o f entanglem ent that encom pass the possibility o f change, o f ‘content’, o f parole, within its structure. T h at is, by ‘sem anticising’ relationships the semiotic square transform s the ‘absent’ or unm arked term o f Ja k o b so n ’s phonological contradictory opposition into the sem antic contrary I exam ined in the last section. O r rather, it records the transform ation o f ‘cosm ological sem iotics’ into the hum an sciences. T h e Analytical Dictionary defines semanticism as the ‘sem antic investm ent’ in lan gu age (S L : 271), and G reim as writes elsewhere that ‘every sem anticism (“ notion” , “ field” , “ concept” , “ place” , “territory” , etc.), when it is ap p reh en d ed as a relationship and presented as a sem antic axis, can be represen ted as a semantic category and represen ted by m eans o f a semiotic sq u are.’ (1979b: 93) In F igu re 1.1 s represents the ‘m inimal unit’ o f sem anticism , the ‘sem e.’ In term s o f the colours I have already exam ined, black and white are minim um signifying units; thus they are ‘sim ple’ sem antic investm ents which, as G reim as says in a differen t context in Structural Semantics, ‘constitute privileged cases . . . too close, if we may say so, to the structures o f signification.’ (SS: 40) T h e centre o f his Semantics, G reim as argues, ‘resides in the naive hypothesis that, starting from the minimal unit o f signification, we can succeed in describing and organ isin g continually broader, 26

The Analytical Dictionary larger ensem bles o f signification. T h is minimal unit, however, which we have called seme, has no existence on its own and can be im agined and described only in relation to som ething that it is not, inasm uch as it is only part o f a structure o f signification.’ (S S : 117—18) Black vs white is a privileged case because black, as op posed to white, is sim ultaneously only a part o f a structure in the simplicity o f a cosm ological opposition and also a com plex m eaningful whole ‘simultaneously distinctive and significant’ (1966a: 33), op posed its ‘colou rfu l’ contrary, ‘white’. Black is a seme and a semanticism. (Sem anticism s usually are bundles o f sem es.) T h e semiotic square structures the sem antic investm ent o f language. In sem antics even absence signifies so that the absence o f voicing is contrary to voicing ju st as the absence o f colour is also a colour on the axis o f colour, the contrary to the all-colour colour o f white. T h u s Figure 1.1 can be inscribed with colou rs,’ app reh en d ed as a relationship and presented as a sem antic axis. Figure 1.2

S: 'particular colours' St black < ------------------------ S 2 white (s : black [no colours]) (s: white [all colours])

S 2 colourlessness *+------------- ^ colouredness (neither s nor non s: (both s and non s: neither 'black' nor 'white') both 'black' and 'white') S: 'colour'

In Figures 1.1 and 1.2, S2 is the ‘contrary’ to S! (white op posed to black), while S, is its ‘contradictory’ (colouredness as op posed to the absence o f colour). Recently Nancy A rm strong has ‘n arrated ’ the generation o f the square: O n c e any unit o f m eaning [ S J is conceived, we autom atically conceive o f the absence o f that m eaning [S,], as well as an o p posin g system o f m eaning [S2] that correspondingly im plies its own absence [S2].’ (1981: 54) T h e ‘autom atic’ conception o f the absence o f m eaning is, as A rm stron g notes, an ‘im plication’: thus the levels o f the square, S vs S, like the levels o f 27

The Analytical Dictionary lan gu age (e.g. distinctive features vs phonem es), are not in a relationship o f reciprocal presupposition, but in a relationship o f implication or direct presupposition (colouredness p resu p poses particular colours). T h u s the semiotic squ are describes three logical relationships. In the context o f phonology N. S. T rubetzkoy has den om inated these relations as ‘privative,’ ‘equipollent,’ and ‘grad u a l’ (or ‘arbitrary’). (1969: 7 4-77) As G eoffrey Sam pson notes, T rubetzkoy distinguishes between (i) privative oppositions, in which two ph onem es are identical except that one contains a phoenic ‘m ark’ which the other lacks (e.g. /f/ ~ /v/, the ‘m ark’ in this case being voice), (ii) gradual oppositions in which the m em bers d iffer in possessing differen t degrees o f som e gradien t property (e.g. /I/—/e/ ~ /æ/, with respect to the property o f vowel aperture), and (iii) equipollent oppositions, in which each m em ber has a distinguishing m ark lacking in the others (e.g. / p / ~ / t / —/k/). (1980: 108) T h ese relationships exhaust the logical possibilities o f binary opposition. A contrary (or ‘privative’) relationship creates a double relation o f conjunction and disjunction in term s o f the presence or absence o f som e shared feature (in the black/white exam ple, it is ‘light articulated as colours’); a contradictory (or ‘equipollent’) relationship creates that double relation in term s o f a shared function (hum an perception: ‘colour’); and a complementary (or ‘g rad u a l’) relationship creates that double relation in term s o f an (arbitrarily defined) implication (‘white’ im plies the category o f ‘colou redn ess,’ but it im plies other things as well: ‘light’, ‘sh ad e’, ‘hue’) (see Jack so n 1985: 76). T h e last o f these oppositions breaches the purity o f logic and ‘en tan gles’ the elem entary structure o f signification with ‘m ean in g’ which is ‘ap p reh en d ed by m eans o f ’ the differen ces o f opposition. (1966a: 33) It does so by inscribing the negative within the semiotics o f the square. In my exam ple, colourlessness, neither black nor white, neither the absence nor the presence o f light, inhabits that position. In this position colourlessness falls like a shadow across the square, a kind o f fecund negativity whose absence, in the light o f life, cannot be conceived. T h is is why, I believe, that Fredric Ja m eso n has argu ed that the place o f the negative com plex term is 28

The Analytical Dictionary privileged. T h e positive com plex term , S b articulates the axis o f the first opposition (both s and non s); the negative com plex term , S 2, creates a differen t context in which to u nderstand the elem entary sem antic structure u n d er consideration. T h u s Ja m eso n notes, In actual practice, however, it frequently turns out that we are able to articulate a given concept in only three o f the fo u r available positions; the final one, [S2,] rem ains a cipher or an enigm a to the m ind . . . the m issing term . . . we may now identify as none oth er than the ‘n egation o f a negation’ fam iliar from dialectical philosophy. It is, indeed, because the negation o f a negation is such a decisive leap, such a production or generation o f new m eaning, that we so frequently com e upon a system in the incom plete state . . . (only three term s out o f fo u r given). (Jam eson 1972: 166) T h is position inscribes what Sh oshan a Felm an has called ‘radical negativity’ in the square, negativity which ‘escapes the negative¡positive alternative.’ (1983: 141) Ju lia Kristeva calls this position ‘the fourth “term ”’ o f H egel’s dialectic: ‘what the dialectic represen ts as negativity . . . is precisely that which rem ains outside lo g ic . . ., what rem ains heterogen eous to logic even while prod ucin g it through a m ovem ent o f separation or rejection . . ..’ (1984: 112) Above all, this position is ‘p ro d u ctive,’ it is what Felm an describes as ‘fundam entally fecund and affirm ative, and yet without positive referen ce.’ (1983: 141) Felm an describes this ‘negativity’ as a species o f ‘history’, but it could as well be described as ‘sem antics’ or ‘sem antic investm ent’: H istory [semantics] only registers theoretical acts or ideaevents within the structure — always an ideological structure — o f opposition or alternatives, but it is precisely what lies outside the alternative that m akes an event, that m akes an act, that m akes history. P aradoxically, the things that have no history (like hum or) are what m ake history. (1983: 144) What Felm an suggests is that the sem iotic square is a structure o f ideology, a structure com prised o f ‘positions’ and ‘meaning29

The Analytical Dictionary effects’ rather than particular m eanings, always ready to be invested with m eanings and, in term s o f the fourth position, always ready to ‘ex p lo d e’ that structural investment. In Structural Semantics G reim as explicitly describes the ‘action’ o f the square as an ‘explosion ’ (SS: 245). A lthough the sem iotic square was first explicitly form ulated in ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’ ( 1968a) which G reim as coauthored with François Rastier, it was implicit in Structural Semantics, and especially in G reim as’s analysis o f narrative discourse. (‘T h e Interaction’ o ffers the abstract exam ple o f a typology o f rules in which S is the axis o f ‘injunctions’ and S is that o f non-injunctions.) In the Semantics G reim as describes, as we shall see in C hapter 3, the structure o f the sem antic investm ent o f P rop p ’s Morphology o f the Folktale in term s that becom e the semiotic square. T h e m ost instructive ‘investm ent’ o f the square, however —perh aps because it is only begun in Structural Semantics — is G reim as’s use o f an exam ple from Lévi-Strauss’s ‘T h e Structural Study o f Myth’. T h ere G reim as describes a binary opposition gen eratin g a ‘zone o f en tanglem ent’, a m iddle term. T h u s the opposition: life (S) vs death (non S) generates the further opposition agriculture (Sj) vs war (non Sj) which in turn generates ‘a third com plex or m ediating term ’: agriculture (positive)

vs

hunt

(complex)

vs

war

(negative)

(SS:194)

T h e ‘com plex’ term here is the ‘positive com plex term ’ o f the semiotic square, and the whole can be inscribed in a semiotic square: agriculture

war

exchange

hunt

30

The Analytical Dictionary I f him ting com bines w arfare and agriculture (b oth Sj 4- n o n S ¡), it does so precisely by jo in in g the op posed m inimal units in Sj vs non Sj, the life-sustaining aspect o f agriculture and the lifedestroying aspect o f w arfare (s and non 5 o f Figu re 1.1). In Structural Semantics G reim as does not generate the fourth term — as Jam eso n says, only three o f fou r positions are articulated — but exchange su ggests itself as the absence o f war and the contrary o f hunting. (O ther categories also su ggest them selves. Gathering, fo r instance, is contrary to hunting and, perh aps, closer to Lévi-Strauss’s original fram ew ork. B ut its contradictory is theft or pillage rather than ivarfare; it rem ains a form o f ‘h arvesting’.) In this square what m akes exchange such a ‘decisive leap ’, as Ja m e so n says, is that its inscription in the square can only occur when we have reconceived the semic elem ent, s: in this new context what is life-sustaining about agriculture is its ‘harvest’: what is exchan ged is ‘already harvested’. Such a new ‘conception’ requires reconceiving the other elem ents o f the square as well: agriculture shares ‘harvesting’ with its logical contradictory, hunting, and in this context even the ‘life-destroying’ aspect o f warfare can be conceived as a kind o f ‘harvesting’ (whose pillage is the contradictory to exchange). T h u s the semiotic square allows us to rethink ou r conception o f agriculture altogether, to see agriculture within a differen t fram ew ork o f m eaning — on a differen t level o f m eaning (see C h apter 3) — so that its seem ingly minimal elem ent o f ‘life sustenance’ can be seen as already ‘com plex’: harvesting sustains life by m eans o f a kind o f destruction. But this is accom plished by the ‘fecundity’ o f exchange, neither life-sustaining nor life-destroying, but positioned to reconceive the results o f all these hum an activities as goods already harvested, as positioned within social and cultural life. In Str uctural Semantics G reim as calls this process o f discovering the com plex in the sim ple an ‘explosion ’ which creates the possibility o f m odels o f ‘tran sform ation ,’ what I am calling ‘reconception’. T h e ‘fecundity’ o f exchange, neither life-sustaining nor lifedestroying, explodes the sem antic simplicity o f agriculture as lifesustaining into the com plexity o f its participation in its opposite, the complexity o f ‘harvest’ (both destructive and sustaining). T his process inscribes within the squ are a tem poral succession which, as G reim as says in the narrative analysis o f Structural Semantics implicitly describing the 31

The Analytical Dictionary semiotic square, ‘is neither pure contiguity nor logical im plication.’ (SS: 244) Exchange — and any sem anticism inhabiting the fourth position — is neither pure contiguity nor logical im plication in relation to the other term s. Rather, exchange inscribes another, ‘affirm ative,’ way o f conceiving o f agriculture: as a form o f culture which, along with the reconception o f warfare and hunting as social and econom ic activities, transform s the diversity o f distinctive and significant hum an pursuits into a structure o f hum an activity. Exchange in its turn can be positioned as a first term to generate an other semiotic square (see A rm stron g 1982: 275, for an exam ple from literary history). In this way the o p p o sition agriculture vs war can be ‘ex p lo d ed ’ to produce the following squares. war

agriculture -

hunt hoarding

capitalism

communa/ism

communa/ism + ----------------------- *· scientific socialism

anarchism + --------- estate capitalism (e.g. National Socialism)

Such an ‘explo sio n ’ could — and probably would — generate a good deal o f argu m en t over its details and its larger conceptual fram ew ork. In what sense does exchange presu p p o se agricul32

The Analytical Dictionary ture? Is fascism the articulation o f the axis o f com m unalism vs socialism or is it, rather, its radical negation? In what context does h oardin g imply capitalism ? Such questions are precisely the ‘fecundity’ o f the fourth term : that position m akes explicit and dem an ds the reconsideration o f the assum ptions govern in g sem antic opposition. As G reim as says, it creates the possibility o f the ‘tran sform ation ’ o f a static structural description into an intentional dynam ism .

Discourse ‘P o st9structuralism T h u s the Analytical Dictionary defines the semiotic square as the ‘result o f the establishm ent o f the relation “both . . . an d ” between contrary term s’ (S L : 310), and this relationship is essential to G reim as’s study o f sem antics in discourse beyond the limits o f the sentence. T h e difficulty o f sem antics has always been its analysis beyond the limits o f the sentence, what G reim as calls the ‘vague, but necessary concept o f the meaningful whole set forth by a m essage.’ (SS: 59) It is difficult because the sentence is categorically differen t from other elem ents o f langu age: ‘because the sentence does not constitute a class o f distinctive units, which would be potential m em bers o f higher units as are phonem es or m orph em es,’ Benveniste writes, ‘it is fundam entally d ifferen t from the other linguistic entities.’ (1971: 109) It is this aspect o f sem antics which has led to its confusion with psychology, epistem ology, and philosophy: ‘with the sentence,’ Benveniste continues, ‘we leave the dom ain o f lan gu age as a system o f signs and enter into another universe, that o f lan gu age as an instrum ent o f com m unication, whose expression is discou rse.’ ( 1971: 110) Benveniste’s definition is based upon the assum ption that the sentence ap p ears only in ‘structu res’ o f ‘pu re contiguity’: ‘a statem ent can only precede or follow another statem ent in a consecutive relationship.’ (Benveniste 1971: 109) G reim as, as we have seen, wants to define the tem porality o f discourse som ew here between the rigour o f logical implication and the accidents o f contiguity. T h e concept o f ‘both . . . an d ’ — a zone o f entanglem ent — inscribed in the semiotic square op posed to 33

The Analytical Dictionary the ‘either . . . o r ’ opposition o f binarity is consequently necessary to any ‘rigo rou s’ conception o f discourse that will preserve its fun dam en tal differen ce from other elem ents o f lan gu age and still take discourse beyond the sentence as an object o f linguistic (i.e., ‘structu ral’) study. ‘Discoursive linguistic,’ the Analytical Dictionary notes, ‘takes as its basic unit the discourse viewed as a signifying whole.’ (S L : 82) H ere G reim as’s project o f m aking Lévi-Strauss’s structural study o f what he im agined was the privileged ‘content’ o f myth into the structural study o f signification altogether — into structural sem antics — suggests a m iddle term in the o p p o sition between logical implication and contiguity, between the opposition I have presented o f logic and grammar. It is, o f course, the third term in the trivium, rhetoric. Rhetoric is the characterising differen ce between ‘structuralism ’ and ‘po ststructuralism ’; it is the ‘science’ o f the m ixture o f m orphem es and systems. I f systems — representative, generative, logical — characterise structuralism , and morphemes — presentational, contextual, grammatical — characterise speech-act theory, then it is no accident that Ja c q u e s D errida attacks Lévi-Strauss at length for his logical inconsistencies and argu es with the speech-act theory o f J.L . Austin and Jo h n Searle about the limitations o f contexts in his lan gu age studies (D errida 1976, 1977, 1982). It is no accident because poststructuralism is essentially rhetorical: it seeks, as Newton G arver has written in his Preface to D errid a’s Speech and Phenomena, to use discourse rather than logic ‘as the ultim ate criterion o f m ean in g’ (1973: xiii). Such a use o f discourse em phasises the bi-planar nature o f lan gu age G reim as describes in Structural Semantics, the power o f ‘disen gagem en t’ o f natural languages. When G reim as describes ‘linguistic activity’ in two mutually exclusive m odes, ‘system atic’ and ‘m orph em ic’ — or what he calls elsewhere ‘a double form ulation o f the sam e content — topological and deictic’ (SS: 149) — and when he and C ourtés choose a crossreferenced dictionary over both ‘a theoretical discou rse’ and a sim ple dictionary, rhetoric is situating itself in the place o f logic and in the place o f gram m ar. Rhetoric — like the semiotic square — opts for a ‘both . . . an d ’, not rather than, but along ivith the exclusions o f binarity. I f discourse, as I am argu in g, is neither logical implication nor pu re contiguity, then, in this form ulation, it seem s to assum e the fourth position in a semiotic square (neither 5 nor non s). 34

The Analytical Dictionary T h e first and second positions are, o f course, logic (or system) and contiguity (or morphemes), and the third position — the com bination o f ‘both logical implication and pure contiguity’ — would be grammar (or semiotics). (See F igu re 1. 3) Figure 1.3

logic (system) (s)

contiguity (morphemes)

discourse

grammar (or semiotics or the natural sciences) (both s and non s)

(or the human sciences) (neither s nor non 5)

(non s)

An ap p ro p riate articulation o f the com bination o f logic and contiguity is, o f course, a cross-referenced analytical dictionary with its systematic cross referen cin g o f its m orphem ic elem ents. T his situates semiotics, as G reim as notes, on the plane o f expression while situating the hum an sciences as ‘disciplines o f the content’. (1966a: 33) T h e exploration o f the identification o f discourse and the human sciences inscribed in F igu re 1.3 will be the implicit concern o f the last chapter o f this book in its exam ination o f discourse conceived as enunciation. I f the com bination o f logic and contiguity is gram m ar and semiotics — and certainly Paul de Man, as I shall argu e in the concluding chapter, identifies the two (see 1979a: 9) — then their com bined opposite may very well characterise the ‘en ergy’ o f desire Ja cq u e s Lacan exam ines. In fact, G reim as distinguishes between ‘two types o f discursive m an ipulation,’ two types o f enunciation (i.e. rhetoric) in the hum an sciences, which I will exam ine in the final chapter: ‘herm etico-herm eneutic com m unication,’ which he explicitly associates with Lacan, and ‘scientific — or socalled scientific — discou rse’ which I associate with the ‘philosophical’ writing o f de Man (G reim as 1980: 110-11). While these concepts are, as G reim as says, ‘still very vagu e’, they do constitute a kind o f ‘m eaningful whole’ — or kinds o f m eaningful wholes — which are the objects o f the hum an sciences. Although I will exam ine philosophy and depth psychology as well as literary criticism as form s o f discourse, it is literature and criticism — and the pleasure they affo rd and the 35

The Analytical Dictionary energy they generate — that will be my final exam ple o f the discourse o f the hum an sciences in this chapter.

Semiotics an d literary criticism T h e ‘rhetoric’ o f semiotics is inscribed in the translators’ title for the dictionary, Semiotics and Language: to join semiotics and lan gu age is to attem pt a m iddle term between logic and gram m ar. T h is is m ore ap p aren t in the fact that the Language o f the title is a translation o f langage which, as we have seen, G reim as and C ourtés translate as Semiotic System and/or Process. T h e ‘an d/or’ o f this rendition puts this term in the am biguous m iddle o f rhetoric I am describing. U n d er Semiotic System and! or Process, the dictionary states On the basis o f the intuitive conception o f the semiotic universe taken to be the world which can be ap p reh en d ed in its signification prior to any analysis, we can justifiably postulate that this universe is an articulation o f signifying sets or sem iotic systems which are ju x tap o se d with or su perim posed on one a n o th e r . . . all semiotic systems are bi-planar, which is to say that the m eans by which they are m anifest is not to be con fused with what is m anifested . . . Furtherm ore, every semiotic system is articulated. As a projection o f the discontinuous on the continuous, it is m ade up o f differen ces and oppositions. (SL: 285) H ere the Analytical Dictionary com es as close as it ever does to a hom ogen eous and coherent definition o f the discourses o f the hum an sciences. In fact, langage could be economically tran slated as ‘discou rse’. What distinguishes semiotics from structuralism is its postulation o f what the Dictionary calls hierarchies o f semiotic systems, the m anifested relationships am on g which create kinds o f ‘en ergetic’ interplay. Such a ‘hierarchy’ is inscribed in the semiotic square. M oreover, not only are there the ‘con trasts’ o f the projection o f the discontinuous on the continuous, there is also the ‘en ergy’ o f the ‘both . . . an d ’ o f projection itself — the projection o f the continuous on the discontinuous — which originates in the arbitrary choice o f the level on which the distinctions will be 36

The Analytical Dictionary described. D iscussing the relationship between semiotics and criticism, Godzich argu es: i f signification cannot be restricted to any given sem iotic system, and even less to a level or elem ent o f it, then the semiotic description o f a text, both in term s o f its inner processes and o f its cultural functioning, cannot be restricted to the description o f its im m anent organ ization. With the concept o f culture, semiotic analysis escapes the dan gers o f form alism ; with that o f text, those o f structuralism . It recognizes the need to study the relations o f structures o f d ifferen t hierarchical ord er: ‘switching from one level to another may occur with the help o f rewriting rules, in which an elem ent represen ted on a higher level by one symbol is ex p an d ed on a lower level into a whole text.’ (1978: 393) Structuralism , as developed by Lévi-Strauss, corrects form alism by conceiving o f the ‘logical’ property o f its object o f study as a cultural reality; it corrects form alism by perceiving that the ‘reality’ o f logic is the cultural functions and p u rp oses to which it is put. Sem iotic analysis corrects structuralism by conceiving o f its object as textual, particular m anifestations rather than im m anent structures. Both ‘text’ and ‘culture’ in semiotic analyses entangle the im m anent organisation o f sem iotics with particular m anifestations. D oing so, they require a ‘som ething’ which is none other than a discursive strategy, ‘neither logic nor pure contiguity’. H ere we arrive at the discourses o f the hum an sciences. In literary criticism, fo r instance, the m iddle term s o f rhetoric constantly switch as the poles between which they exist — lan gu age vs context; system vs process; gen re vs work — them selves shift. In ‘T h e Voice o f the Shuttle: L an gu age from the Point o f View o f L iteratu re,’ G eoffrey H artm an m akes the kind o f argum en t I am su ggestin g here, o fferin g an analysis o f rhetoric to create the place o f criticism between the logics and gram m ars o f lan gu age that the Analytical Dictionary presents. ‘So fa r,’ he writes, we have learned that figures o f speech may be characterized by overspecified ends and indeterm inant m iddles, that this structure may explain the shifting 37

The Analytical Dictionary relations o f concrete and abstract poetics and that (I add this now) the very elision or subsum ing or m iddle term s allows, if it does not actually com pel, interpretation. (1970: 339) T h at is, interpretation projects the continuous onto the discontinuous; it fills what the Analytical Dictionary calls the gaps o f language (SL: 127) to prod uce discourse. It does this by a process o f disengagement at another level from its texts. T h e level could be phonological as in R om an Ja k o b so n ’s ‘gram m atical’ literary studies (see Jak o b so n 1960, 1962, 1968, 1977), functional as in P ro p p ’s Morphology of the Folktale (1968), the superim position o f a systematic structure as in Lévi-Strauss (1963b) and G reim as’s own actantial analyses, the reversal o f binary oppositions as in D errid a’s deconstruction (1976, 1981a; see Culler, 1982), or the privileging o f antinom ic clusters as in Roland B arth es’ ‘p leasu re’ (1975). Criticism, then, and m ore generally the hum an sciences, are what the Analytical Dictionary calls discoursivization: the putting to work o f certain operations o f disengagem en t and engagem ent. As such they belong to the dom ain o f enunciation. T hey need to be subdivided into at least three subcom ponents: actorialization, tem poralization, and spatialization, the effect o f which is to p roduce an organized gro u p o f actors and a fram ew ork, both tem poral and spatial, in which will be inscribed the narrative program s originating in the semiotic (or n arrative) structures. (SL: 86) Criticism generates discourse by developin g the m iddle through the discoursivization o f interpretation in the various ways the Analytical Dictionary describes. It focuses on the discontinuities o f the gaps in discourse in ord er to situate and inscribe those gaps at another level, in another langage (semiotic system and/or process), another discourse. T h is is why I am asserting that literary studies, essentially discursive, are the m ost global o f the hum an sciences: ‘spatialization’ creates the disengagem ent o f structural and ‘scientific’ studies (see SS: 219 for a discussion o f spatialisation and science), ‘actorialization’ creates the en gagem en t o f depth psychology and speech-act theory, and ‘tem poralization’ creates their com bination in 38

The Analytical Dictionary narrative studies (criticism). B ut all o f these belong to the dom ain o f enunciation exam ined in C h apter 5. L ater in his essay, H artm an ex p an d s his diacritical figu re for rhetoric to the most com prehensive o f systems: H um an life, like a poetical figu re, is an indeterm inate m iddle between overspecified poles always threatening to collapse it. T h e poles may be birth and death, fath er and m other, m other and wife, love and ju d g m e n t, heaven and earth, first things and last things. Art n arrates that m iddle region and charts it like a purgatory, for only if it exists can life exist; only if the im agination presses against the poles are erro r and life and illusion — all those things which Shelley called ‘gen erous su perstitions’ — possible. T h e excluded m iddle is a tragedy also for the im agination. (1970: 348) What H artm an is doin g — what criticism does — is, in the words o f the Dictionary, to textualize experience, to create ‘a representation o f one or another o f the levels o f the generative trajectory’ that discourse gives rise to (SL: 341). Criticism interprêts the discontinuous by repeatedly discovering (or superim posing) system in (or on) m orph em es at a particular level. It generates m iddles. G reim as conceives o f these m iddles, as I shall argu e at the end o f C h apter 3, in term s o f the m eaningful ‘wholes’ o f the generative trajectories o f discourse. T h e rhetorical figu re fo r the generation o f criticism is tmesis, a term o f central im portance to Roland B arth es’ Pleasure o f the Text, whose rhetoric is antithetical to that o f an analytical dictionary. B arth es’ term s, pleasure, bliss, tmesis itself, do not a p p e ar in the Analytical Dictionary. M oreover, his definition o f ‘text’ — as a ‘Tissue . . . worked out in a perpetual interw eaving: lost in this tissue — this texture — the subject unm akes him self, like a spider dissolving in the constructive secretion o f its web’ (1975: 64) — is as far from the Analytical Dictionary's definition — text ‘designates an entity prior to its analysis’ (SL: 340) — as possible. Both B arthes and the dictionary identify text and discourse, but while the Analytical Dictionary recognises it as an occasion for logical or gram m atical analysis, Barthes m akes it an occasion for his own figurative weavings. Yet those weavings recall the ‘w eavings’ o f the semiotic square and the cross-referenced discourse o f the Analytical 39

The Analytical Dictionary Dictionary as I have followed it throughout this chapter. At the end o f ‘T h e Voice o f the Shuttle’, H artm an o ffers a fanciful figu re to describe the interpretation o f criticism which also describes language from the point o f view o f literature: ‘Interpretation is like a football gam e. You spot a hole and you go through. But first you have to induce that opening. T h e Rabbis used the technical word patach (“he o p en e d ”) for in terpretation.’ (1970: 351) G reim as’s work, in its very ‘scientific,’ taxonom ic form , o ffers such inducem ents to open in g by m aking the ‘holes’ — the gaps — apparen t. M oreover, in its perpetual weaving o f the m etalanguage o f semiotics, it suggests new ways o f u n d erstan din g the discourses o f the hum an sciences and new contexts for situating ou r old u n d erstandings. T h e Analytical Dictionary defines meaning as ^in definable’, yet suggests that ‘two approach es to the problem o f m eaning are possible: it may be considered either as that which perm its the operation o f p arap h rasin g or transcoding, or as that which groun ds hum an activity as intentionality.’ (SL: 187) T h ese approach es are systematic and m orphem ic respectively, ‘scientific’ and ‘herm etic’ discourses, contrary ‘g ro u n d s’ that are both inscribed in the hum an sciences. In the follow ing chapters both approach es will be surveyed in the exploration o f G reim as’s relationship to systematic linguistics, the light he sheds on P ro p p ’s m orphem ic readings o f narrative, and the com bination o f both o f these approach es in the theory o f discourse em bodied in his narrativity. T h e final chapter o f the book will re-traverse the groun d o f logic, gram m ar, and rhetoric by explorin g the relationship between G reim as’s semiotics and poststructuralism in the work o f Paul de Man, Ja cq u es Lacan, and the contrary to G reim as’s ‘both . . . an d ’ o f semiotics, the deconstructive discourses o f Ja cq u es D errida.

Conclusion L a n g u ag e an d relationships: the ‘Analytical D ictionary’ T h ere is a final problem the Analytical Dictionary add resses in its very cross-referencing that defin es one o f the m ajor difficulties in following the argu m en t o f structuralism and also 40

The Analytical Dictionary explains a cause o f recurrent m isun derstandings o f lan gu age by philosophers and linguists. It is a problem whose articulation will help define a central aspect o f the discourses o f the hum an sciences by u nderscoring the fact that the relationship between m orphem es and systems is neither logical implication nor pure contiguity. T h is has to do with the radically relational nature o f the elem ents o f langu age: langu age, Sau ssu re says, is ka form not a substance’; linguistics, he adds, is the science o f form s (1959: 113). N evertheless, lan gu age creates the illusion o f dealing with substances: its referential function seem s to refer to a world o f pre-existing things which it en um erates like an elaborate taxonom y. G reim as calls this the ‘substantifying’ aspect o f language. ‘T h ere rem ain s,’ he writes, ‘a m ajor obstacle’ in conceiving o f the elem ents o f lan gu age as relational and oppositional; it is the inevitable appearan ce in the closed universe o f discourse o f the fact that, whenever one opens on e’s m outh to speak o f relationships, they transform them selves, as if by magic, into substantives, that is, into term s whose m eaning we m ust negate by postulating new relationships, and so on and on. Any m etalanguage that we can im agine to speak about m eaning is not only a signifying langu age, it is also substantifying, freezing all intentional dynam ism into a conceptual term inology. (1970a: 8) L an gu age creates what I describe as ‘referen ce-effects’ in C hapter 5, and it does so, I suspect, precisely because its h ierarchical dualities create seem ingly ‘substantial’ wholes by the com bination o f its seem ingly ‘dynam ic’ parts. G reim as uses this ‘fact’ o f lan gu age to develop his ‘actantial’ analysis o f discourse in Structural Semantics, (see SS: 138) H ere, however, I want to dwell on the radically relational nature o f lan gu age and the need for reorienting ourselves in light o f that nature. T h e central term s o f structural analysis present this problem . T h u s ‘sign ifier’ is the English rendition o f signifiant which, as a verbal noun (‘the signifying’) signifies both the process and the (‘substantial’) tool o f signifying. M oreover, as a verbal noun it is both sin gular and plural: ‘signifying’ is relational. ‘Signification,’ Roland Barthes notes 41

The Analytical Dictionary in Elements of Semiology, ‘does not conjoin two term s, for the very good reason that signifier and signified are both at once term and relation.’ (1968: 48) A nother central term in G reim as is ensemble which signifies a bundle o f individual elem ents (‘ensem ble’) and a ‘totality’ (o f parts). In this term is inscribed the problem atic relationship between m orph em e and system, parts and wholes (see L an e 1970: 35). T h ro u gh o u t G reim as — and, indeed, throughout ‘structuralism ’ as a whole — such inscriptions occur: as we have seen, the Analytical Dictionary translates langage as ‘Sem iotic System and/or Process.’ T h e inscription o f relationships is the inscription o f ‘pow er’ within the discourses o f ‘know ledge.’ Unlike knowledge, which attem pts to describe and discover ‘what is,’ pow er can only be relational, a ratio between forces. Power form s what Michel Foucault calls a ‘netw ork’. ‘W here there is pow er,’ he writes, ‘there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position o f exteriority in relation to power . . . T h ese points o f resistance are present everywhere in the pow er network . . . there is a plurality o f resistances, each o f them a special case.’ (1980: 94—96) T h e fact that each is a special case — a particular manifested ‘event’ — underm ines the abstract and generalising function o f ‘know ledge,’ and helps defin e the problem o f the discourses o f the hum an sciences. ‘In d eed ,’ Foucault add s, ‘it is in discourse that power and knowledge are jo in ed togeth er.’ (1980: 100) In this we can see a central difficulty o f the discourses o f the hum an sciences. Unlike facts o f nature which lend them selves to taxonom ies, ‘facts o f culture’ require discourse, even if it is the m inimal ‘discou rse’ o f cross-referencing. ‘It seem s to u s,’ Benveniste writes, that one should draw a fun dam en tal distinction between two ord ers o f phenom ena: on the one side the physiological and biological data, which present a ‘sim ple’ nature (no m atter what their com plexity may be) because they hold entirely within the field in which they ap p e ar . . .; on the other side, the ph enom en a belonging to the interhum an milieu, which have the characteristic that they can never be taken as sim ple data or defin ed in the ord er o f their own nature but m ust always be understood as double from the fact that they are connected to som ething else, whatever their ‘referen t’ may be. A fact o f 42

The Analytical Dictionary culture is such only in sofar as it refers to som ething else. ( 1971: 38- 39) T his is the problem o f the hum an sciences and the problem o f ‘m ean in g’, which G reim as add resses throughout his career.

43

2 Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics

T h e last chapter concluded with B enveniste’s rem arkable inference draw n from a structuralist, bi-planar conception o f language — what I called the radically relational nature o f language — o f a kind o f ‘dou blin g’ within hum an experience and knowledge. Benveniste, as we have seen, describes this as the ‘two ord ers o f ph en om en a’, the ‘sim ple’ nature o f physiological and biological data, and the ‘do u ble’ nature b e lo n g in g ‘to the interhum an m ilieu’. ( 1971: 38—39) L an gu age itself is double in sofar as it is, again in Benveniste’s term s, a com bination o f ‘the m aterial and the im m aterial’ . (1971: 36) From a certain vantage this can be seen as the ‘expression p lan e’ and the ‘content plane’: expression is m aterial and articulate, and it is subject to the ‘sim ple’ analyses o f physiology; while content is interhum an and always refers, as Benveniste says, ‘to som ething else’. ( 1971: 39) T h e bifurcation Benveniste describes also describes two ways o f conceiving o f the ‘science’ o fla n g u a g e and, within that dichotom y, three ‘tren ds’ in structuralist linguistics. In 1958 Bohum il T rn k a published a description o f these ‘trends in m odern linguistics’. G reim as mentions all o f these ‘schools’ in the first chapter o f Structural Semantics. ‘T h e Prague School,’ he writes, ‘did, after all, establish phonology; the C openh agen School, which im m ediately followed, mainly undertook the elaboration o f linguistic theory, which it attem pted to apply in a renewal o f gram m atical studies’; and ‘a certain view o f linguistics that dep en d ed on behaviourist psychology’ associated with the work o f L eon ard Bloom field in the United States finally led to the practice o f considering that ‘sem antics itself was without ‘m ean in g’ (SS: 4, 5). In fact, G reim as does 44

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics m ore than simply mention these schools. W hat is most im pressive about Structural Semantics — as it is most im pressive about G reim as’s on goin g work in general — is its ability to integrate within a coherent theory the divergent work o f others. For this reason it would be well to quote T rn k a ’s description o f m odern linguistic trends at length. T h e word ‘structuralism ’ is used to design ate various trends in m odern linguistics which cam e into existence between both the world wars, but ap art from the school o f Geneva, those associated with the Cercle L inguistique de Prague, Cercle Linguistique de C open h agen and the nam e o f L eon ard B loom field are regard ed as the m ost typical. From the historical viewpoint, these three currents o f structural linguistics have at least two features in com m on: divergence from the N eo-gram m arian m ethods which tended to the psychologization and atom ization o f linguistic reality, and a tendency to establish linguistics, looked upon by the older school as a conglom erate o f psychology, physiology, sociology and other disciplines, as an independent science based on the concept o f linguistic sign. O therwise they d iffer considerably from one another in their principles and procedures, and it is th erefore advisable to use a special d esignation for each o f them, viz. functional linguistics (V. M athesius’s term) for the linguistic school o f Prague, glossematics for H jelm slevian linguistics, and descriptive linguistics for the Bloom fieldian trends. (T rn k a 1958: 469) All three o f these approach es to linguistics imply a m ethodology, and each contributes to the attem pt at a m ethod o f Structural Semantics. H jelm slev’s glossem atics offers a rigo rously deductive m ethod, a ‘m ovem ent,’ as Benveniste says, ‘from linguistics toward logic.’ (1971: 11) Glossem atics, T rn k a notes, ‘introduces into linguistics the deductive m ethod o f algebraic calculus and declares itself to be in dependent o f any linguistic reality.’ (1958: 469) T h e m ethod o f the ‘structural linguistics’ o f the Bloom field school, on the other hand, seeks a rigorous description o f linguistic ph enom ena by ‘identifying phonem es and m orphem es ac cordin g to the form al conditions o f their arran gem en t’ (Benveniste 1971: 9) in term s o f step by 45

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics step procedures o f distributional analysis. Behind this m ethod, as Benveniste says, ‘is the principle that linguistic analysis, in ord er to be scientific, should ignore m eaning and apply itself solely to the definition and distribution o f the elem ents.’ (1971: 10) T h e P rague School distinguishes itself from both o f these. ‘Linguistic theory is not viewed by Prague structuralists,’ T rn k a notes, ‘as an a priori discipline in dependent o f all experience, but as a theoretical fram ew ork derived from concrete linguistic m aterial and liable to verification.’ (1958: 472) As such, it com bines the logic o f the C op en h agen school and the em piricism o f Bloom field. T h is becom es clear if we return to Benveniste’s dichotom ous two ord ers o f phenom ena.

The functional linguistics of the Prague School Functionalism I said earlier that the expression plane — the signifier — is subject to the ‘sim ple’ analyses o f physiology, but, o f course, since the physical soun ds o f lan gu age are not sim ply sounds, but sounds intended tow ards interhum an com m unication — intended tow ards m eaning — this dichotom y is too simple. In fact, the differen ce between the two ord ers o f phenom ena Benveniste describes is m arked by the differen ce between ‘intentional’ phenom ena and ‘sim ple’ phenom ena. In terhum an com m unication not only ‘refers to som ething else’ in the sense o f the ‘differen tial’ and ‘diacritical’ u n d erstan din g o f the radically relational nature o f linguistic ph enom ena I described in C hapter 1; as an interhum an phenom enon, it m akes reference to its own intention to be understood. T h u s Rom an Jak o b so n , a chief representative o f the Prague School, asserts on the first page o f his Selected Writings that language ‘cannot be analysed without taking into account the pu rpose which that system serves.’ (1928: 1) It is the purposeful sense o f lan gu age — ‘functional’ in the sense o f serving a function and not in the m athem atical sense o f being a function (Jakobson 1963: 485) — that characterizes the P rague School and distinguishes it from the descriptions o f Bloom fieldian linguistics (‘For linguistic work,’ the Bloom fieldian Zellig H arris writes, ‘it suffices to know how to recognize the phonem es o f a lan gu age’ 46

Structural Semcmtics and Structural Linguistics (1941: 345)) and the logical ‘elaboration o f linguistic theory’ (SS: 4) o f Hjelm slev and the C open h agen School. T h u s the first doctrinal statem ent o f the P rague Linguistic Circle begins by asserting that ‘lan gu age like any other hum an activity is goal-oriented. W hether we analyze lan gu age as expression or com m unication, the sp eak er’s intention is the m ost evident and most natural explanation. In linguistic analysis, therefore, one should ado pt the functional perspective.’ (LC P 1929: 5) Since the pu rpose o f lan gu age is to elaborate m eaning — to signify — it is easy to see why the Prague School was so im p o rtant, not only to G reim as’s attem pt at a structural m ethod for u n d erstanding sem antics, but also to Lévi-Strauss’s attem pt to discover the structures governing the m eanings o f myths. It is for this reason that G reim as describes ‘m ean in g’ throughout Structural Semantics as signification : ‘signification’ describes the ‘function’ rather than the ‘m ean in g’ o f a sign, its intention to signify, to be m eaningful (see Vachek 1966: 31). In these term s we can better understand Lévi-Strauss’s distinction between ‘form ’ and ‘structure’: ‘structure,’ he writes, ‘has no distinct content: it is content itself, and the logical organization in which it is arrested is conceived as a property o f the real.’ (1984: 167) H ad Lévi-Strauss described structuralism as ‘an intentional organization conceived as a property o f the real’ his distinction, I think, m ight have been m ore clearly m ade. In his study o f the ‘phenom enological structuralism ’ o f Jak o b so n , Elm ar Holenstein cites an adm irable form ulation by K arel Englis o f impersonal intentionality (teleology). ‘A ccording to him ,’ H olenstein writes, ‘teleology is not a psychological fact, but a logical form o f explanation. It is a form o f intuition by m eans o f which experience is perceived and ap p reh en d ed , com parable to the Kantian spatial form o f intuition. . . . T h e causal form o f thought . . . arran ges events in term s o f cause and effect; the teleological form o f thought, in term s o f m eans and en d s.’ (1976: 119; see also Jak o b so n 1963) It is in this context that Jak o b so n , as we have seen, first coined the term structuralism: Were we to com prise the leading idea o f present-day science in its most various m anifestations, we could hardly find a m ore app ro p riate designation than structuralism. Any set o f phenom ena exam ined by contem porary science is treated not as a mechanical ag glo m er47

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics ation but as a structural whole, and the basic task is to reveal the inner, whether static or developm ental, laws o f this system. What ap p ears to be the focus o f scientific preoccupations is no longer the ou ter stim ulus, but the internal prem ises o f the developm ent; now the m echanical conception o f processes yields to the question o f their function. (1929: 711)

Phonology Since the soun din g o f lan gu age is closest to the ‘simplicity’ o f physiological and biological data, the functionalism o f the Prague School was most fully realised in its establishm ent, as G reim as noted, o f phonology. In fact, the most im pressive advances o f structural linguistics — the m ost thorough analyses — have occurred in phonology. T h e virtual invention and developm ent o f phonology is the great achievem ent o f the Prague School between 1929 and 1939. Phonology, as it was developed by Jak o b so n and T rubetzkoy in opposition to phonetics, studies the physiology o f lan gu age in sofar as it is signifying: it studies the ‘distinctive featu res’ o f the physical soun ds o f language, and these features are ‘distinctive’ insofar as they distinguish, ‘negatively’ as we have seen, signifying differen ces in language. Phonetics studies the occurrences o f sound in language, all the differen ces, signifying or not, in pronunciation. In English, for instance, phonetics might exam ine the differen ce between the aspirated / in ton as o p posed to the unaspirated / in stun. While such a differen ce is a physiological datum o f English, it is not ‘distinctive’ differen ce since, in English, it never discrim inates between two significations. In English the phonetic unit, the aspirated /, never creates a signifying differen ce in contrast to the u naspirated ( in the way that the phonological unit /t/is distinct from /d/ producin g the differen ce in m eaning between ton and dun (H enderson 1971). (In som e lan gu ages other than English aspiration is a distinctive feature.) In articulating the differen ce between phonetics and phonology in his groun d-breaking work, Principles of Phonology (1939), Trubetzkoy ant icipates Benveniste’s desc ription o f two ord ers o f phenom ena:

48

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics the study o f sound pertaining to the act o f speech, which is concerned with concrete physical phenom ena, would have to use the m ethods o f the natural sciences, while the study o f sound pertaining to the system o f langu age would use only the m ethods o f linguistics, or the hum anities, or the social sciences. (1969: 4) Phonology articulates this differen ce in term s o f the im personal intentionality o f function: ‘phonology is a part o f linguistics dealing with speech soun ds with regard to the functions which they fulfill in a given lan gu ag e,’ Jak o b so n wrote seven years before Trubetzkoy, and ‘the basic linguistic function o f sound differen ces is the distinction o f m ean in gs.’ (1932: 231) Several years later he add ed that ‘in dissociating the phonem e into distinctive features we isolate the ultim ate linguistic constituents charged with semiotic value.’ (1949: 422) T h u s, in term s o f the semiotic square describing discourse in the last chapter (Figure 1.3), phonetics is the taxonom y o f contiguity, o f the sound elem ents (phones) o f langu age. Phonology is the ‘gram m ar’ or the ‘sem iology’ o f those elem ents, com bining the ‘pure contiguity’ o f their occurrences (their ‘distribution’) with the system atic ‘logic’ (or ‘structu re’) o f the relationships am o n g them. (As this suggests, the three linguistic ‘tren ds’ T rn k a describes can be inscribed in the semiotic squ are o f Figure 1.3.) T his is why Jak o b so n speaks o f the ‘sem iotic value’ o f ‘the ultimate linguistic constituents,’ the ‘bundle o f distinctive featu res’ which constitute phonem es. Every phonem e can be analysed as a collection o f im m anent featu res which are never realised independently but only in com binations within particular phonem es which create signifying differen ces in contrast with their binary opposites in the com bination (or bundle) o f features o f differen t phonem es. A lthough each feature is only ‘im m anent’, in opposition to its absence — a ‘privative’ opposition conventionally described as m arked ( + ) vs unm arked (-) — it creates signifying distinctions with other phonem es. T h u s /t7 in English is a bundle o f features ( —vocalic, -f consonantal, —grave, + d iffu se , —strident, —nasal, —continuant, —voiced) which is identical to that o f /d/ except the bundle o f distinctive features in /d/ contains + voiced (H alle 1964: 328). All the phonem es o f a lan gu age can thus be reduced to a com binatory o f a much reduced num ber o f 49

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics distinctive features. T h u s the forty-two phonem es o f Russian can be described by com bining eleven distinctive features (Jakobson 1953). Such distinctive features — voiced vs unvoiced in the opposition o f /d/ vs /t/ in English, for instance — exist only in a structure: like G reim as’s m inimal unit o f signification, the ‘sem e’, which he m odelled on the distinctive features o f the Prague School, a distinctive featu re ‘has no existence on its own and can be im agined and described only in relation tp som ething that it is not, inasm uch as it is only p art o f a structure o f signification.’ (SS: 118) It was this aspect o f Prague linguistics, m ore than anything else, that led LéviStrau ss to his structural anthropology. ‘T h u s,’ he writes in ‘Structure and Form : Reflections on the W ork o f V ladim ir P ro p p ’, ‘step by step we defin e a “ universe o f a tale,” analyzable in pairs o f oppositions interlocked within each character who — far from constituting a single entity — form s a bundle o f distinctive features, like the phonem e in Rom an Ja k o b so n ’s theory.’ (1984: 182)

M arkedness an d N eutralisation Neutralisation A seem ingly technical and m arginal aspect o f the phonological studies o f the Prague School is directly related to the markedness o f distinctive features. T h is is the opposition o f the presence or absence o f a feature such as voiced / + voiced/ vs unvoiced / —voiced/ conceived as part o f the sam e genus, or as G reim as says, on the sam e sem antic axis. M arking has far-reaching im plications for sem antics and the hum an sciences in general in the phenom enon which T rubetzkoy described as neutralisation. While the binary oppositions o f distinctive features can be ‘constant’ — that is, the opposition distinguishes significations ‘in all conceivable positions’ (Trubetzkoy 1969: 77) — other oppositions no longer function to distinguish m eanings — they no longer function as ‘distinctive featu res’ — in particular positions or contexts. T h u s, T rubetzkoy argues, ‘in G erm an the bilateral opposition d —t is neutralized in final position [of a word]. T h e opposition m em ber, which occurs in the position o f neutralization, from a phonological point o f view is neither a voiced stop nor a voiceless stop but “ the nonnasal dental 50

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics occlusive in gen eral” .’ (1969: 79) T rubetzkoy calls such neutralised phonem es ‘archiph on em es’ by which, he notes, ‘we understand the sum o f distinctive properties that two phonem es have in com m on.’ (1969: 79) M oreover, T rubetzkoy argu es that ‘actual neutralization, by which an opposition m em ber becom es the representative o f an archiphonem e, is therefore only possible in cases o f distinctive bilateral o p p o sitions’ (1969: 79); that is, only possible in the ‘privative’ o p p o sition o f m arked vs unm arked. In discussing Trubetzkoy, G eoffrey Sam pson notes that the archiphonem e prod uced by the neutralisation o f /t/ vs /d/ in English does not function in quite the sam e way as its n eutralisation in G erm an. In G erm an, the category /voiced/ vs / unvoiced/ is irrelevant to the archiphonem e and phonetically (i.e. nonsignifyingly) the archiphonem e is articulated as ‘u n m ark ed’, that is, as the absence o f voicing. T h u s Sam pson notes that the neutralisation o f /tI vs /d/ in G erm an m anifests itself with /t1 ( 1980: 108). A rem arkable aspect o f the linguistics o f the P rague school is its discovery that the absence o f a featu re (an unm arked pole in an opposition) can signify: P rague phonology systematically substantiates S a u ssu re ’s contention that ‘a m aterial sign is not necessary for the expression o f an idea; lan gu age is satisfied with the opposition between som ething and nothing.’ (1959: 86) When a distinctive o p p o sition is neutralised the absence rem ains in a nonsignifying way. However, as Sam pson notes, the ‘neutralisation’ o f /t/ vs /d/ in English does not simply m anifest ‘the nonnasal occlusive dental in gen eral’ (the com m on features o f /t/ and /d/: —nasal, + consonantal (occlusive), —continuent (stop), —grave (dental), etc.) T rubetzkoy describes in G erm an. ‘In English also,’ Sam pson notes, the /t/ ~ /d/ opposition is neutralized, after /s/ (there is no contrast between e.g. still and *sdill); but, unlike in the G erm an case, the sound which occurs in the environm ent o f neutralization is identical to neither m em ber o f the opposition (the sound written t in still is unaspirated like /d/, though it is voiceless like /t/). (1980: 108) In English, that is, a nondistinctive feature [aspiration], jo in s a neutralised distinctive feature, /voicing/, to create the ‘arch iph on em e’. T h is phenom enon can clearly be inscribed on

51

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics G reim as’s sem iotic square, clarifying both the square itself and the phonological category o f neutralisation. (Phonological) Neutralisation /t/ /d/ (-voice, + aspirated) (+voice, -aspirated)

neutralised archiphoneme German /t/: neither voiced nor voiceless

complex archiphoneme English: /-voiced/ -I- /-aspirated/, etc.

Marking T h e neutralised archiphonem e, as T rubetzkoy conceives o f it, m anifests itself as the unmarked phonem e. On G reim as’s square, it inhabits the ‘decisive’ position o f the negative com plex term . H ere we can explore the w ide-ranging significance o f the unmarked featu re in language. T h e fact that in lan gu age an absence can signify in an im portant way explains Benveniste’s distinction between two ord ers o f phenom ena with which I concluded the last chapter (and which I figu red earlier in L acan ’s discussion o f ‘h idden ness’). In phonology the term ‘u n m ark ed ’ is quite literal: what is unm arked does not possess the feature in question and thus conveys less in fo rm ation. But, as we have seen, such an absence is not ‘sim ple’ in the way that Benveniste describes physiological and biological data. An unm arked term exists both as the restricted opposite to a m arked term and as the m anifestation o f the {general) neutralisation o f the oppositional category altogether. T h at is, the unm arked term is a com plex structure. T h e com plex structure o f the unm arked term exists on the m orphological and sem antic levels o f lan gu age as well as on the phonological level, and here the significance o f neutralisation becom es profou n d. In sem antics the term ‘u n m ark ed’ signifies that the unm arked sign in an opposition conveys less in fo rmation than the m arked sign even though such an unm arked sign is not simply the ‘absen ce’ o f a particular signification or

52

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics seme. On the (phonological) plane o f the signifier the term ‘u n m ark ed’ is literal in term s o f particular inform ation; the unm arked elem ent is in a ‘privative’ relationship to its opposite in term s o f presence vs absence. On the (sem antic) plane o f the signified, however, the ‘privative’ binary opposition can only be understood as partial in term s o f definitive vs indefinite: as G reim as says ‘the nonexistence o f a sem e is not a sem e.’ (SS : 25) N evertheless, one can talk o f an ‘u n m ark ed ’ sign (or signification) in sem antics because an existing sem e can still signify less (definite) inform ation than its opposite. T h u s Jak o b so n notes in both the phonological and sem antic analyses o f lan gu age the unm arked elem ent has both a general m eaning and a restricted m eaning in relation to the m arked m eaning S: restrictedly it is the statem ent o f non S; generally it is the nonstatem ent o f S (H olenstein 1976: 130-31). In the phonological exam ple I am using, restrictedly /t/ is / —voiced/ in relation to /cl/; and generally it erases the category (or in G reim as’s term s the ‘ax is’) o f voicing when it articulates the neutralised archiphonem e. In sem antics an unm arked signification, old for instance, is op posed to young; but in the context o f a sentence such as ‘Cyrus is fou r years o ld ’ the opposition is neutralised so that ‘old ’ sim ply signifies /agedness/. ‘In com parison to the unm arked term ,’ H olenstein writes, the m arked term provides m ore inform ation. T his is best illustrated by the exam ple o f polar adjectives and nouns. T h e statem ent ‘Peter is as young as Paul’ is m ore in fo rmative than the statem ent ‘Peter is as old as Paul.’ Som eone unfam iliar with Paul’s age knows, after the first statem ent, that he is relatively young while the second statem ent reveals nothing about his age. Young is the m arked term, old the unm arked term. Tw o oppositions overlap in the relation m arked/unm arked — the o p p o sition betw een a positive and a negative term and between an indefinite and a definite one. (1976: 131) An ‘indefinite’ signification is still an existing signification, but its lack o f definitiveness is precisely the absence o f a ‘m arkin g’. In ‘Com m ent défin ir les in définis’ (How7 to D efine the Indefinite) G reim as exam ines indefinite pron ou n s in term s o f their distinctive features. In the course o f his analysis he distinguishes between a ‘distributive’ whole and a ‘gen eral’ whole in

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics ways that shed light on sem antic neutralisation. ‘In effect,’ he writes, the distributive, we could say, operates with discrete dim ensions, with contours that are clearly delim ited, while the general deals with dim ensions in their integrity and focuses on the perm an ent “ n atu re” o f the objects upon which it operates. I f this term inology would not im part too much am biguity, we could say that the distributive is a definite quantity while the general is indefinite,, that the form er designates quantifiable objects, the latter unquantifiable. (1963b: 116; italics add ed) In these term s sem antic neutralisation can be inscribed in a semiotic squ are in the sam e m anner as phonological neutralisation (see 1963b: 123 fo r the ‘logical categories’ G reim as later inscribed in the semiotic square). S^: old/aged/

(Semantic) Neutralisation S 2: young /youthful (nonaged)/

S2: a^e/ess(indefinite agedness)

§ί : agedness (definite agedness) both old and young: 'five years old'

neither old nor young: 'olderthanthe hills'

T h e ‘defin ite’ archisem em e (S ^ describes the ‘n atu re’ o f the category upon which the binary opposition is inscribed in term s o f its elem ents o f units. A lthough it is not clear in this tem poral exam ple, the ‘indefinite’ archisem em e delim its that ‘n atu re’ itself. A nother exam ple, less tied to sem es than ‘old vs young,’ should make this clear. S yman

S2 woman

S2mankind/humanity/ St man /person/ (e.g. chairman) cf. the verb to man [the barricades])

54

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics T h e relationship between Sj and S 2 is a contrary binary o p p o sition o f reciprocal presupposition (‘m an ’ and ‘w om an’ are parts o f the sam e genus, /sexuality/, d ifferin g the m ost from each other). T h e positive com plex term redefin es ‘m an ’ as /person/ (i.e. the absence o f sexuality) and the negative com plex term defines the indefinite nature o f sexual persons, /hum an/. In ‘Com m ent défin ir les indéfinis’, G reim as com pares the contrary opposition same vs other (A vs non A) to the contradictory opposition same vs (definite) nobody (personne) (A vs - A) (1963b: 121). (H e also im plies the arbitrary opposite same vs (indefinite) none (aucun).) T h e concepts o f neutralisation an d m arking are in dispensable for a linguistics that attem pts to account for ou r intuitive ‘sen se’ o f lan gu age, fo r the appreh en sion o f greater inform ation conveyed by ‘you n g’ than by ‘o ld ’ and by the appreh en sion o f signifying differen ce between /t/ an d /d/ in most contexts, but not in particular specifiable contexts. T h ese concepts them selves, I am argu in g, are inscribed within G reim as’s elem entary structure o f signification — within his semiotic square — precisely because the square, as the Analytical Dictionary notes, is distinguished from the ‘pu re syntax’ o f logic by the presence o f its ‘sem antic com ponent’ (SL: 311). Such a com ponent necessitates the functionalism o f the Prague School which attem pted to account fo r the sem antic functioning o f language. It is ju st such sem antic ‘particularities’ — to use a term D errida cites from H egel (1982: ix) — which create the always present political im plications o f sem antic neutralisation (such as fou nd in the o p p o sition m an vs woman) and will allow me to exam ine philosophical deconstruction in the context o f linguistic analysis in C hapter 5.

Structure an d form ‘Functional’ linguistics, then, com bines the study o f expression and content, the signifier and the signified. In this way the Prague School dem onstrated the reciprocal interrelationship between expression and content, ‘fo rm ’ and ‘m ean in g.’ In ‘Structure and F o rm ’, Lévi-Strauss describes this interrelationship and goes on to su ggest the central im portance o f sem antics to structuralism — a suggestion that G reim as follows

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics and elaborates in Structural Semantics. ‘T h e error o f form alism ,’ he writes, is thus twofold. By restricting itself exclusively to the rules that govern the arrangem en t o f elem ents it loses sight o f the fact that no langu age exists whose vocabulary can be dedu ced from its syntax. T h e study o f any linguistic system requires the cooperation o f the gram m arian and the philologist . . . P ro p p ’s idea that the two tasks can be separated, that the gram m atical study can be undertaken first and the lexical study postpon ed until later will result only in the production o f a lifeless gram m ar and a lexicon in which anecdotes replace definitions. (1984: 186) Lévi-Strauss is defin ing the functional nature o f linguistics against the em piricsm o f distributional analysis (‘the gro u p in g o f proposition s’) by linking it to the function or pu rpose o f language, namely intersubjective com m unication. B ecause the structures o f lan gu age are aim ed at such com m unication and they function to facilitate it, they cannot be exam ined without consulting the signifying purpose o f lan gu age, its m eaning. Even though structural analysis, as I have su ggested, had it greatest successes with the least ‘m ean in gfu l’ aspect o f language, sound form ation, the functional structuralism o f the Prague School nevertheless implies the necessity o f developing a semiotic sem antics. T h u s Lévi-Strauss goes 011 to note that ‘it is now believed that lan gu age is structured at the phonological level. We are gradually becom ing convinced that it is also structured at the level o f gram m ar but less convinced about vocabulary. Except perh aps for certain privileged areas, we have not yet discovered the angle from which vocabulary would yield to structural analysis.’ (1984: 186)

Language without meaning: the linguistic methodology of Bloomfield and Hjelmslev ‘Binarity’ was privileged in linguistics by its m ethodological success in analyzing the most basic elem ent o f language, phones, into the binary oppositions o f distinctive phonological features. It was privileged, as G reim as and C ourtés said, by ‘a set o f historical and pragm atic factors. T h is may be due to the 56

Structural Semantics and Structural Li?iguistics successful practice o f the binary coupling o f phonological oppositions established by the P ragu e School.’ (S L : 25) H istorically and pragm atically, the phonological work o f the P ragu e School created the m ost basic substantiation o f S au ssu re’s structural m odel o f u n d erstan din g lan gu age. Still, the ‘binarity’ o f the phonological studies o f the P rague School was, in im portant ways, an historical accident, and it is not solely as p art o f Prague linguistics, even in its crossing with anthropology in Lévi-Strauss, that the work o f G reim as can be u nderstood. In fact, if, as I am suggestin g, P ragu e Linguistics com bines the structural ‘logic’ o f the C op en h agen School and the em pirical ‘contiguity’ o f the B loom field School, the strength o f G reim as’s ‘attem pt at a m ethod’ is to integrate these m ethods in his Semantics. ‘Scientific sem antics,’ G reim as notes, ‘. . . can only be conceived as the result o f the reunion, form ed by the relationship o f reciprocal presupposition, o f two m etalanguages: a descriptive . . . lan gu age . . . and a m ethodological lan gu ag e.’ (SS: 14—15) T h e elem ents o f the first are d efin ed ‘inductively, by analyzing [their] distribution,’ while those o f the second are ‘constructed by dedu ction.’ ‘T h e problem which arises,’ G reim as continues, ‘is that o f two conceptions o f truth: truth considered as an internal coherence and truth conceived as an approxim ation o f reality.’ (SS: 15) T h u s, before I turn to G reim as’s elaboration o f structural sem antics, which eventually leads to the transform ation o f linguistics into sem iology, I will exam ine m ore closely the m ethodological approach es o f Bloom field and Hjelmslev.

B loomfield's E mpiricism T h e em pirical studies o f the linguistics associated with the nam e o f Leon ard Bloom field are part o f the special circum stances o f linguistics in the U nited States. An overriding influence on Am erican linguistics has been the existence, and progressive extinction, o f h u n dreds o f u nrecorded langu ages o f native Am erican speakers. Early in the twentieth century linguistics in A m erica was faced with the u rgen t necessity o f describing h u n dreds o f A m erican Indian lan gu ages that were in the process o f dying out. ‘In these circum stances,’ Jo h n Lyons notes, ‘it is not su rprisin g that Am erican linguists have given considerable attention to the developm ent o f what are 57

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics called “ field m ethods” — techniques for the recordin g and analysis o f lan gu ages that the linguist him self could not speak and that had not been previously com m itted to writing.’ (1977: 21) It is precisely in these circum stances that the gram m arian and the philologist have to be dissociated. Still, Bloom fieldian linguists m ade a virtue o f necessity and defined linguistic science in the purely em pirical and ‘antim ental’ m anner that such a linguistic task required. T h at is, Bloom field defined lan gu age strictly in term s o f ‘events’, which in turn was defined in term s o f a ‘stim ulus/response’ m odel: ‘we distinguish between langu age, the subject o f ou r study,’ Bloom field wrote, and real or practical events, stimuli and reactions. When anything apparently unim portant turns out to be closely connected with m ore im portant things, we say that it has, after all, a “ m ean in g” . . . Accordingly, we say that speech-utterance, trivial and u nim portant in itself, is im portant because it has a meaning: the m eaning consists o f the im portant things with which the speech-utterance (B) is connected, namely the practical events (A and C). (1933: 27) T o analyse lan gu age defin ed as ‘speech-events’ definable and m easurable by ‘the sciences o f physiology and physics’ (1933: 25), Bloom fieldian linguistics developed techniques o f distributional analysis. R ather than relying on signifying d iffe rences, distributional analysis relies on analyzing ‘the distribution or arran gem en t within the flow o f speech o f som e parts or features relatively to oth ers’ (H arris 1951: 5), what M artinet described as the special functioning o f presence vs absence on the phonological level o f the second articulation (1962: 36, 41). Such an analysis defin es elem ents by their repetition, and then describes the ‘function’ o f such elem ents not in term s o f ‘intention,’ but in term s o f their placem ent or ‘distribution’ within language. T h u s in Methods in Structural Linguistics, Zellig H arris asserts that W7e associate elem ents with parts or features o f an utterance only to the extent that these parts or features occur independently (i.e. not always in the sam e com bination) som ew here else. It is assum ed that if we set up new 58

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics elem ents for successive portions o f what we had represen ted by [s], and then used them in represen tin g various other utterances, these new elem ents would not occur except together. We therefore do not subdivide [s] into these parts. As will be seen, this m eans that we associate with each utterance the sm allest num ber o f d ifferen t elem ents which are them selves ju st sm all enough so that no one o f them is com posed o f any o f the other elem ents. We may call such elem ents the m inim um , i.e. sm allest distributionally independent, descriptive factors (or elem ents) o f the utterances. (1951: 21) Such a program m e effectively elim inates the exam ination o f the distinctive features o f ph on em es sim ply because, as we have seen, such features do not ‘occu r’ as such; they do not fit B loom field’s positivist definition o f an event. As G reim as said, each featu re does not ‘exist’ on its own (‘independently’) and ‘can be im agined and described only in relation to som ething that it is not, inasm uch as it is only part o f a structure o f signification.’ (SS: 118) M ore generally, this program m e elim inates the system or structure as op posed to the phenom ena. I f G reim as, in pu rsu in g a ‘universal’ linguistics privileges the logic o f ‘internal coherence’ over the ‘approxim ation o f reality’ o f em piricism — a sim ple ‘inductive description,’ he writes, ‘will never go beyond the limits o f a given signifying ensem ble; it will never reach the level o f a general m ethodology’ (SS: 15) — then distributional analysis privileges the ‘description ’ o f em pirical data. ‘It does not m atter for basic descriptive m ethod,’ H arris writes in a pronouncem ent that would certainly scandalise Lévi-Strauss and, as we shall see, H jelm slev as well, ‘whether the system for a particular lan gu age is so devised as to have the least n um ber o f elem ents (e.g. phonem es), or the least num ber o f statem ents about them , or the greatest over-all com pactness, etc. T h ese differen t form ulations d iffer not linguistically but logically.’ (1951: 9) H arris calls the ‘system atic’ or structural description o f distinctive features, with its recourse to ‘m ean in g’ and intentional phenom enology, ‘the Prague Circle’s occasional mystical use o f philosophical term s.’ (1941: 345) H ad T rubetzkoy ‘not been satisfied with such w ords,’ he continues, ‘he would have been forced to seek for the physical events which enable us to 59

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics consider the word as a unity and not merely a sequence o f ph on em es.’ (1941: 345) Such ‘physical events’ are the actual ‘occurrences’ o f langu age upon which distributional analysis bases its study. ‘T h e crux o f the m atter is that phonetic and distributional contrasts are m ethodologically differen t, and that only distributional contrasts are relevant while phonetic contrasts are irrelevant.’ (1941: 347—48) T hey are irrelevant, H arris suggests, because such phonetic contrasts — such as regional accents in English — multiply the contexts in which data can be studied without providing controlling criteria for choosing am ong them. ‘Data about a hearer accepting an utterance or part o f an utterance as a repetition o f som ething previously p ron ou n ced,’ he asserts, ‘can be m ore easily controlled than data about m ean in g.’ (1951: 20) An im portant implication o f such an em pirical linguistics is the im possibility o f a general or universal linguistics: ‘the fact that the determ ination o f elem ents is relative to the other elem ents o f the lan gu age m eans that all such determ in in g is perform ed for each lan gu age independently.’ (H arris 1951: 8) M ore im portant, such a m ethodology implies ju st the kind o f ‘form alism ’ Lévi-Strauss decries. ‘T h e Prague Circle term inology,’ H arris writes, \ . . gives the im pression that there are two objects o f possible investigation, the Sprech akt (speech) and the Sprach gebilde (language structure), whereas the latter is merely the scientific arrangem en t o f the fo rm er.’ (1941: 345) H arris’s ‘arran gem en t’ is precisely Lévi-Strauss’s ‘fo rm ’: ‘contrary to form alism , structuralism refuses to set the concrete against the abstract and to ascribe greater significance to the latter. Form is defin ed by opposition to content, an entity in its own right, but structure has no distinct content: it is content itself, and the logical organization in which it is arrested is conceived as a property o f the real.’ (1984: 167) N evertheless, even the structural linguistics o f the Prague School recognised the usefulness o f distributional analysis, especially in the cases o f lan gu ages whose m eaning is unknown to the linguist. ‘D istributional analysis,’ H olenstein writes, ‘rests on the rem arkable observation that in every language strict laws govern the succession o f ph on em es.’ (1976: 71) T h u s when two sounds never ap p e ar together in any particular context but rather (dways alternate in every particular context — that is, when they m anifest a ‘com plem entary distribution’ — they are considered varients o f the sam e phonem e, while 60

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics two sounds that alternate in som e but not all contexts are considered differen t phonem es. D istributional analysis is the exact opposite o f a m ethod the P rague School developed which cam e to be called the ‘com m utation test.’ In this test ‘they tried to find . . . w ord-pairs, o f such a sort that the m em bers o f each pair were sem antically differen t but phonically identical except for one single phonic differen ce. I f such w ord-pairs could in deed be found, they were regard ed as clear evidence fo r the differen t phonem ic evaluation o f the concerned phonic qualities . . . the Bloom fieldian gro u p never accepted the “ com m utation test” as a basic tool o f analysis, in full conform ity with its refusal o f any recourse to sem antic criteria in phonology and linguistics in gen eral.’ (Vachek 1966: 53) Distributional analysis seeks identity in repetition, while com m utation seeks differen ces in repetition: while distribu tional analysis reduces lan gu age to ‘sim ple’ phenom ena, com m utation m aintains the doubleness o f lan gu age, what Benveniste calls the ‘duality o f soun d and sen se’ ( 1971: 35) and G reim as calls ‘the sem antic investm ent’ (55: 203). Yet the crossing o f structuralism and semantics — the analysis o f signification in term s o f ‘the form o f the content’ — paradoxically requires that G reim as use both com m utation and distributional analysis in his sem antic analysis. D istributional analysis is necessary to reduce a sem antic inventory and denom inate it by a single term while com m utation assures the m aintenance o f ‘the fram e o f a given co rp u s’ so reduced (55: 191). T h ese are com plem entary p roced ures which m aintain the ‘d u p lex ’ structure o f language. ‘An inventory o f occurrences,’ G reim as writes, ‘can be reduced to a class and denom inated . . . only to the extent that another inventory, diam etrically op posed to it, is at the sam e time constituted and d en om in ated .’ (55: 191) T h u s in an im portant aspect o f Structural Semantics G reim as app ro p riates the m ethods o f distributional analysis to account for ‘identical’ elem ents o f signification in a ‘sam ple’ corpu s o f linguistic phenom ena, the ‘universe’ o f G eorges Bern an os, in the last chapter o f Structural Semantics.

H jelm slevs Logic It is with the logical structuralism o f Hjelm slev, however, that G reim as begins the Structural Semantics. Not only does G reim as 61

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics call H jelm slev’s Prolegomena to a Theory of Language ‘the most beautiful linguistic text’ he has ever read (1974: 58), describing it ‘as above all an epistem ology o f the hum an sciences’ (1966b: 10) and him self as a ‘H jelm slevian’ (1974: 58), he also notes in Structural Semantics that a com parative or general sem antics can only be constituted in a ‘deductive axiom atic ensem ble’. (SS: 15) T h e basic aim o f H jelm slev’s Prolegomena, as G reim as suggests, is to establish the logical, internally coherent — that is, systematic — definition o f linguistic science. Unlike the P rague School, which defin ed lan gu age as ‘goal-oriented’ (LC P 1929: 5), H jelm slev asserts that ‘a lan gu age is by its aim first and forem ost a sign system .’ (1961: 46) T h u s he argu es that Linguistics m ust then see its main task in establishing a science o f the expression and a science o f the content on an internal and functional basis; it m ust establish the science o f the expression without having recourse to phonetic or phenom enological prem isses, the science o f the content without ontological or phenom enological prem isses (but o f course not without the epistem ological prem isses on which all science rests). Such a linguistics, as distinguished from conventional linguistics, would be one whose science o f the content is not a semantics. Such a science would be an algebra o f language, op eratin g with u nnam ed entities, i.e., arbitrarily nam ed entities without natural designation, which would receive a motivated designation only on being confronted with the substance. (1961: 79) H jelm slev goes on to nam e this project ‘glossem atics’ to distinguish it from linguistics which has been ‘so frequently m isused as the nam e for an unsuccessful study o f lan gu age proceedin g from transcendent and irrelevant points o f view'.’ ( 1961: 80) T h e im plications o f this p rogram m e are profou n d. T h ro u gh o u t Structural Semantics G reim as speaks o f the ‘effect o f m ean in g’ (‘m eaning-effect’) o f sem antic elem ents, a term which is used to describe the phenom enon o f m eaning — o f som ething being grasp ed as m eaningful — without exam ining the ‘content’ o f that m eaning. Such a term, Fredric Jam eso n notes, functions ‘as though, having taken all m eaning for our 62

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Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics object, we can no longer speak about it in term s o f signification as such, and find ourselves obliged somehow to take a position outside the realm o f m eanings in ord er to ju d g e what they all, irrespective o f the content, have form ally in com m on with each oth er.’ (1972: viii) M oreover, it allows Hjelm slev to distinguish between phonetics and phonology without the recourse to particular significations that the Prague School utilises. T h u s H jelm slev divides the ‘expression plan e’ (as well as the ‘content plan e’) into form and substance, ‘expression -form ’ and ‘expressionsubstance’ . (1961: 56) T h e distinction between ‘fo rm ’ and ‘substance’ allows him to distinguish between structural and phenom enal aspects o f lan gu age without incorporatin g phenom enology into structuralism , as the P rague School does; without creating what H olenstein calls a ‘phenom enological structuralism ’ (1976). It allows him a form al, contentless ‘algeb ra’ o f language. ‘T h e/o rm ,’ Roland B arthes notes, is what can be described exhaustively, simply and coherently (epistem ological criteria) by linguistics without resortin g to any extralinguistic prem ise; the substance is the whole set o f aspects o f linguistic phenom ena which cannot be described without resorting to extralinguistic prem ises. Since both strata exist on the plane o f expression and the plane o f content, we therefore have: (i) a substance o f expression : for instance the phonic, articulatory, non-functional substance which is the field o f phonetics, not phonology; (ii) a form o f expression, m ade o f the paradigm atic and syntactic rules . . .; (iii) a substance o f content: this includes, for instance, the em otional, ideological, or simply notional aspects o f the signified, its ‘positive’ m eaning; (iv) a form o f content: it is the form al organization o f the signified am o n g them selves through the absence or presence o f a sem antic m ark. (1968: 40; see Sam pson 1980: 167) It is for this reason that G reim as is at such pains to argu e that the designations he o ffers fo r sem es in his sem antic analyses are not ‘content,’ but simply ‘denom inative lexem es [which] are not a part o f natural langu age, but o f a second descriptive language, and . . . are no m ore English than algebraic sign s.’ (SS: 180) Still, while H jelm slev assum es that the ‘form o f the 63

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics content’ is the sole ‘contentual’ object o f linguistic science, G reim as situates the ‘substance o f the content’ within his linguistics: ‘the substance o f the content m ust not then be considered as an extralinguistic reality — psychic or physical — but as the linguistic m anifestation o f the content, situated at another level than the fo rm .’ (SS: 27) ‘H jelm slev’s concept o f the form o f the content,’ he notes later, ‘while being revolutionary inasm uch as it signified the death o f form alism , cannot be used to establish the real distinction between the levels o f lan gu age, especially when one wants to m aintain, as we do, the Saussurean conception o f lan gu age considered as a form whose sole m anifestation is the result o f provoking the appearan ce o f effects o f meaning assim ilable to the substance o f the content.’ (SS: 68) The meaningful whole D espite occasional disclaim ers, G reim as’s systematic sem antics incorporates the ‘givenness’ o f com plex sem antic phenom ena. T h at is, to speak o f m eaning-effect is to transform the ‘sim ple’ o rd er o f ph enom ena into an ‘in terh um an ’ ord er: it u n d erstands the ph enom en a o f lan gu age as an ‘effected affect’, that is, in term s o f a sen der and a receiver (emission and reception). ‘A physicist,’ H olenstein writes, ‘has to establish agreem ent between two sets o f data: the facts o f nature and the system o f the theory. A linguist is confronted with three d ata gro u p s: the m essage or object lan gu age o f the sender, the code o f the sen der, and the m etalanguage or theory o f the linguist.’ (1976: 5 9 -6 0 ) Unlike the physicist, H olenstein argu es, for the linguist the “ ‘object o f research ” can com m ent on its own signs. And the linguist can in turn interfere in the process o f inform ation and take over the role o f the sender. U nilateral inform ation becom es bilateral com m unication.’ (1976: 59) T h u s while H jelm slev’s ‘form o f the content’ seem s to make room for the interhum an aspect o f lan gu age without in corporating ‘ontological or phenom enological p rem isses’ into the structure or system o f language, it does so only by self-conscious attem pts to erase the specific, sem antic ‘givenness’ o f lan gu age — the particular m eaning-effects ‘received’ by the linguist — in disclaim ers such as G reim as’s ‘algeb ra’ o f ‘design ated lexem es’ m odelled on H jelm slev’s global disclaim er o f design ating his theoretical discourse as simply ‘p rolego m en a’ and, m ore im portantly, o f giving ‘internal coh erence’ precedence over 64

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics ‘approxim ation to reality’. Linguistic description, H jelm slev writes, 'shall be free of contradiction (self-consistent), exhaustive, and as simple as possible' in this ord er o f ‘preceden ce’. (1961: 11) Nevertheless, both G reim as and Hjelm slev, unlike the Bloom field group, begin with the ‘givenness’ o fla n g u a g e , what G reim as calls the ‘vague, yet necessary concept o f the meaningfu l whole set forth by a m essage.’ (SS: 59) H jelm slev also defines the deductive (as op posed to the inductive) proced ure o f linguistics on the basis o f this assum ption: ‘I f the linguistic investigator is given anything,’ he writes, ‘it is the as yet unanalyzed text in its undivided and absolute integrity.’ (1961: 12) Both assum e the ‘givenness’ o f m eaning which allows for the analysis o f distinctive features: features which distinguish between felt differen ces in m eaning (see Hjelm slev 1961: 73). R epeating H jelm slev’s rules for linguistic description — ‘ob servational adequacy’, ‘consistency (absence o f contradiction)’, and ‘the greatest possible simplicity o f explanatory prin ciple’ — H olenstein notes that ‘the additional criterion for phenom enology is its intuitive givenness.’ (1976: 60) T h is addition, I will argu e, transform s the ‘structuralism ’ o f G reim as’s project in Structural Semantics into ‘sem iology,’ and leads him to break his book into two parts, the structural analysis o f the im m anent linguistic features o f sem antics in chapters one through nine, and the sem iology o f the actantial analyses o f the manifested sem antic universe, what he calls the ‘speculative’ chapters, ten through twelve. Ju s t as Lévi-Strauss ‘discovered’ linguistic analysis through his chance m eeting with Jak o b so n in New York, so Roland B arthes was first introduced to linguistics by G reim as when they were colleagues in Egypt in the early fifties (Culler 1983: 19). It is significant to this study o f G reim as, then, that in Elements o f Semiology Barthes argu es that it m ight be necessary to ‘invert’ Sau ssu re’s claim that ‘linguistics is only a part o f the general science o f sem iology’ (1959: 16) and to assert that ‘it is sem iology which is a part o f linguistics: to be precise, it is that part covering the great signifying unities o f discou rse.’ (1968: 1 1) Such unities are the m anifested, signifying wholes o f discourse. Tw o years after B arthes published this claim, G reim as published Structural Semantics, in which the ‘speculative,’ sem iological analyses o f m anifested discourse succeed the detailed structural linguistic analysis o f im m anent semantics.

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Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics

The linguistic analysis o f ‘Structural Semantics’: the immanent semantic universe I have spent so much time on the P ragu e School, the B loom field group , and the C open h agen School because they serve to define the goals and p roced ures o f G reim as’s structural analysis o f semantics. As H jelm slev notes in the Prolegomena, ‘it is an inevitable logical consequence’ that the analyses o f the expression plane are applicable to the content plane: ‘J u s t as the expression plane can, through a functional analysis, be resolved into com ponents with m utual relations (as in the ancient discovery o f alphabetic writing and in m odern phonem ic theories), so also the content plane m ust be resolved by such an analysis into com ponents with m utual relations that are sm aller than the m inim al-sign-contents.’ (1961: 66—67) T h e aim o f Structural Semantics, then, is to ap p ro p riate the tasks and proced ures o f structural linguistics for an analysis o f the signification o f language. Such a task encom passes the three criteria Hjelm slev articulates: exhaustive accounting o f the data, logical self-consistency, and simplicity (and elegance) o f the m odel developed. G reim as him self subscribes to these criteria which, in a b road way (with ‘simplicity’ und erstood as the m ost econom ical articulation o f the relationship between inductive accountings o f data and the deductions o f logic), correspon d to the B loom field group , the C op en h agen School, and Prague Structuralism . T h u s he writes that sem antic description ‘m ust borrow the p roced ures p ro p er to any analysis which are constituted by successive halting places for inventory, for reduction, and for structuration.’ (SS: 77)

The aim o f semantics B efore turning to the inventory, reduction, and structuration o f sem antics, I want to pau se to exam ine what G reim as calls the ‘epistem ological’ assum ptions and im plications o f his attem pt at a structuralist m ethod. T h e broadest aim o f sem antics is to account for — that is, to develop proced u res o f description and discovery for — the nature and functioning o f the palpable fact that lan gu age signifies, and that it signifies, as we have seen, in ways ‘felt’ to be ‘whole’ beyond the structured confines o f the sentence. G reim as’s sem antics seeks to u nderstand the ‘m ean 66

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics ingful whole’ o f a given discourse, what he calls ‘the unity o f the entire com m unication’ (SS: 59, 130). T h ro u gh o u t Structural Semantics G reim as describes the ‘ap p reh en sion ’ o f such unity and m eaning with the verb saisir, t o ‘g ra sp ’ o r ‘seize’: m eaning is ‘seized’ or ‘ap p reh en d ed ’ because, as he su ggests at one point in an ‘epistem ological speculation’, it is ‘given’, ‘a kind o f “ given” integrated into perception itself.’ (SS: 98) Such ‘givenness’ is inscribed in another verb that is repeated throughout Structural Semantics, apparition, the ‘sudden ap p e aran ce’ or ‘advent’ o f signification. T h u s while Bloom field reduces sem antics to ‘the study o f gram m ar and lexicon’ (1933: 513) and H jelm slev suggests that an algebraic ‘science o f the content is not a sem antics’ (1961: 79), G reim as p u rsu es the largest sense o f sem antics as the science o f m eaning. For G reim as, then, sem antics studies the content plane o f langu age, the realm o f the signified. But, as H jelm slev noted, the ‘m ethods’ for studying sem antics cannot be d ifferen t from those o f linguistics in general. In fact, H jelm slev even argu es that the m ethods o f linguistics, when applied to sem antics, are central to all scientific en deavou r (1961: 78) — an argum en t, I suspect, which inform s B arth es’ claim that sem iology is a part o f linguistics (1968: 11). T h u s, although sem antics has been what G reim as calls ‘a poor relation’ in linguistics (SS: 4), its elaboration in structural linguistic terms can articulate the ‘epistem ological attitude’ o f ‘the hum an sciences in the twentieth century in gen eral.’ (SS: 7) T h at attitude eschews the depth s o f m etaphysical constructs — whether they be the ‘scientific fo rm ’ o f Bloom field or H jelm slev’s positing o f an absolute distinction between the ‘internal’ and ‘extern al’ bases o f form and substance — for a sense o f the palpable surfaces o f things and, as I shall argue, the ‘play’ o f the surfaces. G reim as cites only one ‘particularly striking’ exam ple o f this attitude — ‘we have seen the psychology o f m anners and behavior substituted for the psychology o f “ faculties” and introspection’ (SS: 7) — but this attitude is inscribed in the very distinction between structure and form Lévi-Strauss describes. Even the ‘behaviourist’ assum ptions o f the Bloom field gro u p participates in this epistem ological attitude, although, as I have argu ed , its ‘fo rm al’ distinction between data and ‘scientific arran gem en t’ (H arris 1941: 345) and its (related) assum ption that physical ph enom ena are m ore ‘ontological’ than mental phenom ena suggest a kind o f depth u n der the surface. In any 67

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics case, this claim for structural analysis, with all o f its ‘im m anent’ m odels, its ap p aren t system ‘below’ process, and other such form ulations, may seem paradoxical at best (or simply ju st w rong), yet the centrality o f structuralism ’s relational u n d erstan din g o f phenom ena and its strategies to avoid, as far as possible, what G reim as calls the ‘substantifying’ o f relations, m ark its u rge to rem ain on the surface and ‘ph enom en al’. Even the ‘givenness’ o f signification and its abstraction o f ‘intention’ in o rd er to replace causal and genetic explanations with teleological an d functional ones is significantly ‘on the su rface’, a description o f m anners and behaviour rather than ‘faculties.’ For this reason, in structural sem antics the plane o f the content, like everything else we have encountered in the ‘interhum an m ilieu’, is itself susceptible to bifurcation — to dou blin g into relational pairs. As we have seen, H jelm slev effected such a doubling in this opposition between the ‘fo rm ’ and the ’substance’ o f the plane o f the content. G reim as calls H jelm slev’s distinction between form and substance ‘revolutionary inasm uch as it signified the death o f form alism ’ (SS: 68) and, he virtually begins Structural Semantics with an articulation o f this distinction in his description o f the ‘elem entary structure o f signification.’ Yet he is at great pains to argu e that ‘substance’ is not, as H jelm slev proposes, ‘nonlinguistic’ or the ‘extralinguitic’ phenom ena o f ‘physics’ or ‘an th ropology.’ While H jelm slev asserts that ‘the substance o f both planes can be viewed both as physical entities (sounds in the expression plane, things in the content plane) and as the conception o f these entities held by the users o f the lan gu ag e’ (1961: 78; see also Barthes 1968: 40), G reim as argu es th a t‘the substance o f the content m ust not be then considered as an extralinguistic reality — psychic or physical — but as the linguistic m anifestation o f the content, situated at another level than the fo rm .’ (SS: 27) T h u s he argu es that ‘the still very vague, yet necessary concept o f the meaningful whole set forth by a m essage’ is crucial to sem antics, and ‘going beyond the narrow fram e o f the m essage, we shall try to show . . . how it is that entire texts are located at a m ore h om ogen eous sem antic level, how the global signified o f a signifying ensem ble instead o f being set forth a priori (as Hjelmslev proposes), can be interpreted as a structural reality o f linguistic m anifestation.’ (SS: 59) Like H jelm slev and Barthes, G reim as also ‘su sp e n d s’ the ‘distinction between linguistic sem antics and Saussurean 68

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics sem iology’ (SS: 7), but he does so not by positing, a priori, and then suspending, nonlinguistic substances o f physics and anthropology, but by attem pting to utilise the conception o f ‘substance’ without ‘substantifying’ it. He attem pts to describe the reciprocal presupposition o f ‘substance’ and ‘fo rm .’

Double articulation : The organisation o f semes T o do so G reim as continues the ‘dou blin g’ o f linguistic relationships without bracketing the ‘substance’ o f the content H jelm slev elim inates from linguistic analysis. H e does so by repeatin g throughout his sem antic analysis the conception o f the ‘double articulation’ o f lan gu age that A ndré M artinet developed in his description o f language. H ere G reim as is explicitly pu rsu in g the ‘functional analysis’ o f the expression plane on the content plane that H jelm slev called fo r as ‘an inevitable logical consequence’ for linguistics. D ouble articulation, as we have seen, presents two distinct planes o f analysis. It is the distinction, as Barthes notes, ‘between the sigiiifi cant units, each one o f which is endow ed with one m eaning . . . and which form the first articulation, and the distinctive units, which are part o f the form but do not have a direct m eaning . . . and which constitute the second articulation.’ (1968: 39) T his doubling is clear in the phonological investigations o f the Prague School on the level o f the signifier (see D ucrot & T odo rov 1979: 53), but G reim as transfers it to sem antics, and begins Structural Semantics with the ‘distinctive units’ o f signification, which he calls ‘sem es’. (T o maintain the m ethodological parallel with the P rague School, he design ates the distinctive features o f phonem es ‘ph em es’ (1969: 40; SS: 33).) T h e sem e, like the distinctive featu re, ‘has no existence on its own and can be im agined and described only in relation to som ething that it is not, inasm uch as it is only part o f a structure o f signification.’ (55: 118) But ju st as ‘bu n dles’ o f distinctive features (or ‘ph em es’) combine to form phonem es, minimal functional (i.e. realised) sound units, so sem es com bine to form lexemes, m inimal functional signifying units (most often words, but also inflections, su ffixes, etc.: what M artinet calls ‘the units produced by the first articulation’ (1964: 24) which G reim as identifies with m orph em es (1971a: 84)). As I already m entioned ‘black’ and ‘white’ are lexem es that approach the 69

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics status o f single sem es. But a word like ‘girl’ is a bundle o f sem es: /hum an/, /femininity/, /young/, etc. (SS: 7; Jackson 1985: 36-39). Early in Structural Semantics G reim as analyses high vs low, lexem es com parable to ‘black’ and ‘white’, and inscribes them in ‘the semic system o f spatiality.’ At the end o f his analysis he o ffers a chart, parallel to the charts describing the distinctive features o f phonem es as m arked or unm arked ( + or —), describing ‘the relationship existing between the semic system and the lexem atic m anifestation.’ (SS: 37) Sem es spatiality

dimensionality

vertically

high low

+ +

+ +

+ +

Í long I short

+ +

+ +

Í wide \ narrow

+ +

+ +

{

+ +

Lexemes j \

vast

1 dense

-

-

-

horizon- perspectality tivity laterality -

-

-

-

-

-

+ +

+ +

+ +

-

-

-

+ +

-

-

T h e com binations and contrasts o f sem es, taken in their entirety, develop the ‘categories o f signification’ and constitute what G reim as calls the immanent semantic universe. T h is universe is the ‘second articulation’ o f the content plane (just as phonology is the second articulation o f the expression plane). T h e first articulation is the manifested semantic universe (SS: 143) which I will exam ine in the next chapter. Within the im m anent sem antic universe G reim as articulates two levels o f content analysis, ‘two architectural arran gem en ts o f content’ (SS: 61), the ‘sem iological level’ and the ‘sem antic level’. T h e sem iological level organises the sem es in term s o f the invariants contained in particular lexemes while the sem antic level organises the vanant sem es.

Inventory: the semiological level T h e extended exam ple o f the sem iological level G reim as 70

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics offers is an analysis o f the lexem e tête (head). In his analysis G reim as works from the inventory o f m eanings supplied by the dictionary (see H jelm slev (1961: 71) for a justification o f the use o f a dictionary) and organises them to reduce and structure the occurrences o f head into invariant and variant elem ents. T h e dictionary begins by defin ing head ‘realistically’ as ‘a part o f the body’, a definition which is ‘related to the nonlinguistic im age o f the body.’ (SS: 47) In his analysis, G reim as m akes no distinction between literal and figurative m eanings — such a distinction uses a ‘nonlinguistic’ criterion for ju d g em en t — but does distinguish between invariant sem es o f the lexem e head, ‘extrem ity’ + ‘superativity’, and variants (such as ‘verticality’ in the occurrence to be in over one's head or ‘horizontality’ in head of a line) that are generated by the context. G reim as calls the form er nuclear semes, the m inimal units o f the sem iological level fou nd within lexem es, and the latter classemes, the m inimal units o f the sem antic level found across at least two lexem es. A particular (i.e. univocal) realised m eaning-effect, which G reim as design ates sememe, is the com bination o f nuclear sem es and classem es, which realises a double articulation, the ‘j u n c tu re ’ o f the sem iological and sem antic levels o f language. A sem em e is a lexem e considered only on the plane o f the content. (1973a: 59) In this analysis G reim as is distinguishing his conception o f the m ethod o f sem antic analysis in an im portant way from that o f Hjelm slev. Hjelm slev argu es that, in sem antic analysis, there can be no minimal invariant units o f m eaning. ‘T h e “ m ean in g” ,’ he writes, which each minimal entity [m orphem e] can be said to bear m ust be u nderstood as being purely contextual m eaning. N one o f the minimal entities, nor the roots, have such an ‘in depen den t’ existence that they can be assigned a lexical m eaning . . . there exist no other perceivable m eanings then contextual m eanings; any entity, and thus also any sign [lexem e], is defined relatively, not absolutely, and only by its place in the context. From this point o f view it is m eaningless to distinguish between m eanings that a p p e ar only in the context and m eanings that might be assum ed to have an independent existence . . . (1961: 4 4 -4 5 )

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Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics H jelm slev su spen ds ‘in depen den t’ m eaning for the sam e reason he su spen ds the ‘nonlinguistic’ substance, in ord er to create an ‘algebraic’ linguistics (i.e., a glossematics) whose term s, like those o f the second articulation o f the signifier, are the ‘negative m ean in gs’ o f oppositions without positive content beyond the differen ces o f opposition. M eaning in this d efin ition is simply ‘variations’ determ ined by the discursive context from which, in H jelm slev’s logic, the algebraic elem ents o f linguistics ‘would receive a m otivated designation only on being confronted with the substance.’ (1961: 79) In this conception, there can be no positive ‘m inimal units’ o f signification because such units, as aspects o f the substance o f the content, are outside linguistic analysis. T h u s in this account the invariant elem ents o f hum an perception — tactile, spatial, aspectual — are given a pYiori and not in corporated within the structure o f language. G reim as, however, does incorporate invariants within the structure o fla n g u a g e by conceiving o f sem es, invariant as well as variant sem es, as articuláted in the elem entary structure o f signification. N uclear sem es are articulated in oppositions such as those fou nd in ‘the semic system o f spatiality’ — a broad exteroceptive category. G reim as notes that ‘the lexem es high/ low, long/short,’ like the black/white o f my earlier exam ple, ‘. . . constitute privileged cases: they are too close, if we may say so, to the structures o f signification.’ (SS: 40) T h u s, while ‘positive’, nuclear sem es exist only in relations to things they are not: an invariant sem e o f head such as ‘superativity’, for instance, exists only in relation to its opposite, a constituent invariant o f foot, ‘posteriority’. (SS: 51) T h at is, in contrast to H jelm slev, G reim as wants to conceive o f ‘a sem antics independent from the second articulation o f the signifier’ (SS: 73) and substitute for it the second articulation o f the signified. For G reim as the sem iological level is precisely the systematic linguistic realisation o f the invariants o f hum an perception and, like the invariant distinctive features o f phonology for any particular lan gu age which com prise the ‘second articulation o f the signifier’, its inclusion in the analysis o f the content allows for the plane o f the content to be u nderstood as a double articulation. T h e ‘sem iological level,’ G reim as writes, ‘is an ensem ble o f categories and semic system s situated and apprehensible at the level o f perception.’ He goes on to note that 72

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics situated within the processes o f perception, the sem iological categories represen t, so to speak, the external facet, the contribution o f the exterior world, to the birth o f m eaning. C on sidered from this angle, the sem iological categories seem isom orphs o f the qualities o f the sensible world, and com parable, fo r exam ple, to the morpho-phonemes o f which gestural lan gu age is com posed. (SS: 7 2 -73) T h e sem iological level, then, is exteroceptive, directed ‘ou tw ard’ toward the ‘substantial’ qualities o f the world, yet, as the form o f the content, it articulates them into a system o f articulation. It is, then, the second articulation o f the signified. ‘T h e sem iological,’ G reim as writes, ‘constitutes a kind o f signifier which . . . articulates the symbolic signified and constitutes it in a net o f differen tiated significations. Ju s t as the plane o f the articulated expression is necessary fo r the plane o f the content to be som ething other than a Saussurean “great cloudiness,” so articulation o f the form o f the content calls to life the substance o f the content by differen tiatin g it.’ (SS: 67) T his is the im portance o f the inclusion o f Pierre G u irau d ’s study o f ‘proto-sem anticism ’ in Structural Semantics — the most extensive citation o f a sem antic study in the book — which dem onstrates the ‘concom itance’ between phonological o p p o sitions and the oppositions o f nuclear sem es in a m orphosem antic field. Analysis o f the second articulation, as we have seen in M artinet, dep en d s upon the proced ure o f ‘com m utation’ developed by the Prague School and form ulated by the C openh agen School. G uirard elaborates the com m utation o f /e/, /i/, /a/ in the context o f the French root [t — k] (1962) and thus dem onstrates a parallel between the second articulation on the plane o f the expression and on the plane o f the content. B ut what is striking in G u irau d ’s study is that its com m utations are based upon the assum ption o f the synonymy o f diachronic m anifestations o f the lexem es it exam ines. Synonymy is the great problem o f the diacritical analysis o f the second articulation — the ‘negative m ean in gs’ o f com m utation. M oreover, as long as the second articulation is conceived in term s o f the signifier rather than the signified (as it is in H jelm slev’s purely contextual und erstan din g o f signification) synonymy seem s im possible: in this conception ‘any phonological divergence,’ G reim as notes, must lead ‘to an unavoidable divergence in 73

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics signification.’ (SS: 129) T h at is, articulating equivalences rather than differen ces, synonymy requires distributional analysis, the proced ure o f the B loom field gro u p , along with commutation, to identify its elem ents. ‘In the m orphological dom ain ,’ G reim as notes, ‘differen t m arks (—s and —en o f the English plural ‘cows and ‘oxen,’ for instance) can cover identical elem ents o f content, on the condition, however, o f having d ifferen t contextual distributions.’ (SS: 129) T h e great d an ger o f distributional analysis, as H jelm slev has suggested, is the positing o f false equivalences such as /h/ and /r)/ in English (1961: 63—64); the great dan ger o f com m utation, as N oam C hom sky has shown, is the positing o f false dichotom ies such as /ekinam iks/ vs /iykinam iks/ (economics) (1957: 95). T h e inventory o f sem es, then, requires both distributional analysis and com m utation — G reim as’s analysis o f tête utilises both — and using both, G uirau d dem onstrates that the sem iological level is part o f the ‘form o f the content’ even though it is based u pon the nonlinguistic organ s o f perception ju st as the distinctive featu res o f phonology is part o f the ‘form o f the expression ’, even though they are based upon the organ s o f speech articulation.

R eduction: the semantic level T h u s, the differen ce between the sem iological level and the sem antic level is not the differen ce between the form and the substance o f the content. ‘T h e concepts o f the semiological and o f the form o f the content are not coextensive, how ever,’ G reim as writes; ‘if all that is sem iological belongs necessarily to the form o f the content, the opposite is not true: the classem es and the sem antic level o f the lan gu age that they constitute (which is the source o f an agogic isotopies) equally participate in the form o f the content.’ (SS: 68) T h ese levels are differen t ‘architectural arran gem en ts’ o f sem es classified ‘according to their presu m ed origin ’ (SS: 135): if the sem iological level gro u n ds itself in elemental ‘invariants’ o f hum an perception, then the sem antic level gro u n ds itself in the ‘process’ o f perception, ‘ou r aptitude to ap preh en d achronically, as wholes, very sim ple structures o f signification.’ (SS: 171) A lthough the m essage is presented for reception as an 74

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics articulated succession o f significations, that is to say, with dichronic status, the reception can be effectuated only by transform in g the succession into sim ultaneity and the pseudo-diachrony into synchrony. Synchronic p ercep tion, if one believes B r0n dal, can ap p reh en d only a m axim um o f six term s at the sam e time. (SS: 144) T h e sem antic level, then, is the form o f the content closely related to the structuration o f discourse while the sem iological level is related to a hypotaxis or ‘field ’ o f invariant elem ents. T h e differen ce, to return to G u irau d ’s study, is the opposition o f ‘the idea o f field to that o f system, o f the notion o f sim ple relationship to that o f structu re.’ (1962: 104) I f the sem iological level is directed outw ard tow ards the world, then the sem antic level is interoceptive, directed inward tow ards lan gu age itself. It presents categories which su ggest that ‘the global signified o f a signifying ensem ble, instead o f being set forth a priori (as Hjelm slev proposes), can be in terpreted as a structural reality o f linguistic m anifestation.’ (SS: 59) If the sem iological level o ffers an inventory o f perceptions, then the sem antic level, whose elem ents, classem es, are m ore abstract and much less num erous than nuclear sem es, o ffers a kind o f reduction, what G reim as speculates m ight be ‘a small num ber o f the categories of the human mind.’ (55: 121) T h u s, while the second articulation suggests an analysis from the part to the whole in distributional analysis which progressively discovers through ‘pertinent opposition s’ m ore and m ore ‘elem ental’ articulations, the first articulation lends itself to the com m utation test from the whole to the part, beginning with the givenness or the signifying whole o f discourse and reducing it to a small num ber o f recurrin g ‘equivalent’ parts. H ere we can indeed see a differen ce in ‘presu m ed origin ’ for these levels: the sem iological level is analysis from the point o f view o f conception and the sem antic level is analysis from the point o f view o f appreh en sion . In this doubling G reim as m aintains ‘the convenient distinction between lan gu age (langue) conceived as an immanent system and lan gu age ap p reh en d ed as a manifested process.’ (SS: 117) Isotopy T his is why isotopy — the term that is most closely associated with G reim as’s early work — is so im portant: the isotopic 75

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics analysis o f lan gu age starts with the ‘m eaningful whole’ o f a text. ‘By isotopy,’ G reim as writes in ‘T h e Interpretation o f Myth: T heory and Practice’, ‘we m ean a redu n dan t set o f sem antic categories which make a uniform readin g o f the narrative possible.’ (G reim as 1971a: 84) In Maupassant he argu es m ore elaborately that ‘the existence o f discourse — and not a collection o f in dependent sentences — can only be affirm ed if we postulate that the totality o f sentences constitute a com m on isotopy recognisable because o f the recurrence o f a linguistic category or a bundle o f linguistic categories throughout the length o f its u n fold in g.’ (M: 28) Isotopies account for the ‘sense’ o f wholeness o f m eaning beyond the sentence; they account for the ‘sen se’ o f discourse. T h is is why Elizabeth Sewell defines ‘n on sense’ as a sem antic universe which ‘m ust never be m ore than the sum o f its parts, and m ust never fuse into som e all-em bracing whole . . . It m ust try to create with words a universe that consists o f bits.’ (cited in Steiner 1975: 187) T h is definition o f nonsense describes discourse without a discoverable isotopy. Isotopies are ‘discoverable’ in the appreh en sion o f redun dan t sem es in discourse that create ‘the principle o f the equivalence o f unequal units.’ (SS: 82) Synonymy is one form o f such equivalence, and the ‘m eaningful whole’ o f the synonymic base o f G u irau d ’s study in an im portant way d eterm ined the transform ation o f a ‘field’ o f elem ents into a ‘structu re.’ T h u s isotopies function to create a ‘fram e o f organ ization’ for signification. In fact, G reim as him self helps to define ‘the double function o f classem es’ — their ability to account for ‘the relatively hom ogenous sem antic linearity o f d iscou rse’ and their ability, in term s o f isotopies, ‘to constitute the fram e o f organization o f the sem antic universe’ (55: 89) — by analysing an inventory synonyms o ï fatig u é. (SS: 89—98) Such equivalence, however, only rarely takes the form o f synonyms. G reim as’s first exam ple o f the isotopy o f a discourse is an ordinary jo k e where one speaker com m ents upon a ‘fash ionable soirée, brilliant, very chic, with very select gu ests,’ etc. “ ‘A beautiful evening, isn’t it? M agnificent meal . . . and also lovely attire (toilettes), righ t?” “ Well,” says the other one, “ I do not know . . . I haven’t had to go to the lavatory (toilette)” ' (SS: 79) Within this jo k e are ‘two differen t isotopies’ — two possible contexts or ‘fram es’ o f global m eanings: a social gath ering (the sem e /sociality/ redundantly recurrin g in soirée, chic, guests) and 76

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics the furnishings o f a house — which prod uce two d ifferen t m eaning-effects o f toilette (Eco 1984: 195). T h e ‘unequal units’ o f this jo k e are the ‘narrative-presentation’ which establishes the isotopy ‘social gath erin g’ by m eans o f the redu n dan t sem e /sociality/ and an elem ent o f that presentation, the lexem e toilette, which, as ‘lavatory’ (—/sociality/) causes the narrative’s ‘unity to explode, by brusquely op posin g a second isotopy to the first.’ (SS: 80) As ‘lovely attire’ (+/sociality/), toilette contributes to the establishm ent o f the isotopy, the m eaningful whole, o f the story. H ere, then, is the reciprocal p re su p p o sition constituting isotopies: the parts create the whole which determ ines the parts. G reim as’s jo k e is the m isreading o f isotopy — o f redu n dan t sem es — which explodes the m eaningful whole o f discourse into nonsensical ‘bits’. Metalinguistic workings M ore generally, the equivalence o f unequal units is prod u ced by ‘the existence o f one or several sem es com m on to the two ju x tap o se d segm en ts.’ (SS: 83) Such equivalence takes the form o f ‘expan sion and definition’ (G reim as provides dictionary definitions as exam ples) an d also ‘condensation and denom ination’ (he provides the definitions calling for d en om inations in crossw ord puzzles as exam ples). In this discussion G reim as explicitly describes the parallel in proced ures between analysis o f expression and content: thus he dem onstrates the equivalence across lan gu ages between potato and pomme de terre (SS: 82) and, earlier, within a lan gu age between the m orpho-lexem e and and the com m a in John, Peter, and Paul (SS: 42). Most im portant, such equivalence develops the metalinguistic workings o f language. T his is what H olenstein describes as the incorporation o f the ‘code o f the sen d er’ within language: ‘the physicist receives no m etalinguistic inform ation from the object o f research; the linguist does. His “object o f research ” can com m ent on its own signs . . . U nilateral inform ation becom es bilateral com m unication.’ (1976: 59) T h u s the equivalence o f unequal units radically ‘d ou bles’ the analysis o f discourse into the double articulation o f ‘conception’ and ‘reception’ (see G reim as 1962/63). M oreover, it doubles the analysis by including the possibility o f negating the ‘scientific’ relationship between ‘the facts o f nature and the system o f theory.’ (H olenstein 1976: 59) ‘D iscourse,’ G reim as says, ‘conceived as a hierarchy o f units o f 77

com m unication fitting into one another, contains in itself the negation o f that hierarchy by the fact that the units o f com m unication with differen t dim ensions can be at the sam e time recognized as equivalent.’ (SS: 82) T h is fact is as radical as Benveniste’s distinction between two ord ers o f phenom ena — in fact, distinguishing discourse from other ‘n atu ral’ phenom ena, it is Benveniste’s distinction. It transform s linguistics, the science o f lan gu age, into semiotics. T h e m etalinguistic property o f lan gu age is the fact that any piece o f lan gu age — nonphonem ic, agram m atical, asem antic — can be in corporated, m etalinguistically, into langu age so that the hierarchy that ‘disallow s’ it is ‘deconstru cted.’ T h u s Barthes notes that phonetic, nondistinctive features in lan gu age can becom e the equivalent o f the hierarchically su perior distinctive features: ‘the rolled r is a m ere com binative variant at the denotative level, but in the speech o f the theatre, for instance, it signals a country accent and therefore is a part o f a code, without which the m essage o f “ ru raln ess” could not be either em itted or perceived.’ (1968: 20) ‘It is too often fo rgo tten,’ G reim as writes, ‘that a connotation is not a sim ple secondary m eaning-effect, but that it possesses the structure o f a sign and because o f that is part o f a connotative “ lan gu ag e” .’ (1 9 8 0 :1 0 6 ) At a greater extrem e, D errida also notes that by being quoted — itself a m etalinguistic operation — an agrammatical or asemantic sequence such as ‘green is o r ’ becom es m eaningful. ‘But even “green is o r” ,’ D errida writes, still signifies an example of agrammaticality. T h is is the possibility on which I wish to insist: the possibility o f extraction and o f citational graftin g which belongs to the structure o f every m ark, spoken or written, . . . a possibility o f functioning cut off, at a certain point, from its ‘origin al’ m eaning and from its belonging to a saturable and constraining context. Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic . . . can be cited, put between quotations m arks . . . T h is citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability o f the m ark is not an accident or an anom aly, but is that (norm al/abnorm al) without which a m ark could no longer even have a so-called ‘n orm al’ functioning. (1982: 32 0 -2 1 )

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Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics G reim as too notes that the ‘hierarchy’ o f syntax com pletely disrupts its hierarchical ord er in the service o f the ‘conducting wire’ o f isotopy: derivatives take charge o f classes o f roots, syntactic ‘fu n ctions’ transform gram m atical classes by m aking them play roles for which they are not app ro p riate; entire propositions are reduced and described as if they behave like sim ple adverbs. A cross the m ultiple translations, the task o f the analyst is to find again the conducting wire o f discourse, to reduce these hierarchies to an isotopic plane o f com m unication. (SS: 133) T h is is ‘reduction ’ with a vengeance — in the case o f D errida reduction tran sform in g itself into the contrary o f isotopy, ‘dissem ination’ — and it is this aspect o f discourse that form ed the basis o f the m ost serious criticisms o f Structural Semantics. T h u s U m berto Eco argu es that as soon as the sem antic universals are reduced in num ber and m ade m ore com prehensive . . . they becom e unable to m ark the differen ce between d ifferen t sem em es. A nd as soon as their num ber is au gm ented and their capacity for individuation grows, they becom e ad hoc definitions . . . T h e real problem is that every semantic unit used in order to analyze a sememe is in its turn a sememe to be analyzed. (Eco 1976: 121) Jo n ath an Culler notes the sam e problem in G reim as’s isotopic analysis o f the jo k e by turning arou n d the conversation and having the speaker look for the lavatory: ‘in this case,’ he writes, ‘the reader selects the correct m eanings with no d ifficulty even though the sem e “sanitary facility” or whatever relates to nothing in the introduction [the ‘narrative-presentation’] to the jo k e .’ (1975: 80) ‘It may be im possible,’ C uller concludes, ‘in principle as well as in practice, to construct a m odel which would derive the m eaning o f a text or o f a set o f texts from the m eaning o f lexical item s.’ (1975: 85) Both Eco and C uller isolated an im portant weakness in G reim as’s early theory even while they m arked the great ambition o f his proced ure, its attem pt to bring together the positive (and positivistic) em piricism o f Bloom field and the 79

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics negative meaning o f Hjelm slev. T h e linguistics o f this chapter — the P rague School, B loom field’s em piricism , H jelm slev’s glossematics, G reim as’s semic analyses — are all situated on the im m anent plane o f language, langue rather than parole, which the Analytical Dictionary calls ‘the sole object o f linguistics.’ (SL: 226) T h e isotopies o f discourse are also situated on the im m anent plane o f langu age, and the problem in G reim as that Eco and Culler describe is the problem o f situating the ‘conducting wire’ o f isotopy solely within a linguistic fram e, solely as an im m anent structure o f language. In the linguistic m ethodology o f Structural Semantics G reim as recognises that the m anifestation o f significance, thus d ep en d in g on two m odels o f interpretation situated at distinct hierarchical levels [the ‘im m anent universe’ and the ‘m anifested universe’], has consequently a double articulation and is subm itted to two types o f analysis, the first accounting for semic investm ent realized in sem em es, the second for the organization o f invested contents. (SS: 143) Structural Semantics in its entirety is governed by the hierarchy o f double articulation and, as we shall see in the next chapter, in Structural Semantics G reim as exam ines the m anifested organisation o f invested contents in term s o f the double articulation o f actantial analysis (actants vs functions). But in later studies o f the m anifestation o f signification he learned — in large part because o f the criticism o f his early work en gen dered — that the ‘conducting wire’ o f an im m anent isotopy is better conceived (or reconceived) as the ‘generative trajectory’ o f discourse altogether — a ‘trajectory’ which neutralises the hierarchical opposition between im m anence and m anifestation. G enerative trajectory is not based upon the hierarchical opposition between im m anence and m an ifestation. R ather, it fully takes into account the m etalinguistic property o f language, the fact that lan gu age uses any elem ent and disru pts and neutralises any hierarchy in its global aim o f the articulation o f m eaning. T h u s, as we shall see, generative trajectory reconceives the linguistic method o f Structural Semantics in o rd er to account for the fact that ‘texualization, as a putting-into-text that is linear . . ., can intervene at any point in the generative trajectory.’ (SL: 133) T h e next chapter will exam ine G reim as’s exploration o f the linguistic organisation o f 80

Structural Semantics and Structural Linguistics invested contents in the actantial analyses o f Structural Semantics — which he called in that book ‘the dom ain o f conjectu re.’ (SS: 196) And the follow ing chapter will exam ine his later explorations o f the m anifestation o f signification — the generative trajectory o f discourse — in Maupassant and other studies, his explorations in the dom ain o f semiotics.

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3 Structural Semantics and Du Sens II: Actants, Functions, and the Semio-narrative Level

Linguistics and semiotics T h e relationship between im m anence and m anifestation is the relationship between langue and parole, what H jelm slev calls the distinction, m ore general to science, between the system and the process o f phenom ena: ‘for every process there is a correspon d in g system, by which the process can be analyzed and described by m eans o f a limited num ber o f prem isses.’ (1961: 8) N oam Chom sky uses the term s ‘com petence’ and ‘p e rfo rm ance’ to describe this sam e Saussurean distinction, and his lan gu age is instructive in several ways. First o f all, it clearly defin es a central problem o f linguistic phenom ena: the sim ple (and perh aps ‘m ysterious’) fact that by the age o f three or four hum an beings can u nderstand and generate a seem ingly infinite num ber o f utterances that they have never encountered before. T h is fact seem s to call for H jelm slev’s distinction between a system o f finite elem ents and a process producin g vast (if not infinite) com binations. Secondly, the differen ce o f C hom sky’s term inology from that o f Sau ssu re and H jelm slev m arks the differen ce I have described in the last chapter between A m erican and continental linguistics. Chom sky, a student o f Zellig H arris, was trained in the Bloom fieldian tradition, and even when he breaks with its em piricism — to form what Jo h n Lyons calls ‘the evolution in Chom sky’s thought from em piricism to rationalism ’ (1977: 31) — he still rem ains w edded in im portant ways to an em pirical sense o f the uniqueness o f individual occurrences. T h u s he form ulates the distinction between im m anence and m anifestation, not in term s o f the relationship 82

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II between particular utterances (parole) and a system (langue) that is ultimately transperson al and social, but in term s o f the relationship between individual com petence and individual perform ance. T h is distinction between continental and A m erican approach es can be seen in G reim as’s use o f the category com petence vs perform an ce to describe ‘individualised’ actants — ‘subject’ and ‘object’ — but not to describe ‘social’ (or collective) actants — ‘sen d er’ and ‘receiver’ (DS2). M ore generally it can be seen in S a u ssu re’s definition o f ‘sem iology’ as V/ science that studies the life of signs within society . . . ; it would be part o f social psychology and consequently o f general psychology’ ( 1959: 16) and the definition o f ‘sem iotics,’ developed alm ost sim ultaneously in A m erica by C harles San ders Peirce, as ‘the logic o f general m ean in g.’ (1931: 227) Citing these texts, Pierre G u irau d notes that ‘Sau ssu re em phasises the social function o f the sign, Peirce its logical function.’ (1971: 6; see Jack so n 1985: 26) B efore he opted (along with the International Association for Sem iotic Studies) simply to use ‘sem iotics’ rather than sem iology as the global term (see SL : 282), G reim as used this distinction in term inology to distinguish between the ‘sciences o f expression ’ (‘sem iotics’) and the ‘disciplines o f the content’ (‘sem iology’) (1966a: 33). In this way he was able to situate semiotics within linguistics by describing its double articulation. H ere we can see a third implication o f C hom sky’s term inology, the fact that it m aintains S a u ssu re ’s rather than B arth es’ u n d erstan din g o f the relationship between linguistics and sem iology. T o defin e linguistics as ‘part o f a general science o f sem iology’ (Saussu re 1959: 16) im plies that linguistics is simply the science o f the expression plane o f language — and sem antics, at best, studies the form o f the content so that the Bloom fieldian m ethod o f bracketing and ignoring signifying data in linguistic analysis is necessary. T h at is, the distinction between com petence and perform an ce requires that the rolled r o f the theatre Barthes describes, for instance, not be subject to linguistic analysis, but rather to the m ethods o f sociology, psychology, etc., which, in H jelm slev’s definition o f science, could follow, in general term s, the m ethods o f structural analysis — defin ing a relationship between system and process — but which would develop its own term inology for such analysis. In Chom sky the relationship between com petence and perform an ce is outside 83

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II linguistics: ‘Any psychological model o f the way this com petence is put to use in actual performance,' Jo h n Lyons writes, ‘will have to take into account a num ber o f additional factors, which the linguist deliberately ignores in his definition o f the notion o f grammati cali ty' (Lyons 1977: 107) However, to situate sem iology (now ‘sem iotics’) within linguistics, as B arthes and G reim as do, requires the use o f the term inology o f linguistics to explore the larger sem iological phenom ena: it requires what G reim as calls ‘the transposition o f the m ethodological procedu res o f the plane o f the signifier to that o f the sign ified .’ ( 1 9 7 3 a :60) T h is is precisely G reim as’s semiotic project, the ‘theoretical m ediation between narrative form s and linguistic form s o f sentential dim ension s’ ( 1973a: 59), what he calls ‘an attem pt to shed a little light upon the relations which can exist between discourse and the sentence, between discursive linguistics and sentential linguistics.’ (M: 30) For this reason, G reim as defines sem iotics in term s o f ‘actants’, ‘actantial roles’, and the structure o f the narrative ‘functions’ o f discourse in the term s o f linguistic analysis. Actants, as we shall see, are implicit, abstract agents, a kind o f gram m ar or structure o f agency-effects in discourse an alogous to the abstract (sentential) categories o f syntax in the sam e way sentential categories (gram m atical ‘subject’, ‘object’, and so forth) are an alogous to the com binatory o f the implicit discrete distinctive features o f phonology. Functions, as classes o f narrative action, are closer to the surface o f discursive activity, less the abstract ‘narrative fo rm ’ o f actants than the raw m aterial o f narrative form . As abstract agencies, actants are defin ed reciprocally in relation to one another in term s o f their actantial roles and in relation to the narratives in which they ap p e ar in term s o f their ‘spheres o f action’ or ‘narrative functions’. Actantial roles in turn, G reim as argues, ‘are defined by the position o f the actant in the logical chain o f the narrative (its syntactic definition) and, sim ultaneously, by its modal investment (its m orphological definition), thus m aking possible the systematic gram m atical regulation (réglementation grammaticale) o f narrativity.’ (1973a: 5 3 -5 4 ) Actantial analysis, then, allows the ‘linguistic’ structuring o f discourse by com bining, as Prague linguistics does for phonology, form al and sem antic aspects o f linguistic phenom ena. Such an agency-effect is implicit in G reim as’s definition o f ‘linguistic activity’ as first the ‘m orph em ic’ activity 84

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II o f ‘setting up . . . hypotactic relations between a small num ber o f sem em es’ and then su perim posin g ‘a system atic structure — the distribution o f roles to the actants — . . . on this hypotaxis.’ (SS: 134) M orphem ic activity implies an agent which the systematic structure erases. T h e distinction between ‘systematic structu re’ (e.g. ‘syntax’) and ‘m orph em es’ repeats H jelm slev’s ‘scientific’ distinction between system and process and S au ssu re’s ‘philosophical’ distinction between langue and parole in the lan gu age o f linguistics; it includes, as G reim as’s definition o f actantial roles su ggests and both Sau ssu re and H jelm slev omit, the study o f the substance o f the content, m anifestation, loithin linguistics. T h u s, beyond the im m anent linguistics o f its semic analyses, Structural Semantics includes the m anifest sem antic universe within its purview. It incorporates semiotics — which Barthes had defin ed as a ‘translinguistics which exam ines all sign systems with referen ce to linguistic laws’ (Eco 1976: 30) — within its attem pt at a structural linguistic m ethod for u n d erstan din g signification. G reim as’s semiotics does m ore than this, however. I f trad itional linguistics studies the immanent structures o f signification — the Analytical Dictionary, for instance, asserts that la langue is ‘the sole object o f linguistics’ (SL: 226) — then semiotics is a global ‘linguistics’ which studies langage, the ‘semiotic system an d/or process’, in other areas o f hum an signification beyond lan gu age narrowly conceived. T h at is, semiotics, like G reim as’s linguistics, studies m anifestation as well as im m anence; as such, it is a species o f linguistics that takes all production o f signification — linguistic and nonlinguistic — as its object (see Eco 1976). But as a ‘linguistics’, it recognises the double articulation o f m anifestation as well as im m anence. H ere, then, is G reim as’s decisive break with C hom sky’s dichotom y: rather than sep aratin g im m anence and m anifestation, com petence and perform ance, deep structures and surface structures, langue and parole, on hierarchically distinct levels, G reim as situates the actants o f discourse, the units o f narrative sem antics, and the functions o f discourse, the units o f narrative syntax, on the sam e level o f semiotic and narrative structures. G reim as variously calls this the level o f ‘actualisation’ and the level o f ‘sem io-narrative structu res’. But most im portant it is a level o f m anifestation inhabited by actants as op posed to what G reim as calls the ‘discursive level’ o fla n g u a g e (1979b: 98) inhabited by the ‘activity’ o f discourse, narrativity, 85

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II exam ined in the next chapter. H ere, then, G reim as’s actantial analysis allows us to account for another phenom enon o f lan gu age and to u nderstand ‘com petence’ in its m ore colloquial sense. Actantial analysis accounts, in its very proced ures, for the ‘given’ sense not only o f the ‘m eaningful w holes’ o f discourse I have repeatedly noted, but also o f the ‘piecing together’ o f m eanings, the ‘given’ experience o f ‘figu ring o u t’ signification. T h at is, it accounts not only for m eaningful relationships, but for the felt sense o f incom prehension — o f ‘non sense’ — prod uced by isolated elem ents o f signification which do not readily su ggest an isotopic fram e. In the term s with which I en ded the last chapter, it accounts for the possibility o f unrelated ‘nonsensical’ elem ents o f m eaning being ‘textualized’. T o do this G reim as describes the generative trajectory o f discourse com prised o f a ‘deep level’ o f virtual m eanings present in disjoined or actualised elem ents on a m anifest ‘sem io-narrative level’ before the realisation o f signification on the level o f narrative d isco u rsed 1973c: 27—29) T h u s he prop oses an interm ediary level between the possibilities or ‘virtualities’ o f im m anence and the concrete realisations o f ap p reh en d ed m eaning — a level o f elem ental but not global com prehension. In these term s he reconceives the dichotom y between im m anence and m anifestation as that between virtuality on the one hand and the double articulation o f m anifest signification, actualisation and realisation, on the o th e r .(SL: 9) Actualisation is the ‘su rface’ sem io-narrative level o f the actants and functions, m ediating between ‘d e e p ’ level o f im m anent sem antics and syntactics and ap p reh en d ed discursive m eanings in the sam e way that the semantic level m ediates between the ‘virtualities’ o f the sem iological level (1976b: 446 n 2) and the ‘realised’ m eaning-effects o f particular sem em es. It corresponds, as the Analytical Dictionary says, ‘to the passage from system to process.’ (SL: 9) G reim as conceives o f this ‘p assag e’ as a trajectory, and in the Analytical Dictionary he ‘visualises the distribution o f the diverse com ponents and sub-com ponents’ o f the generative trajectory o f discourse in the follow ing diagram .

86

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II Figure 3.1 GENERATIVE TRAJECTORY

Semiotic and narrative structures

Discoursive structures

syntactic component

semantic component

deep level

FUNDAMENTAL SYNTAX

FUNDAMENTAL SEMANTICS

surface levels

SURFACE NARRATIVE SYNTAX

NARRATIVE SEMANTICS

DISCOURSIVE SYNTAX Discoursivisation 1 actorialisation temporalisation spatialisation

DISCOURSIVE SEMANTICS Thematisation Figurativisation

(SL: 134)

Actants G reim as’s semic analysis, like the traditional sem antics o f Lyons or the philosophical sem antics o f Q uine or the generative sem antics o f Katz and Fodor, focuses on the im m anent signification o f the elem ents o f lan gu age — o f lexem es — boun ded, by and large, by the sentence. T h e conception o f isotopy extends that boun dary beyond the sentence, but the analysis o f isotopies, focusing on the ‘e x p lo sion’ o f im m anence into m anifestation in puns or the d efin itions and denom inations o f dictionaries and puzzles, still focuses on the im m anent level o f language. T o organise, in term s o f a structural analysis — in term s o f a double articu lation — the invested contents manifested in discourse, in Structural Semantics G reim as posited larger ‘units’ o f signification, com binations not o f im m anent sem es, but rather com binations o f the classem es (SS: 138) existing on higher level, which are ‘trans-sentential’, extending beyond the limits o f the sentence. If, as the Analytical Dictiomny asserts, there is an ‘isom orphic’, ‘form al identity’ between the double articulations o f phem es/sem es, phonem es/sem em es, and 87

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II syllables/sem antic utterances (SL: 163), then there should also be signifying units that recur across sentences in the way that syntactic units do. Syntactic units are ‘linguistic form s o f sentential dim ension s’ (G reim as 1973a: 59), the organisation o f the phonologically and m orphologically invested expression. A nother gro u p o f units, actants, can be conceived o f as trans-sentential ‘narrative fo rm s’, the organisation o f the semiologically and semantically invested content. ‘An actant,’ the Analytical Dictionary notes, ‘can be thought o f as that which accom plishes or u n d ergoes an act’ (SL: 5); ‘the actorial form o f the m anifestation o f actants,’ G reim as adds, is ‘a property o f all discursive m anifestations in dependent o f whatever natural lan gu age is u sed .’ (1973c: 25) In Structural Semantics G reim as develops an actantial approach to discourse based upon the ethnological work o f V ladim ir P ro p p ’s Morphology of the Folktale (English translation, 1958) and C laude Lévi-Strauss’s critique, ‘Structure and Form : R eflections on a Work by V ladim ir P ro p p ’ (1960; revised English translation, 1984), and later he noted that ‘actantial structure seem s m ore and m ore to be able to account for the organisation o f the hum an im agination, a projection o f both collective and individual universes.’ (1973a: 50) In Structural Semantics, follow ing Lévi-Strauss’s suggestion, G reim as uses the syntactic relationships between actantial units to structure the functions o f P rop p ’s analysis o f the Russian fairytale (or ‘w ondertale’ as recent translations m ore accurately render it (see Propp 1984a)) to prod uce, as he claims, a general theory o f narrative. ‘W hatever the interpretation given to syntactic structu res,’ G reim as wrote later, (a) on the social plane, the relation o f man to the work o f prod ucin g objects o f value and putting them into circulation in a fram ew ork o f a structure o f exchange, or (b) on the individual plane, the relation o f man to the object o f his desire and its inscription within the structures o f interhum an com m unication, [the re-definition o f P rop p ’s narrative functions as relationships between actants] seem s sufficiently general to furnish the basis o f an initial articulation o f the im agination. W hether [these relationships] are linguistic verbalisations o f preexisting ‘real’ structures or projections o f the hum an mind organising the sensible world is not im portant: they are 88

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II form al positions which allow the m anifestation and articulation o f m eaning. (1973a: 51)

N arrativ e units Above all actants are ‘segm en tations,’ that is ‘provisional syntagm atic units’ that com bine in discourse (SL: 270). T h e idea o f ‘unit’ is determ ined by the classem e ‘discreten ess’ (SL: 356): ‘the m anifested universe, in its entirety,’ G reim as writes, ‘constitutes a class defin able by the category o f “ totality” .’ (SS: 137) ‘T h is category,’ he goes on, which we prop ose to conceive, follow ing B r0n dal, as being articulated into discreteness vs. integrality divides the m anifested universe by realizing, at the m om ent o f the m anifestation, one o f its sem ic term s into two subclasses, constituted, in the first case, o f discrete units, and in the second case o f integrated units. Placing ourselves at the level o f the m anifestation o f occurrences, we see that every sem em e, overdeterm in ed by the presence in its core by the classem e ‘discreten ess,’ is presented as a unitary object and produces, as its effect o f meaning, the idea o f ‘substance’ — . . . ‘thin g,’ ‘perso n ,’ ‘im age,’ ‘sym bol,’ and so forth. On the other hand, we see that every sem em e having the classem es ‘integrality’ presents itself as an integrated ensem ble o f semic d eterm inations. (SS: 138) H ere G reim as is m aking the ‘substantification’ o f relationships that I discussed at the end o f C h apter 1 — what he calls its seem ing ‘m agic’ (1970a: 8) — the object o f linguistic analysis. T h e phenom enon o f substantification is not a ‘m ystery’, but som ething to be u n d erstood in term s o f linguistic analysis: it is the fact, with far-ran gin g philosophical and m ethodological im plications, that language, apparently com posed o f ‘radically relational’ elem ents, creates the m eaning-effect, on all levels — throughout descriptive, m etalinguistic, and epistem ological langu ages — o f discrete entities. Benveniste explores an ‘epistem ological’ implication o f this m eaning-effect in exam in ing the linguistic bases for A ristotle’s 89

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II categories o f thought and the transform ation in ancient G reek o f the verb to be into a substantive. T h is results, Benveniste argu es, in the treatm ent o f being ‘as a thing’: thus ‘it is in a linguistic situation . . . that the whole G reek m etaphysic o f “bein g” was able to com e into existence and d evelop.’ (1971: 61 ) In a less linguistic appro ach to the ph enom en on o f substantifying, Nietzsche asserts the im portance, to hum an life, o f attributing substantiality to phenom ena: ‘the extrem e case would be the man without any pow er to fo rget who is condem ned to see “becom in g” everywhere. Such a man no longer believes in him self or his own existence; he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession an d loses him self in the stream o f becom ing.’ ( 1957: 6) G reim as’s linguistic description o f substantification is an other m editation on the paradoxical relationship between objects and relationships (spatially rather th aï\ as in Nietzsche, tem porally conceived). It is an attem pt to accou.H for the self-evident fact o f experien ce — the phenomenon o f experience — that, in fact, we experience a m orphology o f ‘things’ and the p arad o x o f the sim ultaneous contradictory ‘fact’ that, upon reflection, these ‘things’ d isap p ea r in the ord er o f structured relationships. T h at is, it attem pts to account for the parad o x that m eaning can be both m issed and ap p reh en d ed ; that it can be ‘figu red ou t’. In this sem antics, G reim as attem pts to account fo r both ord ers o f ‘facts’, relational and substantial, the logic and m orphology o f discourse. In his linguistically m odelled semiotics, as I have su ggested, he situates these ord ers o f ‘facts’ on d ifferen t levels, the ‘sem io-narrative’ level o f discrete actants and the ‘realised’ level o f an ap p reh en d ed m eaningful whole. T h e m etalinguistic articulation o f the im plications o f the classem ic category ‘discreteness vs integrality’ place these general observations within a linguistic fram ew ork. It is on the basis o f this category that G reim as establishes the actants o f discourse. G reim as, as we have seen, defines ‘linguistic activity’ in term s o f m essages and their ‘algorith m s.’ Yet ‘a succession o f m essages,’ he argues, ‘can be considered as an algorithm only if the functions m anifested in it are all attributed to a single actant.’ (SS: 146) N evertheless, there is an am biguity here: if, in individual m essages, predicates seem to be attributed to actants, ‘at the level o f discursive m anifestation’ predicates ‘are creators o f actants’ which are ‘representative, we should say even com prehensive, o f the classes o f predicates.’ (SS: 146) 90

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II T h u s G reim as argu es for ‘the double status o f actants’ as relational and substantifying, ‘in tegral’ and ‘discrete’: ‘as invested contents, the actants are, in fact, instituted by p red icates within each given m icrouniverse; as syntactic subclasses, they are, however, rightfully anterior to the predicates, since discursive activity consists, we have seen, in the attribution o f properties o f these entities.’ (SS: 147) In a m om ent I will turn to G reim as’s classification o f actants based upon ‘syntactic subclasses,’ but first I m ust exam ine this reciprocal p resu p p o sition m ore closely. I f actants can be conceived as both the result and the basis o f predicate analyses (o f the two kinds o f predicates G reim as describes, ‘functional’ predicates that describe activities and ‘qualificative’ predicates that present qualities or states), then why does he choose as he does to conceive o f actants as ‘discrete’ (or ‘actualised’) elem entary units fo r analysis rather than ‘in tegrated’ ensem bles o f other elem ents? (As I shall argu e later in this chapter, P ropp follows the latter course, m aking actants secondary to functions — i.e. predicates — in Morphology of the Folktale.) I have already su ggested that by doing so G reim as describes the double articulation o f m anifested signification. But this ju st begs the question o f why it is necessary to follow linguistic p roced ures in semiotics. Rather, the answer, I believe, has to do with the relationship between m orph em es and structures we have already en coun tered; it has to do with the project o f structuration G reim as assum es. T h u s he writes, a double form ulation o f the sam e content — topological and deictic — is only the illustration o f a general m ode o f existence o f the m anifested signification. Inasm uch as the functional or qualificative analysis institutes the actants, it only transfers, somehow, the sem antic contents o f the class o f predicates to that o f the actants. If, consequently, actantial categories o f a very general character exist, and if they are m anifested, as we have seen, at the level o f functions as well as that o f the actants, it seem s necessary for us to give them an actantial fo rm u lation and not a functional one: the content o f a sem antic m icrouniverse previously described will thus be able to present itself, u nder the form , as a ‘d ram a’ (spectacle) and no longer as a series o f events. (SS: 149—50) 91

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II T h e necessity G reim as describes is the necessity o f the ‘d ram a’ o f structuration. ‘D iscourse,’ he writes, ‘is not therefore an articulation o f successive structures, but the redun dan ce o f a sim ple hierarchical structure . . . the auditor does not perceive signification as a parad e in time, but as the iteration o f a certain num ber o f permanences.'’ (1966c: 104) G reim as is attem pting, as Paul Ricoeur has noted, ‘to escape from tem poral constraints’ in his account o f signification (1981: 283). ‘Paradigm atic in terpretation ’ o f narrative, G reim as writes, is ‘the very condition o f grasp in g the signification o f the narrative as a whole.’ (SS: 236) Actantial analysis assum es as given the m eanings o f discourse. T h u s G reim as’s term, spectacle, o ffers a network o f relationships sim ultaneously ap p reh en d ed which, as we have seen, characterises the ‘appreh en sion ’ or ‘seizing’ o f signification, o f the m eaningful whole. L an gu age, like a series (or ‘p arad e ’) o f m essages, is diachronic, but m eaning, according to G reim as, is the synchronic appreh en sion o f relationships. ‘We have always said ,’ G reim as writes, ‘that we were struck with T esn iere’s observation . . . com parin g the elem entary utterance to a d ram a (spectacle) . . . [which] is perm an ent: the content o f the actions is forever changing, the actors vary, but the dram atic utterance (Vénoncé-spectacle) stays always the sam e, for its perm anence is gu aran teed by the unique distribution o f its roles.’ (SS: 198) Such roles are relatumally defined, but conceived positively, i.e., discretely actualised, they allow for the ‘su perim position ’ o f structural con figurations upon the linearity o f discourse. T h at is, G reim as distinguishes between actors and roles in term s o f the distinction between discreteness and integrality. ‘T h e m inimal sem antic content o f the role,’ he writes, ‘is consequently identical to that o f the actor with the exception o f the seme of individuation which it does not include: the role is an anim ated figurative entity, but anonym ous and social; the actor, however, is an integrated individual assum in g one or several roles.’ (1967a: 256) T h u s the analysis o f roles, like the ‘virtuality’ o f linguistic value, are diacritically and ‘negatively’ defin ed (1973c: 23), while that o f actors and actants, like the sem antic ‘level’ o f vocabulary Lévi-Strauss finds m issing in P ro p p ’s analysis (1984: 186—87), are ‘positively’ defin ed. T hey are a species o f substantification which transform s the ‘algeb ra’ o f functional analysis into the configurations o f structuration. ‘D iscourse,’ 92

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II G reim as writes, ‘the linear character o f which would let us, at first sight, anticipate an algebraic form ulation, instead calls up, once it has been described, a geom etrical and pluridim ensional visualization.’ (SS: 159) P ro p p ’s analysis o f predicates — the isolation o f ‘functions’ or ‘roles’ — defines the ‘sphere o f activity (SS: 197) o f actants by m eans o f a distributional analysis o f m anifested discourse which achieves the kind o f ‘algeb raic’ form ulation that both Bloom field and H jelm slev seek. But P ropp does so, as does Bloom field, by focusing so closely on the m anifested discourse that it sees ‘becom in g’ everyw here: his aim, as he says, is to ‘reveal the laws that govern the developm ent o f the plot.’ (1984b: 75) Propp, that is, fails to develop a semiotics o f plot, a ‘syntactic com ponent’ o f the sem io-narrative level o f discourse situated between the im m anence o f gram m ar and the m anifestation o f m eaning. Actantial analysis, however, projects or ‘su p erim p o ses’ a structure, conceived in spatial term s — what Lévi-Strauss calls ‘an atem poral m atrix structu re’ (1984: 184; see Schleifer 1983: xxxviii; SS: 219) — upon discursive m anifestation. It does so, however, ju st as P rague phonology does, by conceiving o f structure as semantic, based upon ‘phenom enally’ felt m eanings and m eaningful differen ces. While distributional analysis is an im portant proced u re in the description o f actants and in linguistic description altogether, ‘the final decision,’ G reim as writes, ‘when, for exam ple, it is a question o f deciding whether there are one or two phonem es, is generally left to other criteria outside the proced ure being followed such as the simplicity or the efficacy o f the description.’ (1967a: 255) Such criteria, like those o f Prague linguistics, are sim ultaneously sem antic and structural: in term s o f actants they are semionarrative structures.

N arrative gram m ar: the classes o f actants H ere we have arrived at what seem s to me to be a basic assum ption o f G reim as’s work which he describes as the ‘basic presu ppo sitio n ’ con ferrin g ‘logical priority on sem antics over syntax.’ (1971b: 800) Ju st as the P rague school developed phonology by assum in g the logical priority o f sem antics over phonetics, so G reim as posits the priority o f sem antics over syntax and, m ore generally (in this, as I am argu in g, he d iffers 93

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II with Hjelmslev), over the logic o f gram m ar. In both cases this ‘priority’ is the acknow ledgm ent o f a ‘p rio r’ — an a priori — sem antic com ponent within linguistic phonetics and semiotic syntactics. With such an assum ption he attem pts ‘to advance a linguistics of discourse (and not only o f sentences).’ (1971b: 794) Barthes calls such a linguistics ‘sem iology’, but G reim as calls it ‘narrative gram m ar’ in the broadest sense o f the word. ‘T h e linguist,’ he writes, will not fail to take note that narrative structures present characteristics which are rem arkably recurrent, that these recurrences allow for the recordin g o f distinguishable regularities, and that they thus lead to the construction o f a narrative grammar. In this case it is evident that he will utilize the concept o f gram m ar in its most general and non-m etaphorical sense, u n d erstan din g such a gram m ar to consist in a limited num ber o f principles o f structural organization o f narrative units, com plete with rules for the com bination and functioning o f these units, leading to the production o f narrative objects. (1971b: 794) Above all, G reim as aim s to develop a nonfigurative gram m ar which ‘can account for the production and u n d erstan din g o f a great num ber o f texts,’ fo r ‘the m etaphoric use o f this term [gram m ar] . . . scarcely conceals the renunciation o f the semiotic project.’ (M: 9) T o this end he develops the p ro g ressively m ore abstract units o f discourse we have exam ined inhabiting differen t levels o f analysis: actors, actants, roles. Actors are discursive m anifestations — what G reim as calls ‘occurrential ex p ression s’ (SS: 200) — o f the m ore general ‘regularities’ o f discourse. T h e actor, G reim as writes, is ‘a lexical unit o f discou rse’ whose m inimal sem antic content is defin ed ‘by the presence o f the sem es: a) figurative entity (anthropom orphic, zoom orphic, or otherwise), b) animated, and c) susceptible to individuation (realised in particular n arratives, especially literary narratives, by the attribution o f a p ro p er n am e)’ and which ‘is capable o f assum in g one or several roles.’ (1967a: 255-56) T h e regularities, as we have seen, can be conceived functionally, as recurrent roles or P ro p p ’s ‘sph eres o f action’ which are defin ed by ‘procedures o f distributional analysis.’ (C*reimas 1971b: 795) Such an analysis defines the actants o f discourse, ‘classifications o f actors’: ‘an 94

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II articulation o f actors constitutes a particular tale; a structure o f actants constitutes a genre' (SS: 200; see Schleifer & Velie 1987) G reim as, however, does not satisfy him self with a taxonom y o f actants, but attem pts to define the classes o f actants in structural, linguistic term s. As Je a n C alloud notes, ‘far from existing prim arily for them selves, as real beings which are secondarily in relationship with each other, the actors o f narrative are above all in relationship with each other.; (1976: 20) T h u s G reim as describes the ‘principle semiotic actants’ o f discourse (1983: 14) in two distinct categories which are ‘the ex trap o lation o f the syntactic structu re’ (SS: 213): sen der vs receiver subject vs object. G reim as ad d s a third category, not strictly syntactic but rather m odifying the ‘syntactic’ actants, m odelled on the modal nature o f discourse, which he calls the ‘circum stants’: helper vs opponent. T h ese six actants com prise generally conceived classes o f actants. T h e inclusion o f the circum stants in large part is governed by the derivation o f the actants in Structural Semantics by ‘regro u p in g’ the seven ‘dram atics p erso n ae’ Propp describes in Morphology o f the Folktale and the six ‘functions’ Étienne Souriau describes in Les Deux cent milles situations dramatiques into the syntactic categories o f his actants. While G reim as argu es fo r his analyses o f both inventories — ‘the interest in S o u riau ’s thought,’ G reim as notes, ‘lies in the fact that he has shown that the actantial interpretation can be applied to a kind o f n arrative, theatrical works, quite differen t from the folktale and that his results are com parable to P ro p p ’s’ (55: 201) — that o f P rop p ’s inventory is most representative. It is representative both o f G reim as’s own studies and o f his conception o f the hum an sciences. As recently as the Introduction to Du Sens II G reim as describes P ro p p ’s work on the Russian w ondertale as a pioneering m odel which form ed the basis for ‘the construction o f a “gram m ar” ’ for narrative (1983: 8), and, as we shall see, G reim as’s own elaborate actantial structuration o f the ‘functions’ o f Morphology o f the Folktale in the penultim ate chapter o f Structural Semantics itself is a m odel o f actantial 95

Structural Semantics arui D a Sens II analysis, in which G reim as developed the semiotic square. As he notes in Maupassant, ‘with certain m odifications, the Proppian schem a can be considered to be a hypotactic, but universal m odel o f the organisation o f narrative and figurative d iscou rse.’ (M: 11) In Structural Semantics G reim as categorises the dram atis personae o f Morphology of the Folktale in term s o f his three actantial categories. P ropp derives the seven personae from the spheres o f action o f the characters in Russian w ondertales (P ropp 1968: 79-83). T h at is, he isolates the ‘functions’ o f narrative through a process o f distributional analysis and com m utation (see Liberm an 1984: xxix) attributing these functions to particular actors. T h en he notes that ‘many functions logically join together into certain spheres.’ (1968: 79) T h ese spheres, in turn, correspon d to particular dram atis personae, now not conceived as ‘actors’ in the w ondertales, but as defin ed by their ‘roles’. O ne am biguity o f Morphology is that the term ‘dram atis p erso n ae’ initially describes ‘actors’ and subsequently describes ‘actants’. Besides clearing up this problem , G reim as’s analysis reconceives the person ae o f the w ondertale in logical categories that transcend the categorisation o f characters in a particular genre. P ro p p ’s personae defin ed by their spheres are: The The The The The The The

villain don or (provider) helper sought-for person (and her father) dispatcher hero false hero (SS: 201)

T h e o rd er o f this list is im portant: ‘if a don or is m issing from a tale,’ Propp notes, ‘the form s o f his appearan ce are tran sferred to the next character in line; namely, to the h elper.’ ( 1968: 84) G reim as ‘reg ro u p s’ this inventory to correspon d to actantial categories. G R E IM A S Subject vs Object Sen d er vs Receiver H elper vs O ppon en t

PROPP hero vs sought-for person father/dispatcher vs hero helper/provider vs villain/ false hero 96

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II T his regro u p in g is based upon the assum ption, as Lévi-Strauss notes in ‘Structure and F orm ’, that in his analysis Propp stops ‘too soon, seeking the form too close to the level o f em pirical observation.’ (1984: 183) R ather than conceiving each dram atis persona ‘in the form o f an op aq u e elem ent’ thus treating the narrative as ‘a closed system ’ (1984: 181), LéviStrauss argu es that Propp should ‘step by step . . . defin e a “ universe o f the tale,” analyzable in pairs o f oppositions interlocked xvithin each character who — far from constituting a single entity — form s a bundle o f distinctive featu res like the phonem e in Rom an Ja k o b so n ’s theory.’ (1984: 182; italics add ed) T h at is, Lévi-Strauss is argu in g fo r the logical structuring o f the dram atis personae rather than the sequential structuring P ropp offers. G reim as achieves such structuring in his actantial categorisation o f P rop p ’s personae. T h u s he reduces their num ber and, m ore im portant, re-segm ents the ‘sph eres o f action’ on the basis o f d ifferen t principles. As C h apter 2 su ggested, segmentation — the m an ner in which the ‘units’ o f linguistics are defin ed — is one o f the great problem s o f linguistic analysis; it is a problem which defin es the differen ces between functionalism , em piricism , and logical gram m ar. In Structural Semantics G reim as regro u p s P ro p p ’s person ae on the basis o f the logic o f syntax. T h u s he conceives o f two o f P ro p p ’s ‘sph eres’ as ‘syncretic manifestations' o f two actants in which one actor p erform s two actantial roles: in one, the ‘h ero’ syncretises ‘subject’ and ‘receiver’; in the second, one category (or ‘sph ere’), ‘the sought-for person (and her fath er)’, syncretises ‘object’ and ‘sen d er’. He also reduces P ro p p ’s personae by perceiving redun dan cies so that one actant can be conceived o f as subsum ing two actors: ‘villain’ and ‘false h ero’ constitute the actantial role o f the ‘op p on en t’; ‘helper’ and ‘prov id er’ constitute ‘h elper’; ‘fath er’ and ‘dispatch er’ constitute ‘sen d er’. T h ese regro u p in gs are based upon G reim as’s perception o f the lack o f a rigorou s conception o f ‘level’ in the Morphology and leads to a double criticism o f Propp (which follows LéviStrau ss’s critique in ‘Structure and F orm ’). T h e ‘insufficiency’ o f P rop p ’s analysis, he writes, lies in the character, at the sam e time excessively and insufficiently form al, that was given to [his] definitions: to define a genre only by the num ber o f actants, while 97

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II setting aside all the contents, is to place the definition at too high a form al level; to present the actants u n d er the form o f a sim ple inventory, without questioning the possible relationships between them , is to renounce analysis too early, by leaving the second part o f the d efin ition, its specific features, at an insufficient level o f form alization. (SS: 202) Unlike P rop p ’s definition o f w ondertales as ‘tales subordin ated to a seven-personage schem e’ (1968: 100), G reim as’s syncretisation o f P ro p p ’s personae takes the ‘content’ o f the tales into account. A nd unlike his separation o f two functions o f the iron peasant — ‘rew arding Ivan with strength and a m agic tablecloth’ and aiding him ‘in killing the d rag o n ’ — as activities o f two differen t personae, ‘a donor and a h elper’ (1968: 80), G reim as’s reduction o f these two person ae to one actant takes ‘the possible relationships betw een’ these ‘sph eres o f action’ into account. In the first case, G reim as sees P ro p p ’s analysis as ‘naive’, while in the second, he sees it as effected ‘without taking into account an indispensable hom ologation.’ (SS: 202, 203) In the first case G reim as transform s P ro p p ’s ‘sem antic’ personae, defin ed in the Morphology by the commutation o f the functions (i.e. actions) o f narrative, into relational (i.e. linguistic) entities in logical and syntactic relationships with one another (the semio-narrative relationships described in the next section). In the second case, he transform s P ro p p ’s functions, em pirically defin ed in the Morphology by distributional analysis, into sem antically invested structures o f functions (described in the last section o f this chapter). For G reim as, then, actants define a categorisation o f the actors o f narrative that, m ore fully than P rop p ’s personae (or, for that m atter, than So u riau ’s ‘functions’) com bine logic and em piricism in a functional analysis: his later term for the actants, ‘sem io-narrative structu res’, articulates this com bination. T h u s the classes o f actants help form the syntactic component o f discourse and invests the sem io-narrative level semantically. For the sentence John has a pot fu ll of gold coins' G reim as notes that the status o f the object-actant can be interpreted on three d ifferen t levels: syntactic level : actant : object semantic level : value : the seme riches 98

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II Mode o f manifestation : actor : the figurative object pot full of coins (1973c: 24) Later G reim as cam e to see that these syntactic and sem antic ‘levels’ better accounted for the ph enom enon o f m eaning if they were conceived as components o f d ifferen t levels o f the generative trajectory rather than as hierarchically distinct (see Figure 3.1). T h u s he describes the three levels o f the trajectory — a ‘d e e p ’ level o f fun dam en tal syntax and sem antics, a ‘su rface’ level o f narrative syntax and sem antics, and, finally, discursive structures — in term s we have already encountered, ‘term s defin ing differen t m odes o f semiotic existence: /virtualityl - ! actualisation! - !realisation!.’ O n the one h an d ,’ he says, in distinguishing between the differen t d eep levels o f semiotic structures in general, we can say that the deep structures are virtual, the sem io-narrative structures actualised, and the discursive structures realising. On the other hand, in design ating the d ifferen t phases o f the m odalisation o f the acting subject (sujet de faire) (o f acquiring m odal com petence), we can divide the m odalities into virtualities (wishing and n eedin g to do (vouloir- et devoir fa ire )), actualisations (being able and knowing how to do (pouvoir- et savoir-faire)), and realisations (m aking-to-be o f doing (faire-être)). (1979b: 93—94) G reim as describes here the d ifferen ce between the im m anence o f the ‘deep levels’ and the manifestation o f m odalisation. (Note the present participial form o f ‘realising’, which cannot be accom plished immanently.) M odalisation takes place on the ‘sem io-narrative level’, op posed both to the ‘discursive level’ on which en gagem en t and disengagem ent takes place (1979b: 98) and to deep levels. Since only ‘substantified’ syntactic agents can be m odalised, m odalisation presu p p o ses actants and describes their nonfigurative articulation. But m ore im portant, as we shall see, m odal categories create the possibility o f a ‘typology o f subjects and objects’ (1979b: 96), that is, the semantic classification o f actants.

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Actants and the semio-narrative level The modalisation an d structuration o f actants T h e m odalisation o f actants — which is the sem antic investm ent o f actantial classes — is intimately related to their definition and their structuration. T h is will becom e clear if we ‘structu re’ G reim as’s syntactical actantial categories by inscribing them within a semiotic square: Figure 3.2 sender

receiver

object

subject

T h ere are several im portant im plications o f this inscription. Linguistic activity First o f all, Figure 3.2 can be read ‘syntagm atically’ as the ‘projection’ o f the second level (object ~ subject) from and upon the first (sender ~ receiver). T h is repeats the narration o f ‘linguistic activity’ as G reim as describes it. Linguistic activity, G reim as writes, is a hypotactic ‘series o f m essages’ between a sen der and receiver upon which ‘a systematic structure . . . is su p erim p o sed ’ establishing ‘the m essage as an objectivizing projection, the sim ulator o f a world from which the sen der and the receiver o f a com m unication are exclu d ed .’ (SS: 134) Such exclusion inscribes hypotaxis within structure. B ut it does so only if the ‘activity’ o f lan gu age is conceived o f as relational ‘states.’ T h at is, the objectivising projection is the m odalisation o f the activity o f language: ‘on the condition that the m odalising subject is sufficiently determ in ed,’ G reim as notes, ‘we can consider that the act — and particularly the act of language — is the place o f the appearan ce o f m odalities.’ (1976a: 67) T h is conception replaces P ro p p ’s contention that the defin ing characteristic o f the Russian w ondertale is the identical sequence o f functions in every tale (1968: 22) with the suggestion that its

100

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II defin ing characteristic is the logical relationship am on g its actants (see Schleifer & Velie 1987). As Propp him self says in relation to Lévi-Strauss, ‘instead o f a natural ord er, he proposes a logical system ’ .(1984b: 75) T h e ‘natural o rd e r’ o f the wondertale — its sequential ord er — is a hypotaxis, while its actantial o rd er is a systematic semantic structure. Modalisation T h e expression ‘systematic sem antic structu re’ indicates the entanglem ent o f the m odalisation and structuration o f actants because m odalisation, above all, is the sem antic investm ent o f actantial classes. In fact, if the articles collected in Du Sens I (1970) focus, m ore or less consistently, on the relational nature o f lan gu age — the com prehension o f which requires the enorm ous effort o f reorientation in o rd er to check, even m om entarily, the constant tendency toward the substantification o f discourse resisting this relational conception o f langu age — then the articles o f Du Se?is II (1983), with greater consistency, explore the substantification o f actants in term s o f their m odalisation. T his accounts for the highly technical nature o f the essays o f this volum e. In ‘Pour une théorie des m odalités’ G reim as suggests that a provisional definition o f m odalisation is ‘a m odification o f the predicate by the subject.’ (1976a: 67; see S L : 193) Modality distinguishes between the ‘content’ or dictum o f language and the attitude o f the speaking subject to that content. Such utterances as ‘Peter will com e,’ ‘Peter may com e,’ ‘Peter must com e’ seem to have the sam e dictum and d iffer only modally (D ucrot & T od o ro v 1979: 313). M odalisation, then, is a sem antic investm ent o f actantial classes in sofar as it invests an action with a m eaning from the point o f view o f an agent o f lan gu age: it m odifies a ‘d o in g’ by interpreting it. T h u s m odalisation presu p p o ses the discreteness o f actants and their endow m ent with ‘hum an n eeds’ (G reim as 1973c: 21 ; 1979b: 95). A lthough the ‘double status o f actants’ (SS: 147) envisions an actant as both an acting subject (sujet de faire) conceived o f as a bundle o f activities (that is, as instituted by predicates) and an existing subject (subjet d'état) conceived o f as an ‘entity’ to which predicates attribute properties (SS: 147), m odalisation requires that the actant be prim arily conceived as a form ‘o f a syntax o f an an th ropom orph ic n atu re’ (G reim as 1973c: 44), a preexistin g unit semantically invested with anth ropom orph ic qualities and inscribed within the level o f

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II sem io-narrative structures. In Structural Semantics G reim as says the actantial m odel ‘an th ropom orph izes som ehow the significations’ in discourse so that the narrative ‘is presented, because o f [this], as a succession o f hum an (or parah um an) behaviors.’ (SS: 243-44) When he later cam e to ask how the actantial m odel accom plishes this, he saw that the linguistic category o f modalisation o ffered the best fram ew ork fo r und erstan din g this phenom enon. T h u s, when he speaks o f the m odalisation o f the ‘acting subject’, he figures that subject as ‘wishing’ to be jo in ed with the object o f value not as an acting subject, but as an existing subject desiring that the conjunction would be m ade by the acting subject. In other words, the existing subject is first actualised — m odally endow ed with a /wishing-to-be-joined/ — in o rd er to be subsequently realised — jo in ed with the object o f value, a conjunction which gu aran tees its semiotic existence. (1981: 228) T h e actualisation o f the sem io-narrative structures m ust be u nderstood in term s o f the activity o f actants conceived o f as possessing an th ropom orph ic discreteness. In fact, the term ‘subject’, as the Analytical Dictionary suggests, is itself am biguous: ‘the term subject refers to a “bein g,” to an “active principle” capable not only o f having qualities, but also o f carrying out acts’; and it also refers to ‘a discursive subject which can occupy, within sentence-utterances, diverse actantial positions.’ (SL: 320) Synta ctic stru ct ure A second implication o f the inscription o f actantial categories within a semiotic square is su ggested by the inscription o f the actant ‘object’ in the privileged negative com plex position. T h is suggests that the object is a kind o f m ediator, a pivot or term o f neutralisation, that form s an im portant relationship between d ifferen t levels o f conception. In Structural Semantics this is precisely the im portance G reim as confers upon the object. T h ere, he sum s up the relationships am ong the actants dedu ced from P ro p p ’s analysis with this (m odified) chart (SS: 207; see 2 0 3 ,2 4 1 ,2 4 2 ):

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II Figure 3.3 sender

object

-receiver [etiological relationship: 'knowledge'] [teleological relationship: 'desire']

helper-

subject

-opponent [modal or aspectual relationship: 'power']

In this chart ‘object’ is double; it has what G reim as calls a double ‘sem antic investm ent.’ (SS: 203) It is the object o f ‘know ledge’, a kind o f ‘m essage, a type o f “con gealed” speech (parole), reified and transm ittable’ (SS: 241); and it is also the object o f ‘desire,’ the w ished-for good o f the subject-hero. As such, it is inscribed within the m odalities o f two ord ers o f relationships: an etiological ord er, not only o f exchan ge between a sen der and receiver, but conceivable in term s o f ‘cause and effect’; and a teleological ord er, an alogous to the semantic functionalism o f the P rague school (SS: 152). Such a doubling o f the object also suggests an und erstan din g o f the actants in a m ore elaborate syntactic scheme. I f the ‘object’ is an alogous to the syntactic direct object in relation to the ‘subject’, then the ‘receiver’ is a kind o f indirect object or com plem entary object. T h is su ggests the réinscription o f the actants in another semiotic square. Figure 3.4 subject ('subject'/'sender')

direct object ('object')

modal modifiers (circumstants) ('helper'/'opponent')

indirect (complementary) object ('receiver')

In this schem e, the sen der and receiver ‘o f a m essage’ are excluded from the world o f the discourse by being inscribed within its logical syntactic structure. Such a structure, as LéviStrau ss says in ‘Structure and F orm ,’ is ‘an atem poral m atrix 103

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II structure’ into which ‘the chronological succession will com e to be ab so rb ed .’ (1984: 184) T h e price o f such a structure, however, is the effective effacem en t o f the sen der o f the m essage; the effacem ent, that is, o f the historical context o f its sending. ‘Every artifact,’ Anatoly Liberm an writes, ‘be it a pot, a painting, a sym phony, or a tale, is produced by the hum an brain and hands, but as soon as it is alienated from its creator, it starts a career o f its own, subject to the laws o f its inner o rg an ization.’ (1984: xxxvi-xxxvii) H ere lan gu age is conceived only in term s o f reception, not o f em ission; that is, in term s o f its inner organisation. It is conceived, as D errida says, in term s o f ‘iterability’ (1977). ‘Structural linguistics,’ G reim as has noted, ‘in op posin g itself to historic linguistics, m arks its originality as a linguistics o f perception, not o f expression .’ (1962/63: 57) In term s o f L évi-Strauss’s critique o f Propp, in this square ‘sen d er’ as an actant is conceived not simply as an ‘o p aq u e’ elem ent, but ‘in relation to a supplem entary system o f m eaning found at another level’ (1984: 187): it is the syntactic subject o f two objects governed by a factitive verb (see Sender vs receiver below). Subject vs object F igures 3.3 and 3.4 su ggest the double relationship between subject and object in actantial analysis, a relationship that is both logical-syntactic and m odal-sem antic. G reim as distinguishes between ‘two kinds o f logics — subjective logic, describing and governing and m odalisation o f subjects, and objective logic, treating the m odes o f existence o f object-utterances (objets-énoncés).’ (1976a: 79) In actantial analysis the object o f desire o f an an th ropom orph ised subject is also conceived o f as the syntactic object in a linguistic fram e which posits the conjunction o f subject and object as the narrative realisation o f signification. (1973c) Figure 3.3 describes a m odal structure — what G reim as calls modal semiotics — while F igure 3.4 describes what he calls modal logic. (1976a: 97) T h at is, Figure 3.3, with its sem antic investment o f m odal term s (knowledge: ‘to know’; desire: ‘to wish’; pow er: ‘to be able’) describes sem antic relationships rather than the logical relationships between the ‘m odes o f existence’ found in the description o f syntactic relationships o f Figure 3.4. (See Jack so n 1985: 100-10 for the lo g ic ’ o f m odalisation.) In this way the actantial category subject vs object m ediates 104

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II (or ‘neutralises’ the difference) between m odal sem iotics and m odal logic. ‘J u s t as in the logic o f truth,’ G reim as writes, the relationship between the subject and the object (or better the predicate) is defin ed as ‘necessary’, in semiotics /having to be (devoir-être)! is u nderstood as bearin g the object o f value and specifying it as ‘in dispensable’ fo r the existing subject (sujet d'état). Similarly, in deontic logic ‘obligation’ can be u n d erstood as the relationship between two subjects (or two actantial occurrences), while semiotic ‘prescription ’ is /having to do (devoir-faire)/ ‘experien ced’ by the subject and m ade part o f his m odal com petence. At the sam e time the sender, source o f this ‘prescription ’, is, in its turn, characterised by a factitive /doing (faire)/. (1979b: 9 7-98) T h e differen ce between logic and semiotics is the differen ce between exam ining relations as such (much as H jelm slev does) and explo rin g the ‘hum anist’ fact o f p u rposefu ln ess and appreh en ded signification. (SL: 256) The actantial relationship between subject and object both articulates this distinction and neutralises it because the subject and object are in a relationship o f reciprocal presu pposition. (1973c: 32—39) Sender vs receiver T h e sam e ‘neutralisation’ occurs in the actantial category ‘sen der vs receiver’ because, as F igu re 3.4 suggests, sen der vs receiver can be conceived o f logically as a special case o f subject vs object. In gram m atical term s, the ‘sen d er’ is the subject or ‘enunciator’ o f factitive verbs (see SL: 294 for the equation ‘sen der = enunciator’; in Maupassant G reim as calls the ‘en u n ciator’ and ‘enunciatee’ ‘transnarrative actants’ (M: 80)). Factitive verbs take com plem entary objects which are form ally an alogous to a direct object and an indirect object (e.g. ‘Give him the book’; cf. ‘Give the book to him ’). A sentence such as ‘Love makes him pure (cited in SS: 286) tran sform s lan gu age into ‘bi-isotopic’ linguistic activity in which one m essage (‘Love acts') is su perim posed upon another (‘X becomes pure'). T h is su p erim position in turn su ggests two m odels for u n d erstan din g discourse, a constitutional m odel and a modal or tran sform ational m odel (see Schleifer 1983: xliv—xlv). In Structural Semantics G reim as thus divides the Russian w ondertale into ‘two large classes’ 105

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II the narratives o f the accepted present order, the narratives o f the denied present order. In the first case, the point o f d ep artu re resides in the establishm ent o f a certain existing o rd er . . . [which] goes beyond m an because it is a social or natural ord er (the existence o f night and day, o f sum m er and winter, o f men and women, o f young and old, o f farm ers and hunters, and so forth) . . . In the second case, the existing ord er is considered as im perfect, . . . man, the individual, has to take upon him self the fate o f the world, which he tran sform s by a succession o f contests and tests. (SS: 246) In G reim as’s semiotic analysis o f Propp, however, the sen der is not simply necessity inscribed in the existing social or natural ord er or in an abstract obligation to act, but rather is an actively (prescribing) and substantified ‘source’ o f necessity and obligation now conceived as ‘indispensability’ and ‘p rescription’. M ore generally, G reim as says that ‘one m ajor pu rpose (raison d'etre) o f the actantial position sender precisely consists in tran sform in g an axiology, given as a system o f values, into a syntagm atic agent (opératoire).’ (M: 62) T h e sen der suggests the ‘figurative organ isation ’ (M: 61; see 63) o f an axiological universe. As such the sen der literally em bodies the modality to be required. In ‘Pour une théorie des m odalités’ G reim as identifies a provisional inventory o f fo u r ‘overdeterm ined m odalities’ — provisional because it is based only upon E u ropean languages — to wish (vouloir), to be required (devoir), to be able (pourvoir), to know (savoir). (1976a: 77) G reim as’s actantial analysis o f Propp, however, only articulates three m odalities (see Figure 3.3). He leaves out to be required because this modality is inscribed within the category o f ‘social contact’ governing the discourse altogether and present within the actant ‘sen d er’. ‘T h is sender, properly u n d ersto od ,’ G reim as notes, ‘is only the incarnation at the level o f an th ropom orph ic gram m ar o f the universe o f values’ (1982: 221) which are transcendental ‘cultural values’. (1973c: 44—46) T h u s the modality to be required is inscribed within the very prescriptions o f lan gu age, which create, in the m odal logic o f linguistics, the ‘necessities’ o f reference. Conceived in this fram e o f m odal logic, discourse is ‘utterance’ (énoncé) ‘alienated’ from its sender, and it creates the anxiety o f reference such as that fou nd in the literary criticism o f Paul de 106

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II M an; conceived in the fram e o f m odal semiotics, however, discourse is ‘enunciation’ tied to a prescribing actant ‘sen d er’, such as that which constitutes the ‘U n conscious’ o f Ja cq u e s Lacan (see C h apter 5). In this way, the category sen der vs receiver is not com pletely parallel to that o f subject vs object. Since the values o f the sen der are ‘transcendental’, which is to say, since they are sim ultaneously com m unicated by the sen der and yet ‘kept’ by the sen der (1973c: 45; see M: 129), the ‘receiver’ is not in a relationship o f reciprocal presu pposition with the ‘sen d er’. T h is lack o f reciprocity between categories can be seen as the source o f both de M an’s and the psychoanalytic patien t’s anxiety — not to m ention the anxiety inscribed within L acan ’s syntax. It is the anxiety o f the receiver who cannot neutralise the opposition between decidable vs undecidable, who cannot anchor discourse, precisely because the sen d er’s relation to the m essage cannot be disam biguated. T h at is, it is the anxiety o f the receiver who cannot locate him self in term s parallel to ‘linguistic form o f sentential dim ension s.’ (1973a: 59) G reim as has su ggested that the actorial realisation o f the receiver m ight be a ‘pertinent criterion for the division o f a genre into su b gen res’ (SS: 204; see 1973a: 57) — in the classification o f actants he characterises P ro p p ’s w ondertales by the fact that the hero ‘fu se s’ in a ‘syncretism ’ the actants subject and receiver — and a recent study has attem pted to corroíate the receiver’s relationship to the values o f the sen der with literary genres (Schleifer & Velie 1987). Helper vs opponent F igure 3.4 also transfers the m odal circum stants, ‘h elper’ and ‘o p pon en t’, to the privileged position on the square (see Schleifer 1983: xlix-liv). T his actantial category is privileged because it is the actantial articulation o f m odalisation as such, which is, as G reim as says, the essence o f semiotics. T h e ‘h elper’ and ‘op p on en t’ function as if they were actants represen ting in a schem atic fashion the benevolent and m alevolent forces in the world, incarnations o f the gu ardian angel and the devil o f m edieval Christian dram a . . . In a little play on words, we could say, thinking o f the participial form by which we d esignated them (for exam ple, ‘the o p p o sin g’ [opposant: i.e. the 107

Structural Semantics and Du Sens ÎI ‘o p pon en t’]), that they are the circum stantial ‘participan ts’, and not the true actants o f the dram a. Participles are in fact only adjectives which m odify substantives in the sam e way that adverbs m odify verbs. (SS: 206) T h u s the m odal circum stants sum up all the actants (Figure 3.3), all o f which schematically represen t incarnations (‘substantifications’) because they all incarnate relationships am ong logical categories; they are all syntactically positioned, modally an th ropom orph ised, and semantically theatricalised so that they can be ap p reh en d ed as a ‘d ram a’. In a sense, the ‘p eriph eral’ category helper vs oppon en t most clearly dem onstrates the linguistic analysis by narrating it as ‘linguistic activity’ o f the sem io-narrative structures o f syntax (Figure 3.2).

The structure o f modalised actants T h e logical categories the actants incarnate are inscribed in Figure 3.4 which, represen ting the elem ental structure o f signification, inscribes each o f the actantial categories within a semiotic square (see C h apter 1). T h e relationship between subject and object is contrary, both syntactically and actantially each im plies the other in a relationship o f reciprocal p resu p position. T h e relationship between sender and receiver is contradictory: like irreversible tem porality, it is the com bination o f contiguity and seem ing logical im plication, the arbitrary but irreversible designation o f a receiver by a sender. We can now see in linguistic term s the contrary relationship between subject and object is one o f affirmation which, including negation, the affirm ation o f disjunction, is ‘simply . . . in formative in n atu re’ (SL: 19), language conceived as dictum . T h e contradictory relationship between sen der and receiver, however, is one o f assertion, lan gu age conceived in m odalised term s. Assertion is an unm arked m odalisation in which the only m odification o f the predicate by the subject resides in the fact that it is said (enunciated): the assertion John is corning is form ally identical to the deonticprescription John has to cotne\ and both are m odifications o f the given fact, the ‘dictum ’, /John comes/. In the sam e way the sen der is often unm arked in 108

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II discourse, simply implicit in the prescriptions inscribed within a particular language. T h u s the semiotic square inscribes m odalisation in its very form : contradiction, unlike con trariety, is a modality o f discourse in sofar as it creates an agencyeffect, a sense o f an agent o f assertion or denial (dénégation) (see SS: 288—89). (Figure 3.2 inscribes the logico-syntactic contrariety o f sender/receiver, not its contradictory sem antic investm ent.) Finally, the relationship between the circum stants and the subject is complementary: the circum stants p resu p p o se and imply the subject on which they act (in the sam e way the com plem entary object implies the direct object). Yet the category o f circum stants, positioned in the negative com plex position, defines the relationship between helper and oppon en t negatively: neither helper nor op pon en t imply one another — narratives can occur lacking either or both — yet by p resu p p o sin g the subject on which they can act (in a way the receiver never presu p p o ses the sen der who chooses him) neither are they sim ply contingent. T h eir relationship, like the tem porality o f discourse G reim as describes, is ‘neither pu re contiguity nor logical im plication.’ (SS: 244) T h u s the category they constitute, as Ja m eso n says, is ‘a decisive leap, . . . a production or generation o f new m ean in g’ (1972: 166) in sofar as it requires reconceiving the other elem ents o f the squ are in modal term s. T h u s actantial analysis articulates and neutralises (in the fully linguistic sense o f the term) the differen ce between two kinds o f value and im port: the logic o f relationship and attribution and the semiotics o f p u rp ort m odally conveyed. T h u s G reim as distinguishes ‘objective values (produ ced in utterances using to have) from subjective values (produced in utterances using to be), a distinction which allows us to speak o f the extériorisation and the intériorisation o f values.’ (1973c: 25) Yet such a distinction still asserts relationship in linguistic analysis: if such disjunctions were total, G reim as suggests, they would ‘end in the abolition o f semiotic existence and revert . . . to original sem antic chaos.’ (1973c: 29) T h u s while the discourse o f the folktale, G reim as argu es, like that o f psychoanalysis, is interior — the term he uses in Structural Semantics is ‘mythical’ or ‘noological’ know ledge o f ‘the interior w orld’ (SS : 136) — their narration projects (‘exteriorises’) these hum an values into the world. Actantial analysis is a linguistic und erstan din g o f this 109

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II projection. It accounts for the effect o f depth — o f agency, o f interiority, o f pre-existing intention and values — lan gu age creates and with which it structures ou r world. Such effects are linguistically created by the m odalities o f lan gu age which are, alm ost literally, versions o f the nondistinctive featu re o f the rolled r o f the theatre B arthes speaks o f tran sform ed on the su rface narrative level into a signifying structure. In turn that structure takes its place in relation to a hierarchically su perior level, that o f the semiotic process o f discourse — o f narrativity — I will exam ine in the next chapter. In this way, then, the analysis o f actants — ‘substantified’ m odalities structuring m eaning — articulate a structure o f m anifestation within a fram ew ork o f semiotic analysis.

Functional analysis: Propp and Greimas I f actantial analysis correspon d s to the passage from system to process, then a second stage o f G reim as’s analysis o f the semionarrative level, functional analysis, correspon d s to the passage from process to system (see C alloud 1976: 14—32 where this o rd er is reversed). T his stage is the first articulation o f what G reim as calls ‘narrativity’, ‘the very organizin g principle o f all discou rse.’ (SL: 209) For this reason G reim as subm its actants to a double analysis in Structural Semantics correspo n d in g to ‘the double status o f actants.’ (SS: 146) T h e first is G reim as’s articulation o f the classes o f actants, deriving the actantial categories from their predicates ju st as Propp derived the dram atis personae from their ‘sph eres o f action.’ T h e second kind o f analysis aims not at delim iting actantial figu res but at articulating, non figuratively — that is, modally— the ‘d ram a’ o f activity in discourse. T h u s G reim as articulates ‘two m odels: the first, o f actantial character, offers investm ents o f content un d er the form o f qualifications (that is to say, finally, o f predicative contents); the second, o f functional character, on the contrary, invests contents in the form o f actants.’ (SS: 285) T h ese two m odels correspond to what I have called the two kinds o f value and im port actantial analysis both articulates and neutralises. T h e first m odel is ‘figu rative’ (S S : 284) and isom orphic to the sem iological level o f semic analysis: it ‘allows the alm ost im perceptible p assage o f “abstract” m anifestations to “ figurative”

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II m anifestations by tran sform in g abstract concepts into actants.’ (SS: 262) In his definition o f actantial classes, based in som e way on P ro p p ’s analysis, G reim as inverts this process, m oving from P ro p p ’s figurative personae to the abstract syntactic actantial categories (e.g. ‘hero’ becom es ‘subject’). He calls this model derived from the analysis o f qualifying predicates the constitutional model. (SS: 287) T h e second m odel, which he calls both the transformational model and the modal model, attem pts the grammaticisation o f discourse. T h is is isom orphic to the sem antic level o f semic analysis: rather than figu rin g the units o f discourse, it attem pts to structure them nonfiguratively (i.e., m odally). T h e essential trait o f functional analysis, G reim as argu es, is ‘the possibility which it o ffers to tran sfer onto the actants the dynam ism which is contained in the functions and to m anifest it in the form o f “pow er o f acting.” . . . T h e m odel that we have been able to establish follow ing the functional analysis is therefore a n onfigurative articulation o f the actants.’ (SS: 280) Such a m odel describes the m odalisation o f discourse ju st as the constitutional m odel describes its structuration, and in the actantial analysis o f particular corpuses together they realise the complex category o f the sem io-narrative structures (m odalisation + structuration). In the last section I attem pted, as G reim as does in Du Sens //, to bring these two m odels together in term s o f m odalised actants. Figure 3.2 is a ‘constitutional m odel’ o f actants while Figu re 3.4 is a ‘transform ation al m odel’. F igu re 3.3 quite literally brings the two m odels together by su perim posin g m odal categories based upon G reim as’s functional analysis (SS: 241—42) on his schem a o f the syntactical and logical relations am o n g the actants. (SS: 207) In Structural Semantics G reim as pu rsu es this double analysis — actantial and functional — in relation to V ladim ir Propp, and in this section I will explore G reim as’s concrete analysis o f Morphology o f the Folktale to exam ine his analysis o f the structure o f the functions (or actions) o f narrative.

The logic o f ‘Stru ctu ral Sem antics' In this double analysis we can see the great differen ce between G reim as and Propp, the reason why, as Ricoeur has noted, that ‘G reim as reverses P rop p ’s o rd er o f analysis, proceedin g directly to the inventory o f roles or actants and returning, at a

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II second stage o f analysis, to the inventory o f functions or o f basic segm ents o f action.’ (1981: 283) T h e differen ce between them is the differen ce between two conceptions o f the aim o f discursive analysis. For Propp discursive analysis seeks ‘the laws that govern the developm ent o f the plot’ (1984b: 75) while for G reim as it attem pts to account for the functioning o f a ‘series o f narrative states’ in the signification o f discourse. H ence P ropp notes, in his response to Lévi-Strauss, that the latter m istranslates the term plot as thème.(1984b: 76) H e also notes that Lévi-Strauss m istranslates donor as bienfaiteur (benefactor) (Propp 1984b: 77) — a ‘translation’ parallel to G reim as’s reducing P ro p p ’s donor to the actant ‘h elp er’: in both cases an activity, giving, is ‘translated’ into a state o f being. In fact, it is the aim o f ‘translating’ syntax into sem antics — plot into them e — that governs Lévi-Strauss’s project and governs G reim as’s largest claims fo r the classes o f actants based upon the m odalised categories o f syntax, the sem io-narrative structures o f actantial analyses. ‘Since “ n atu ral” speech ,’ he writes, can neither augm ent the num ber o f actants nor widen the syntactic com prehension o f signification beyond the sentence, it m ust be the sam e inside every m icrouniverse. O r rather the opposite: the sem antic m icrouniverse can be defin ed as a universe, that is to say, as a signifying whole (tout de signification), only to the extent that it can su rge up at any m om ent before us as a sim ple dram a, as an actantial structure. (SS: 199) T h u s, beginning in Structural Semantics, as I am argu in g, G reim as tran sform s the ‘naive’ sem antic investm ent o f P ro p p ’s personae into the sem io-narrative structures o f actants. Yet if the structuration o f m anifested lan gu age takes place on the su rface level o f sem io-narrative structures, then the functions o f discourse, as well as the actants, ought to be susceptible to structuration on that level. T h is is the source o f G reim as’s second ‘m odal’ m odel o f signification which invests structured actants with the dynam ism o f functions. T h at is, in Structural Semantics G reim as transform s P rop p ’s taxonom y o f sequential narrative functions based upon the em piricism o f distributional analysis into a structural hom ologation o f functions. A fter he articulates the syntactic extrapolation o f

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II actants described earlier in relation to Propp and Souriau, G reim as offers analyses ‘structu ratin g’ the functions o f Morphology of the Folktale, Réf lexions sur le psychodrame analytique (Reflections on an Analytic Psychodram a) by M oustafa Safouan , and L Imaginaire de Bernanos by T ah sin Yücel. He does so, as he says, to widen the scope o f his actantial analysis o f Propp by analysing individual as well as collective narratives. (SS: 247) I have already noted that G reim as thought that P rop p ’s analysis su ggested a ‘universal m odel o f the o rg an isation o f narrative and figurative d iscou rse’ (M: 11), and in part this is because folklore, situated between myth and literature, m ediates between individual and collective narratives in the sam e way the syntactic structures m ediate between the sem antic level (i.e., ‘sem io-’) and the level o f m anifestation (i.e., ‘narrative’). If, as Lévi-Strauss argu es, folktales are simply a ‘w eakened transposition o f the them e whose stron ger realization is the property o f m yth’ (1984: 176) — G reim as calls this the ‘loss o f m ean in g’ and ‘desem anticisation’ o f myth (1971c: 180, 181) — then the ‘w idening’ o f actantial analysis from collective narratives to individual narratives transform s structural anthropology into structural semantics. But m ore im portant, G reim as develops Structural Semantics this way in ord er to elaborate the double articulation o f his sem antics. T h e structuration o f the functions o f P ro p p ’s Morphology is the tour de force o f Structural Semantics: it follows Lévi-Strauss’s suggestion about the ‘logical’ structure behind P ropp ’s taxonom y and, paradoxically, creates a ‘deep structu re’ o f functions which later G reim as elaborated into the semiotic square. However, G reim as has never repeated such an elaborate functional analysis. In a sense he never had to: the analysis o f Propp suggested the semiotic square and substan tiated G reim as’s intuition that actantial rather than f unctional analysis was necessary for narrative analysis (SS: 150) precisely because, even with their structuration, P ro p p ’s functional term s rem ained ‘figurative’ — figures o f narrative action which m odal analysis allowed to be conceived, nonfiguratively, as ‘p arad igm s’ that could be ‘g ra sp e d ’ as narrative wholes. (SS: 236) In this way, then, the logic o f the last three chapters o f Structural Semantics dealing successively with the definition o f actants, a sem io-narrative analysis o f the functions o f Morphology, and finally a ‘sam p le’ analysis o f the work o f G eorges Bern an os based upon the ‘preanalysis’ of 'L'Imaginaire

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II de Bernanos — all three o f which, G reim as says, are in the ‘dom ain o f conjecture’ (SS : 196) — accom plishes the global aim o f G reim as’s sem antics. T h at aim is to situate the semiotic study o f discourse within linguistic science: ‘the theory o f discou rse,’ he writes, ‘therefore will have for its task the exploration o f discursive form s and the differen t m odes o f their articulation as a linguistic theory in a literal sen se.’ (1973a: 59)

The ‘level9o f the sem io-narrative structures: figu rativ e linguistics an d preanalysis T h e m ode o f both P ro p p ’s discursive analysis and, in a differen t way, Lévi-Strauss’s, is what G reim as calls ‘figurative’. It is figurative in the sense that the analyses o f both Propp and Lévi-Strauss are kinds o f bricolage: studies whose m aterial determ ine the ‘tools’ o f conception. ‘T h e elem ents which the “bricoleur” collects and u ses,’ Lévi-Strauss says, are ‘precon strain ed’ like the constitutive units o f myth, the possible com binations o f which are restricted by the fact that they are draw n from the lan gu age where they already possess a sense which sets a limit on their freedom o f m anoeuvre . . . . . . the en gin eer is always trying to m ake his way out o f and go beyond the constraints im posed by a particular state o f civilization while the ‘bricoleu r’ by inclination or necessity always rem ains within them. T his is another way o f saying that the en gin eer works by m eans o f concepts and the ‘bricoleur’ by m eans o f signs. (1966: 19-20) In these term s the self-conscious linguist such as G reim as is an ‘en gin eer’ while P ropp and, I shall argu e, Lévi-Strauss as well work within the figures o f the discourses they study. T h e lack o f generalisation which the abstract ‘concepts’ o f linguistics affo rd is clear in the case o f Propp, clear in the d efin ition o f his personae, in his suggestion that the w ondertale can be defined by that particular ‘seven-person schem e’ (1968: 100) — and not by actants whose num ber ‘m ust be the sam e inside every m icrouniverse’ (SS: 199) — and, perh aps most im portant, in the constant focus he m aintains on the plot o f the wondertale. Propp analyses a single level o f discourse without 114

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II integrating that level into a hierarchical structure. In the case o f Lévi-Strauss this is a bit m ore com plicated because Lévi-Strauss consciously aim s at describing the h ierarchical structural arran gem en t o f myth and attem pts to do so within the context o f linguistic analysis. N evertheless, in many instances Lévi-Strauss’s uses o f linguistic term s — unavailable for P ro p p ’s 1927 study — are simply m etaphorical (see Liberm an 1984; M ourin 1974; and even D urbin 1974). Liberm an notes the most striking instance in Lévi-Strauss’s use o f the linguistic term ‘level’ which can be fruitfully delineated against G reim as’s use and aban don m en t o f the term in his distinction between ‘sem antic’, ‘syntactic’, and ‘m an ifest’ levels. (1973c: 24) As I already noted, G reim as’s focus on the phenom enon o f signification forced him to see that the distinction between syntax and sem antics cannot be conceived in term s o f linguistic levels, but m ust be seen as semiotic components o f m eaning. ‘Level,’ as the Analytical Dictionary says, ‘is m ade up o f derived units o f the sam e d e g r e e . . . defin ed by the relations that they m aintain am ong them selves . . .an d with the elem ents o f a su perio r level.’ (SL: 171) Linguistic levels, then, are in a contradictory relationship with one another: as distinguished from ‘plan es’ (such as the plane o f the signifier vs the plane o f the signified: H jelm slev’s ‘ex p ression ’ vs ‘content’) whose elem ents are in contrary relationships o f reciprocal presupposition, ‘levels’ are hierarchical con figurations for each o f which specific analytical proced ures can be developed. Lévi-Strauss, however, as Liberm an argu es, does not work with levels in the technical sense o f this term. He distinguishes many codes, such as the acoustical code, the culinary code, and the cosm ological code, am on g others. A code in Lévi-Strauss’s system is a way o f organizin g the concepts that belong to related sem antic fields . . . His goal is to show that all codes are structured alike and reinforce the m essage, because each moves toward the m ediation o f the polar extrem es. T h e idea that all ‘levels’ (codes) o f the tale convey the sam e in fo rm ation has antecedents in the linguistic theory o f isom orphism . . . Lévi-Strauss has several symbols for isom orphism , and when he uses this word he m eans sym m etry, equivalence, hom ology. (Liberm an 1984: xxxviii) 1 15

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II It is possible to conceive o f Lévi-Strauss’s ‘codes’ in term s o f som ething an alogous to G reim as’s sem io-narrative structures, but in this case codes do not constitute a level for which one can im agine a subjacent level whose elem ents com bine to constitute the ‘level’ o f codes. (It is precisely for this reason that G reim as aban don ed the conception o f the ‘syntactic level.’) LéviS trau ss’s codes do not inhabit differen t levels as sem es and sem em es do; rather, reciprocally p resu p p o sin g one another, they seem vaguely an alogous to the planes in the sense that planes are isom orphic to one another. T h e concept o f isom orphism , as Liberm an goes on to note, was developed by Hjelm slev to argu e that the plane o f the content and the plane o f the expression each could be u n d erstood in term s o f the sam e global opposition, the opposition o f substance and form . T h e Analytical Dictionary defines isom orphism as ‘the form al identity between two or m ore structu res’ (SL: 163), but such a ‘form al identity’ — between ‘syllables’ and ‘sem antic utteran ces’, to repeat an exam ple from the Dictionary — is neither ‘equivalence’ nor ‘sym m etry’ since a syllable does not have the ‘dim ension s’ o f a sem antic utterance. (SL: 163) T h u s isom orphism as Lévi-Strauss uses it — Liberm an notes that ‘bricolage is only a trade nam e for isom orph ism ’ (1984: xxxix) — con fuses levels and planes. It confuses the similarity in structure o f his codes — the form al identity o f isom orphism — with the assum ption that the com binations o f codes constitutes a hierarchically distinct level o f signification. T h is confusion produces a ‘m etaph orical’ or ‘figurative’ linguistics that prevents Lévi-Strauss from achieving a consistent level o f abstraction, from achieving the simplicity and consistency o f a linguistic analysis, and from prod ucin g results that are ‘reprod ucible’ (Liberm an 1984: xli). For this reason in Lévi-Strauss’s analyses neither his term ‘m ediate’, u nderstood as an alogous to ‘n eutralisation’, nor the term ‘structu re’ implies G reim as’s sem io-narrative structures positioned within a hierarchy o f levels. (See ‘G reim as and LéviStrau ss’ in the next chapter.) R ather each o f these term s m ediates between elem ents on a particular level ju st as P ropp focuses on one level in his analysis. T h ese com m ents su ggest the special status o f the work o f Lévi-Strauss and Propp in G reim as’s linguistic project, and m ore generally they help to define the status o f the objects o f his study. G reim as’s semiotic analyses are m ost often m etacom 116

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II m entary: with a few exceptions (most notably the individual narrative studied in Maupassant (see also 1973b), but also collective narratives such as folklore (1970b), the lan gu age o f gestures (1968b), and a regional recipe (1979c)), he bases his analyses on the work o f others, what he calls in Structural Semantics ‘semantic prean alysis’. (SS: 258) For this reason throughout his work he repeatedly uses dictionary definitions in his sem antic analyses: ‘lexical descriptions,’ he writes, ‘can econom ically provide preexistin g m odels for subsequent discursive analyses.’ (1981: 225) ‘T h e analyses o f Dumézil are so rich and precise,’ he writes elsewhere, ‘that ou r task will not be to innovate, but only to present another form ulation and occasionally utilise a term inology which is a little d ifferen t.’ (1963a: 1 19; see 1979a) ‘Since we are prim arily interested in a m ethodological rather than a mythological in terpretation,’ he writes in ‘T h e Interpretation o f Myth’ (based upon the ‘d ata’ o f a myth described by Lévi-Strauss (1975)), ‘o u r work will essen tially consist o f regro u p in g and exploiting findings which are not ou r ow n.’ (1971a: 82) Since G reim as argu es that the basic ‘dim ension ’ o f ‘the problem o f m ean in g’ is ‘the tran scoding o f significations’ (1970a: 14), the aim o f his semiotics is served by such ‘reg ro u p in g s.’ With such ‘regro u p in g s,’ he creates what he calls the ‘semiotic description o f signification’, ‘the construction o f an adequate artificial lan gu ag e.’ (1970a: 14) T h at is, using the ‘d ata’ o f preanalysis, G reim as constructs the m ediating nonfigurative sem io-narrative level o f analysis. T his level, com prised o f scientific (i.e. nonfigurative) artificial language, is that o f the structuration o f m anifest linguistic phenom ena, a level o f ‘logical organization ’ in a hierarchy o f levels o f logical organisation on which phenom ena are arrested. H ere, we can see m ost clearly how G reim as’s semiotics is ‘structu ral’ in wavs that P ro p p ’s, and perh aps even Lévi-Strauss’s, is not. In term s o f Lévi-Strauss’s definition o f structure as ‘content itself, and the logical o rg an isation in which it is arrested is conceived as a property o f the real’ (1984: 167), G reim as conceives o f the deep and surface levels o f narrative structures as nonfigurative properties o f langu age (or better, o f semiotic phenom ena). Rather than its figurative or m etaphorical use — which G reim as calls the ‘hom age o f vice to virtue’ (M: 9) — his semiotic analysis, often proceedin g from the ‘m etaphorical’ linguistic preanalysis o f

1 17

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II others, aim s at the nonfigurative conceptions o f linguistic and semiotic science (see Schleifer 1983).

Propp an d linguistics Still, G reim as’s relationship to Propp and Lévi-Strauss, unlike his relation to many o f the other figu res whose ‘prean alyses’ form the object o f his study, is curiously am bivalent: for G reim as the Morphology and ‘Structure and F o rm ’ are both com m entaries subject to the m etacom m entary o f regro u p in gs and authorities upon which to base his own work. In actantial term s Propp (and behind him Lévi-Strauss) is a ‘sen d er’ in a double ‘factitive’ relationship to G reim as, prod u cin g ‘two m essages’ o f ‘described’ content and ‘organ ized ’ content. (SS: 287) As ‘described content’, the work o f P ropp and LéviStrau ss can be regro u p ed , reorgan ised, transcoded; but as ‘organized content’ their work the possibilities o f tran scodings, the possibility o f semiotic analysis. T h is am biguity can be seen in the ‘derivation’ o f actants from P ro p p ’s analysis: on the one hand G reim as seem s inductively to derive — or at least to substantiate the existence o f — his actantial categories from P ropp (which is one reason why I placed his regro u p in g o f P rop p ’s p erson ae in an early section o f this chapter). But on the other hand, his treatm ent o f P ro p p ’s person ae is a thorough ‘tran scod in g’: hence G reim as’s insistence that the num ber o f actants, d ifferen t from P ro p p ’s, ‘m u st’ rem ain constant. T h is am biguity is based upon the ‘m etaph orical’ linguistics o f P ropp and Lévi-Strauss. M ore than in the ‘derivation’ o f actants, this is clear in G reim as’s u nam biguous functional structuration o f the Morphology which attem pts to develop a ‘universal m odel o f the organisation o f narrative and figurative discou rse’ (M: 11 ) by transcoding P ro p p ’s functional analysis o f plot into an actantial analysis which accounts fo r the ‘often unconscious appreh en sion o f relationships between units o f content (unités du signifié) . . . distributed throughout the length o f a n arrative.’ (1963a: 118) Such an analysis is possible because o f what G reim as calls P ro p p ’s ‘role as a p recu rso r’ to structural semantics. (SS: 203) I f Lévi-Strauss self-consciously uses linguistics as bricolage in his work, simply as a tool which com es to hand, P ro p p ’s relationship to linguistics is m ore problem atic. T h is is apparen t 118

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II in the history o f the Morphology. P ro p p ’s work was inconspicuous after its publication in 1927 even in Russia, but after the appearan ce o f Morphology o f the Folktale in English in 1958, Lévi-Strauss alm ost im m ediately announced its role as ‘precu rso r’ to structuralism in ‘Structure and F orm ’ (1960). L évi-Strauss’s study occasioned repeated structuralist ‘revisions’ o f P ropp in France while the Morphology also becam e the source o f practical A m erican ethnological studies beginning with Alan D un des’s ‘From Etic to Em ic Units in the Structural Study o f Folklore’ in 1962 (D undes 1962; Liberm an 1984: x). What attracted Lévi-Strauss and others to the Morphology was the fact that it revolutionised the study o f folklore and, by im plication, o f discourse by reducing a large, but arbitrary sam ple o f Russian w ondertales — Propp notes that ‘we have found that 100 tales constitute m ore than enough m aterial’ ( 1968: 23) — to a single plot. T h e Morphology defines this ‘plot’ by isolating thirty-one elem ents or ‘basic com ponents’ o f the tale (1968: 96) always ap p e arin g in a fixed o rd er and by defin ing the seven d ifferen t characters o f this ‘plot’ derived, as we have seen, from seven ‘sph eres o f action’ in the tales. In other words, P ropp revolutionised the study o f discourse by developing, unconsciously rather than m etaphorically, m ethods o f analysis isom orphic (that is, form ally identical) to the m ore rigorous m ethods o f linguistics. G reim as’s actantial analysis o f P ro p p ’s functions underlines this by dem onstratin g that the Morphology develops a ‘narrative g ram m ar’ fo r the R ussian w ondertale o f regu lar and recurren t elem ents or what Propp calls its ‘m orphology (i.e. a description o f the tale according to its com ponent parts and the relationship o f these com ponents to each other and to the whole).’ (1968: 19) H ere ‘g ram m ar’ is not used in a m etaphorical sense, but alm ost literally. P ro p p ’s distinction, as Liberm an has argu ed , is that he developed m ethods to study discourse that parallel quite precisely distributional analysis, com m utation, neutralisation, and so forth in the em ergin g functional linguistics o f Prague phonology. ‘P ro p p ’s Morphology of the Folktale and T ru betzk oy’s Grundzüge der Phonologie,’ Liberm an writes, are works o f incom parable m agnitude . . . A lthough T ru betzkoy’s theoretical construction is shaky, the entire progress o f phonology (and to a certain extent, o f all 119

Structural Semantics and Du Setts II twentieth-century linguistics) consisted in rectifying his ‘m istakes’; without them there would have been very little to build on. T h e sam e holds for Propp . . . (1984: xxxi; see xix—xliv) T h e sam e holds true because in the Morphology Propp describes the ‘gram m ar’ o f the w ondertale in term s that would accurately describe the gram m ar o f a sentence: ‘It is possible to artificially create new plots o f an unlim ited num ber . . . [which] will reflect the basic schem e, while they them selves may not resem ble one an oth er.’ (1968: 111) T h u s like the ‘global mythic object’ which integrates ‘several lan gu ag es’ and includes ‘a secondary structural organ isation ’ (G reim as 1971c: 184), ‘everything draw n into a tale from outside is subject to its norm s and laws.’ (Propp 1968: 116 n 17) M oreover, as I have already noted, Propp derives the functions by m eans o f distributional analysis: he notes, as he explains in his response to Lévi-Strauss, that he ‘dedu ced the functions from detailed com parative analyses . . . through the com parison, ju xtaposition , and identification o f h u n dreds and thousands o f cases.’ ( 1984b: 74) Most im portant, the functions, like phonem es and their distinctive features, do not signify: ‘definition should in no case dep en d on the person age who carries out the function.’ (1968: 21) B ut because they do not signify, sim ilar ‘sign ifiers’ can only be distinguished through the functional analysis o f com m utation: thus he notes the necessity o f finding * the criterion which in all such cases would perm it us to differen tiate am ong elem ents without respect to similarity o f actions. In these instances it is always possible to be governed by the principle o f defin ing a function according to its consequences. If the receiving o f a magical agent follows the solution o f a task, then it is a case o f the donor testing the hero. If the receipt o f a bride and a m arriage follow, then we have an exam ple o f the difficult task . .. ( 1 9 6 8 : 67) In focusing on consequences, Propp develops the com m utation defin ing the person ae or actants o f the w ondertale. Finally, in noting that ‘the hero often gets along without any helpers. He is his own helper, as it w ere’ (1968: 82) Propp is

120

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II describing a form o f neutralisation — ju st the modal n eutralisation o f the circum stants that G reim as describes. D espite this rem arkable analysis, both Lévi-Strauss and G reim as feel the need to revise or ‘re g ro u p ’ P ro p p ’s analysis. Lévi-Strauss does it for essentially polem ical reasons in ‘Structure and F orm ’ — itself a form o f bricolage, using Propp to define the project o f structural an thropology — while, as I have su ggested, G reim as does so on the basis o f the lack o f a rigorous conception o f ‘level’ in the Morphology which leads to the confusion o f the ‘level o f form alisation ’ in P ro p p ’s analysis o f the person ae o f the w on d ertale.(SS: 202) M ore specifically, Propp lacks a conception o f sem io-narrative level on which to situate the analysis, a level that m ediates (and neutralises the differen ce) between logic and sem antics an d would prod uce what Lévi-Strauss calls the ‘cooperation o f the gram m arian and the philologist.’ (1984: 186) Such a level is defin ed, as Liberm an argu es, by a ‘concern with the level o f opposition . . . and the relational code’ and not with P ro p p ’s level o f ‘com po sitional invariants’ (1984: xxxvii). T h at is, Lévi-Strauss suggests and G reim as pu rsu es a ‘tran scod in g’ o f P ro p p ’s protolinguistic analysis o f plot in the Russian w ondertale into an analysis o f what E dm u n d Leach calls in the case o f Lévi-Strauss ‘a kind o f algebraic m atrix o f possible perm utation s and com binations located in the unconscious “hum an m in d’” (1970: 40) and into an analysis o f what I would call in the case o f G reim as the logico-m odal sem antics o f discourse — a sem antics which m ight, as he says, articulate ‘the categories of the human mind’ (SS: 121), but whose articulations are most fruitfully u n d erstood in term s o f accounting fo r the apprehension o f signification in linguistic term s, ‘its translation,’ as G reim as says, ‘into sem antic lan gu ag e.’ (SS: 256)

The transform ational model o f P ropp Homologation G reim as’s articulation o f Propp into actantial structures is a figurative version — defined in P ro p p ’s an th ropom orph ised term s — o f modalisation, the sem antic investm ent o f actants. T o accom plish this articulation G reim as initially reduces P ro p p ’s thirty-one functions to twenty functional categories o f the form V/ vs non a ’ by following P ro p p ’s own suggestion that

121

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II certain o f his functions can be ‘cou p led ’ (SS: 2 2 3 -2 5 (Figure 3.5)). A fter this reduction, G reim as follows L évi-Strauss’s suggestions that ‘several o f P ro p p ’s functions . . . constitute gro u p s o f transform ations o f one and the sam e function’ Figure 3.5 FUNCTIONS 1. Absence 2. Interdiction 3. Violation 4. Reconnaissance (inquiry) 5. Delivery (information) 6. Fraud 7. Complicity 8. Villainy 8a. Lack 9. Mediation, the connective m o vem en t (m a nd a te ) 10. Beginning counteraction (hero's decision) 11. Departure 12. The first function of the donor (assignment of a test) 13. The hero's reaction {confrontation of the test) 14. The provision, receipt of magical agent {receipt of the helper) 15. Spatial translocation 16. Struggle 17. Marking 18. Victory 19. The initial misfortune or lack is liquidated (liquidation of the lack) 20. Return 21. Pursuit, chase 22. Rescue 23. Unrecognised arrival 24. See 8a above 25. The difficult task (assignment of a task) 26. Solution: a task is accomplished (success) 27. Recognition 28. Exposure (revelation of the traitor) 29. Transfiguration: new appearance (revelation of the hero) 30. Punishment 31. Wedding

REDUCTIONS 1. absence 2. interdiction vs violation 3. inquiry vs information 4. fraud vs complicity 5. villainy vs lack 6. mandate vs hero's decision 7. departure 8. assignm ent of a test vs confrontation of the test 9. receipt of the helper 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

{magical agent)

spatial translocation struggle vs victory marking liquidation of the lack return pursuit vs rescue unrecognized arrival assignm ent of a task v ssu ccess recognition revelationofthetraitorvs revelation of the hero 20. punishm entvswedding

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Structural Semantics and Du Sens II (1984: 183) and that the ‘two series o f [sequential] functions’ in w ondertales which Propp calls its ‘m oves’ (1968: 59) — its optional ‘preparatory section’ (functions 1-8 (1968: 80)) and the tale p ro p er — ‘would them selves be transform ation s o f one an oth er.’ (Lévi-Strauss 1984: 183) In the first case he accom plishes what he calls ‘an indispensable hom ologation’ (SS: 205): he tran sform s individual functions into categorical elem ents (a vs non a), those elem ents into categories (A vs À), and the categories into system

non a

non a

which G reim as later articulates as the semiotic square (1968a: 88; see F igu re 1.1, C h apter 1). T h u s he op poses P ro p p ’s function # 9 , ‘the hero is appro ach ed with a . . . com m an d’ (‘m an date’) or ‘behest’ (a), to function # 1 0 , the h ero’s ‘counteraction’ or ‘acceptance’ (non a). H e calls this opposition as a whole, a vs non a , category A, ‘establishm ent o f a contract’, and he op poses it to category Â, ‘violation o f a contract’, whose elem ents are function # 2 , ‘interdiction’ (à ), vs function # 3 , ‘violation’ (non a). T h u s the second category, ‘interdiction vs violation’, is the ‘negative tran sform ation ’ o f the first category, ‘behest vs acceptance’ (SS: 226). In this hom ologation G reim as is im plying an early semantic version o f the semiotic square. 'b e h e st'*------------------- -*· 'acceptance' (a) (non a)

interdiction'

'violation (non a)

(â)

In Structural Semantics he notes that ‘interdiction’ is ‘the negative tran sform ation ’ o f ‘behest’ .(SS: 242) H e goes on to say that ‘violation . . . if it is a form o f the negation o f acceptance, is not entirely negative, however, for it includes the will to act, in opposition to the interdiction, which is the prohibition o f action.’ (SS: 242) In noting the ‘will to act’, he is articulating 123

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II a m odal aspect o f the functions, which is to say he is defin ing the functions in terms o f actants. Such a definition creates the possibility o f transforming actants and actantial roles. T his analysis, he says, implies the parad o x ‘that violation is a type o f behest . . . T h e consideration o f the actants elucidates the parad o x: violation is indeed a behest, which includes the negation o f the sender and substitutes the receiver for him .’ (SS: 243) In other words, functional analysis links the events o f narrative to the elem entary structure o f signification; it creates a passage from process to system. Syntagmatic schemas T h rou gh ou t his analysis o f the Morphology G reim as ‘p asses’ from functions to actants to account for the sequence o f n arrative. A vs À, the category ‘C ontract’, exists on a level o f abstraction which allows G reim as to integrate an other general category on this ‘level of form alization’: ‘the contention that a contract can be eventually followed by consequence-functions, that it can be inscribed thus in the series o f functions, obliges us to situate it within the syntagm atic schem as o f which it is a p art.’ (SS: 227) T h at is, a contract im plies the parties to it, and in P ropp its chief party is the subject-hero who is ‘tested’ to be found worthy or not o f the contract. G reim as designates this sequence that o f the ‘T e st’ in the w ondertale com prised o f category A (‘C ontract’), category F (‘C ontest’), and ‘consequen ce’ (which is not a category o f binary opposition). In these term s he o ffers the follow ing sequence o f the w ondertale: A = behest vs acceptance F = confrontation vs success non c — consequence (SS: 227) T h e integration o f categories A and F (excluding ‘consequence’) accounts for five o f the twenty elem ents o f P ro p p ’s reduced inventory and ten elem ents o f the original inventory (# s 2, 3, 12, 13, 9, 10, 25, 16, 18,26). M oreover, it produces the three ‘m ajor narrative syntagm s’ (M: 180), the qualifying test, main test, and glorifying test. But G reim as can also describe category F (‘C on test’) in term s o f the subject-hero him self instead o f his relationship to a ‘contract’. H ere he describes the ‘consequences’ o f the tests in term s o f the ‘alienation and reintegration’ o f the subject-hero 124

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II PROPOSED SCHEMA

r behest

A v acceptance

QUALIFYING TEST

MAIN TEST

first function of the donor hero's reaction

, confrontation

hero's decision

assignm ent of a task

struggle

F v success nonc = consequence

mandate

GLORIFYING TEST

receipt of the helper

victory

success

liquidation of the lack

recognition

(SS: 228)

into society in relation to an other sequence o f functions (category C). T h u s a sequence at the beginn ing o f a tale, inquiry (# 4 ) frau d (# 6 ) villainy (# 8 )

vs vs vs

inform ation (# 5 ) complicity (# 7 ) la c k (# 8 a )

correspon ds to one at the end, m arking (# 1 7 ) expo su re (# 2 8 )

vs vs

recognition (# 2 7 ) transfiguration (# 2 9 ) or receipt o f m agical agent (# 1 4 ) punishm ent (# 3 0 ) vs w edding (# 3 1 ) or liquidation o f the lack (# 1 9 ).

G reim as is following Lévi-Strauss’s second suggestion and dem onstratin g the transform ation o f P ro p p ’s ‘m oves,’ yet he does so in term s o f ‘consequences’, that is, in term s o f the com m utations o f actants. G reim as notes that each o f the elem ental ‘consequences’ o f category C articulates an act o f com m unication in relation to the subject-hero: ‘in form ation ’ transform ed into ‘recognition [o f the hero]’ is the com m unication o f knowledges ‘com plicity’ tran sform ed into ‘revelation [of the hero]’ is the com m unication o f power (the h ero’s power being figu red by the ‘m agical agen t’); and ‘lack’ transform ed into ‘w eddin g’ is the com m unication o f the object of desire (its achievem ent being the ‘liquidation o f a lack’) (see Schleifer 1983: xlvii for the hom ologation o f functions in category C). 125

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II For this reason he designates category C as ‘C om m unication’. C ategory C, in any case, accounts for ten o f the twenty functions o f P ro p p ’s reduced inventory. M oreover, here again the functions o f narrative are conceived actantially, in m odal categories, to knoxv (savoir), to be able (pourvoir), and to wish (vouloir), while category A, ‘the establishm ent o f the contract,’ im plies to be required (devoir). G reim as integrates the rem aining six functions o f P ro p p ’s inventory — ‘d ep artu re’ (# 1 1 ), ‘spatial translocation’ (# 1 5 ), ‘retu rn ’ (# 2 0 ), ‘pu rsu it’ (# 2 1 ) ‘rescu e’ (# 2 2 ), ‘unrecognized arrival’ (# 2 3 ) — in term s o f the subject-hero’s ‘absen ce’. T h ese functions are the most specific to the w ondertale — they only allow one ‘cou plin g’ in reduction and, in signficant ways, the very conception o f ‘sequen ce’ is inscribed within them — and G reim as consequently spends the least am ount o f time analysing them. Rather, he suggests that they are in a vague an alogous relationship to the actantial m odel: they ‘account, at the level o f the narration, for the intensity o f desire at the level o f the actantial m odel’ (55: 229—30); and he ad d s that they form ‘a category o f deictic expression , redu n dan t with the m ediating function o f the h ero.’ (55: 230) T h u s G reim as reduces P ro p p ’s thirty-one functions to three categories o f the wondertale, the ‘C ontract’ (category A), the ‘C ontest’ (category F), and the com m unicated ‘consequences’ o f the tests (category C) — and two noncategorical ‘deictic’ elem ents, the ‘presence’ (p) and ‘displacem en t’ (d) o f the hero (55: 234; see Calloud 1976: 17-18 for a slightly exp an d ed version o f these reduced functions). What is m ost im portant to understand, however, is that G reim as accom plishes this reduction by conceiving the functions o f narrative in term s o f the actants o f narrative. T h at is, like Prague linguistics, he structures and reduces the sequential functions o f narrative by devising linguistic procedures which encom pass both their em pirical existence (articulated in P ro p p ’s ‘preanalysis’) and the ‘logic’ o f their ‘paradigm atic interpretation, the very condition o f graspin g the signification o f the narrative as a whole . . . independently o f the syntagm atic sequential o rd e r.’ (55: 236)

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The generative trajectory of discourse G reim as’s reduction and structuration o f P ro p p ’s functions — despite R icoeur’s assertion that G reim as aim s ‘to construct a m odel which is as in dependent as possible o f the chronological o rd e r’ (1981: 282) — is not intended to replace chronology with ‘an “achronic structu re.’” Rather, it is an attem pt to account for the appreh en sion o f m eaning in narrative, the apprehension o f what G reim as calls ‘a series o f narrative states’ which includes the ‘felt sen se’ o f tem porality in narrative (see Schleifer 1984). T o this end G reim as und erstan ds the ‘tem poral succession’ o f narrative as ‘neither pu re contiguity nor a logical im plication.’ (SS: 244) T h at is, G reim as distinguishes between the sequential ‘contiguity’ Propp sees as the chronological structure o f the functions in the w ondertale and the ‘logical sequen ce’ o f the ‘paradigm atic interpretation ’ o f narrative (SS: 228, 236) in term s o f the ‘consecution’ o f narrative states. ‘T h e sequence “test” ,’ G reim as writes, if it characterises the story as consecution, does not necessarily im pose that consecution, as Propp would like. Q uite the contrary, the text constitutes, in this sense, a certain m anifestation o f freedom . A nd if it appears, nevertheless, as a fixed sequence, it is not because o f the inner relations o f causality, but because o f the red u n dance that fixes it as form by con ferrin g on it, as supplem entary mythical connotation, the m eaning o f the affirm ation o f the h ero’s freedom . (SS: 237) ‘C onsecution’, then, is the ‘den ial’ o f the com plex category o f freedom + necessity — what I have discussed as the com plex category ‘freedom vs. restraint’ that recurs throughout Structural Semantics (1983: xlix—liv) — em bodied in the com plexity o f the sem io-narrative level as a whole, a level in which is inscribed the ‘logic’ o f actants and the ‘contiguity’ o f functions. Such a denial or denegration occupies the fourth position on G reim as’s semiotic square, the ‘m od al’ position o f Figure 3.4 or, m ore generally, what Jam eso n calls the ‘decisive’ position o f the abstract square (1972: 166; see C hapter 1). ‘D enial’, as the Analytical Dicdotiary says, implies a (diachronic) context o f utterances, ‘a syntagm atic perspective in which the relation o f implication is actualised.’ (SL: 72) In an im portant figure 127

Structural Semantics and Du Se?is II G reim as calls the denial o f the fourth position the ‘explodin g o f the com plex structure’ (SS: 245), the explosion o f the m ediating, neutralising positive com plex term o f the square. In this chapter we have seen this ‘explosion ’ from two vantages: the fourth position is the position in which constituted actants are m odalised in the p assage from system to process; and it is the position in which functions reveal the possible transformation o f actants in the passage from process to system. But m ore generally, if the com bination o f actants and functions create the ‘com plex’ sem io-narrative level o f lan gu age, then its denial creates another level o f analysis, neither actantial nor functional, the discursive level o f narrativity. For this reason G reim as cam e to see that such ‘p assag e s’, as I have already su ggested, are better u n d erstood u n d er the term ‘trajectory’; in fact, ‘trajectory’ is an apt figu re fo r the tem poral succession o f discourse, neither pu re contiguity nor logical im plication. T rajectory, the Analytical Dictionary asserts, ‘im plies not only a linear and directed disposition o f the elem ents between which it occurs but also a dynam ic perspective su ggestin g a progression from one point to another by way o f interm ediate d o m ain s.’ (SL: 347) T h at is, ‘trajectory’ allows G reim as to situate the im m anent (linguistic) analyses o f actants and functions within the larger fram ew ork o f semiotics. T h u s the actantial analyses o f Structural Semantics are a special case o f the analyses o f the generative trajectory o f discourse based upon the fact that ‘textualization . . . can intervene at any point in the generative trajectory.’ (SL: 133) Such intervening textualisation includes the textualisation o f preanalyses. H ere, I think, G reim as’s am bivalent relationships with Propp and Lévi-Strauss becom e clear. (Also clear is the progressive and revisionary nature o f G reim as’s semiotic project I m entioned in the Preface.) T h e value o f P ropp and Lévi-Strauss, as I have suggested, is their developm ent o f m ore or less rigorous linguistic m ethods for the study o f discourse beyond the sentence. ‘T rajecto ry ’ includes but transcends the im m anent dom ain o f linguistics. Such a conception, as I m entioned at the end o f the last chapter, accounts for the m etalinguistic property o f langu age — its capacity for disengagement — as well as its hierarchic structure — its double articulation. But m ore than this, it articulates m ore fully than actantial analyses (which form a phase o f the analysis o f the generative trajectory o f discourse) the basic aim o f G reim asian 128

Structural Semantics and Du Sens II semiotics, an account o f the nature o f m eaning. ‘Fou n d ed on the theory o f signification,’ G reim as and C ourtés note, the conception of the generative trajectory o f discourse aim s at accounting for all semiotic systems (and not only the sem iotics o f natural languages) and at constructing m odels capable o f generatin g discourse (and not only sentences). On the other hand, considering that all categories, even the most abstract (including syntactic structures) are sem antic in nature and thereby are signifying, it has no trouble in distinguishing, for each dom ain o f the generative trajectory, syntactic and sem antic (stricto sensu) subcom ponents. (SL: 133) T h e com ponents and subcom ponents o f the generative trajectory are described in F igu re 3.1. But the fruits o f the analysis o f discourse conceived as a generative trajectory are the accounts o f semiotic systems and the m odels for discourse G reim as develops in relation to particular discursive dom airls (see Parret 1983: 87) — in relation to narrativity itself — treated in the next chapter.

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Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales: Discourse and Narrativity

T h e last chapter explored the sem io-narrative level o f actants and functions in the generative trajectory o f discourse. T h is chapter will exam ine an other m ode o f discursive or narrative analysis and, m ore globally, what G reim as and C ourtés call ‘the fun dam en tal question on which the general form o f semiotic theory will d ep en d — namely the relation o f dependence between the two previously m entioned levels (that o f narrative structures [or, better: sem io-narrative structures] and that o f discursive structures) — [whose] conjunction defines the discourse in its totality.’ (SL: 2 0 9 -1 0 ; first brackets in text) T h at is, it will exam ine G reim as’s analysis o f the generative trajectory as such, including the possibility o f textualisation and analytic intervention ‘at any point’ on the trajectory. In the article on ‘N arrativity’ (from which I am citing) the Analytical Dictionary succinctly defin es discourse in its restricted and general senses that delim its what I am calling the discursive level o fla n g u a g e . Let us not forget that narratives, taken as descriptions o f connected actions (folkloric, mythical, and literary n arratives) were at the base o f narrative analysis (Propp, Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss). T h ese differen t approach es have already shown the existence, u n d er the appearan ce o f figurative narrated content, o f m ore abstract and deep organizations that have an implicit signification and govern the production and readin g o f this kind o f discourse. N arrativity therefore has gradually ap p eared as the very organizin g principle o f all discourse whether narrative (identified, in the first instance, as figurative 130

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales discourse) or non-narrative. For there are only two alternatives: either the discourse is only a sim ple concatenation o f sentences, and thus the m eaning that it bears is due m erely to a m ore or less h aphazard succession which is beyond the purview o f linguistics (and m ore generally o f any semiotics); or it constitutes a signifying whole, an intelligible speech act that contains its own organization; its m ore or less abstract or Figurative n ature is linked to ever greater sem antic investm ents and ever m ore precise syntactic articulations. (SL: 209) G reim as’s great project, as I have repeatedly su ggested throughout this book, is to opt for the second alternative, to discover a way to account for the phenom enally felt m eaningful whole o f hum an discourse.

Greimas and Lévi-Strauss Narrativity M odalisation — the conception o f the content o f discourse arrested on the sem io-narrative level — is the nonfigurative (i.e. ‘linguistic’) articulation o f G reim as’s conception o f ‘n arrativity’. (SS: 287) G reim as conceives o f ‘narrativity’ in term s o f the synchronic ‘ap p reh en sion ’ o f structures: ‘narrativity,’ he writes, ‘can be considered as a series o f narrative states’. (1973c: 34) As such it im plies that the appreh en sion o f narration is not to be understood, as Propp suggests, in term s o f syntagm atic functions and the laws o f plot developm ent, but in term s o f the relationships o f the elem ental structure o f signification conceived in linguistic term s — the sim ultaneous structuration and m odalisation o f discourse arrested on the semion arrrative level. In these term s he provisionally defines narrativity as ‘one or several transform ation s resulting in the ju n ction — that is to say either conjunctions or disjunctions — o f subjects with objects.’ (1973c: 28) ‘N arrativity,’ he notes, considered as the irruption o f discontinuity into the discursive perm anence o f a life, a history, an individual, a 131

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales culture, disarticulates it into discrete states between which it situates transform ations . . . T h e eventual syntax which we are led to construct is, consciously or not, o f an an th ropom orph ic nature, the projection o f the fu n d amental relations o f man to the world or, perh aps, vice versa . . . (1973c: 47) T h e process o f m odalisation, then, replaces the opposition implicit in P ropp (and in Russian Form alism as well) between form vs content with a hom ologation which generates ‘a third com plex or m ediating term ’ (SS: 194), G reim as’s ‘sem io-narrative’ level. It is in ju st such a position that Lévi-Strauss situates the term structure in ‘Structure and F orm ’: ‘Form is defin ed in opposition to content, an entity in its own right, but structure has no distinct content: it is content itself, and the logical organization in which it is arrested is conceived as property o f the real.’ (1984: 167) T h u s the substance o f Lévi-Strauss’s critique o f P ro p p ’s analysis is that, like the ‘form alism ’ o f Bloom field, it restricts itself ‘exclusively to the rules that govern the arran gem en t o f elem ents’ without realising ‘the fact that no lan gu age exists whose vocabulary can be dedu ced from its syntax.’ (1984: 186) T h at is, P ropp assum ed the opposition o f plot vs content without explorin g the possibility that a m ediating or neutralising term could exist, a term that could m ediate between form and content by conceiving o f ‘vocabulary’ as both form and content. Lévi-Strauss conceives o f such a possibility in term s o f the special status o f the collective discourses o f folktales and myths in which vocabulary serves two p u rposes on d ifferen t levels. ‘Like all discourses, ‘Lévi-Strauss notes, myths and tales naturally em ploy gram m atical rules and words. But another dim ension is add ed to the usual one because rules and words in narratives build im ages and actions that are both ‘n orm al’ signifiers, in relation to what is signified in the discourse, and elem ents o f m eaning, in relation to a supplem entary system o f m eaning found at another level. T o give ju st one exam ple: in a tale a ‘king’ is not only a king and a ‘sh eph erd ess’ not only a sh eph erdess: these words and what they signify becom e recognizable m eans o f constructing a system form ed by the 132

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales oppositions male/fe male (with regard to nature) and highI low (with regard to culture) . . . (1984: 186—87) T his special status, however, is ju st a special case o f LéviStrau ss’s repeated conception o f the nature o f collective narrative discourse. ‘A ccording to Lévi-Strauss,’ Liberm an writes, ‘all myths are structured alike: allegedly, they tell about som e basic contradiction and the way this contradiction is overcom e (his own term is “ m ediated” ; extending the phonological m etaphor to myths we could perh aps say “ neutralized”).’ (1984: xxxvi) T his is o f utmost im portance because the semantic structures o f G reim as — prim arily the semiotic square represen tin g the ‘elem ental structure o f signification’ — are structures that involve neutralisation. In term s I have used in this study, they create the possibility o f structuring signification so that it can be conceived o f linguistically as well as semantically; that is, conceived o f as ‘d u p lex ’. T h e analysis o f this neutralisation accounts for the doubling in lan gu age and discourse I have noted throughout this study. T h u s G reim as defines the ‘global mythic object’ in the m anner o f Lévi-Strauss: it is ‘a com plex object integrating several m anifested lan gu ages and defin ed in its specificity as including a secondary structural organisation (reinforced, m oreover, by the recurrences and superim positions o f signifiers).’ (1971c: 184)

The mediation an d neutralisation o f narrative It is the ‘m ediation’ o f the hero in G reim as’s analysis which brings his work closest to that o f Lévi-Strauss and sim ultaneously dem onstrates the differen ce between anthropology and linguistics. G reim as’s analysis leads him to what he calls ‘two interpretations o f the n arrative,’ and the achronic signification’ and ‘the transform ational m odel’. (SS: 235—45) T his double interpretation leads to the two m odels o f actantial analysis I have already discussed, the ‘constitutional’ m odel and the ‘tran sform ation al’ (or ‘modal') model. G reim as describes this result in Lévi-Strauss’s term s o f m ediation: T h e possibility o f a double interpretation only stresses the great num ber o f contradictions which a narrative can

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Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales contain. It is at the sam e time affirm ation o f perm anence and o f the possibilities o f change, affirm ation o f the necessary o rd er and o f the freedom which breaks or reestablishes that order. And yet the contradictions are not visible with the naked eye; on the contrary, the narrative gives the im pression o f equilibrium and neutralized contradictions. It is in this perspective that it ap p e ars essentially in its role o f m ediation. O f m ultiple m ediations, one should say: m ediations between structures and behavior, between perm anence and history, between society and the individual. (SS: 246) Such a role is that which Lévi-Strauss attributes to the ‘m ediation’ o f myth: ‘the p u rpose o f myth,’ he writes, ‘is to provide a logical m odel capable o f overcom ing a contradiction (an im possible achievem ent if, as it happen s, the contradiction is real).’ (1963b: 229) I f the ‘overcom ing’ o f contradiction (LéviStrau ss also calls it the ‘resolution’ o f contradiction) is im possible, still mythical narrative functions to create the illusion o f its resolution, the illusion o f neutralisation G reim as describes. In ‘the Structural Study o f Myth’ Lévi-Strauss describes this as a kind o f intellectual sleight o f hand prod uced by a curious kind o f reasonin g by analogy: ‘the inability to connect two kinds o f relationships is overcom e (or rather replaced) by the assertion that contradictory relationships are identical inasm uch as they are both self-contradictory in a sim ilar way.’ (1963b: 216) In mythical narrative the ‘replacem ent’ o f one contradiction by another includes them both in the ‘both . . . a n d ’ o f (illusory) neutralisation, and it does so in a way that seems to ‘resolve’ the contradictions within each simply by narrating them, by asserting they are part o f ‘experien ce’. T h u s hum an ‘experien ce’ in the O edipu s myth — namely, the p arad o x that seem ingly self-contained individuals are born o f sexual reproduction, a parad o x Lévi-Strauss figu res in the social contradiction between overrating and u n d erratin g blood relations — self-contradictory itself, seem s to ‘prove’ the cosmological theory o f m an ’s self-contradictory relationship to the earth. ‘A lthough experience contradicts theory,’ LéviStrau ss writes, ‘social life validates cosm ology by its similarity o f structu re.’ (1963b: 216) T h u s the m ediation o f narrative — its ‘neutralisation’ — is a kind o f ‘naturalisation’, an assertion that su perh um an and 134

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales inhum an powers — chthonic pow ers — govern in g hum an affairs can be u n d erstood in hum an contexts, contexts o f ‘both . . . an d ’ (see Schleifer 1980). While they do not go away, such powers are in corporated or ‘n eu tralised’ within a hum an ‘equilibrium ’. N arration, in these term s, is itself best figu red as ‘fo rgettin g’: myths, Lévi-Strauss asserts, do not seek to depict what is real, but to ju stify the shortcom ings o f reality, since the extrem e positions are only imagined in o rd er to show that they are untenable. T h is step, which is fitting for mythical thought, im plies an adm ission (but in the veiled lan gu age o f the myth) that the social facts when thus exam in ed are m arred by an insurm ountable contradiction. A contradiction which, like the hero o f the myth, T sim sh ian society cannot understand and p refers to forget. (1976: 173)

T h e ‘j u stification ’ Lévi-Strauss is speaking o f is negative: it is the ‘sleight o f h an d’ o f the analogical work o f myths which ‘fo rgets’ relationships in favour o f what G reim as calls substantification so that the structural ‘an alogy’ between its elem ents, society and cosm ology fo r instance, seem s to ‘resolve’ the contradiction within each elem ent. T h is is the sam e ‘fo rgettin g’ that Nietzsche speaks of. Lévi-Strauss defines it as the negative o f a ‘category form ed by com m unication.’ (1976: 191) As such, the forgetfu ln ess o f narrative — the negation o f the com m unication o f know ledge — excludes the sen der an d receiver from its m essage. It excludes the contradiction which occasions it in the sam e way G reim as excludes P ro p p ’s first function, ‘absence’, from his hom ologation. I f the analogies o f mythical narrative are ‘fo rgetfu l’, so are the analogies that Lévi-Strauss uses in their analysis. T h at is, readin g Lévi-Strauss in the context o f G reim as’s linguistic analysis o f narrative helps to identify the analogical slippage in the equivalences asserted between isomorphism, homology, equivalence, corrolation, congruence, inversion, and so forth in L évi-Strauss’s analyses (see M aquet 1974: 127). T h is slippage, as we have seen, is a confusion o f the concept o f ‘levels’. N eutralisation is an articulation o f a ‘com plex structu re’ o f the form a + non a which exists on a level differen t from those o f its elem ents. For Lévi-Strauss, however, the ‘m ediating struc135

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales tu re’ exists on the sam e level as that which it m ediates between. T h u s he notes that we need only assum e that two opposite term s with no interm ediary always tend to be replaced by two equivalent term s which adm it o f a third one as a m ediator; then one o f the polar term s and the m ediator becom e replaced by a new triad, and so on. T h u s we have a m ediating structure o f the follow ing type: INITIAL PAIR Life

FIRSTTRIAD Agriculture

Hunting Death

SECONDTRIAD Herbivorous animals Carrion-eating animals (raven; coyote) Beasts of prey

Warfare

(1963b: 224)

In this schem e each colum n is a sep arate ‘level’ whose elem ents seem to com bine to constitute the elem ents on the next level. T h u s ‘h un ting’ m ediates between ‘agricu ltu re’ and ‘w arfare’: ‘hunting’ is conceived simply as a com plex elem ent (a + non a) without im plying a ‘system ’. A system would inscribe ‘hunting’ on a differen t level from ‘agricu ltu re’ and ‘w arfare’ — what G reim as calls the ‘sub-contrary’ level o f the semiotic square (SL: 309) — which would then take the first level as a com bined unit and generate its contrary, ‘exch an ge’ (see C hapter 1). Because o f this lack o f hierarchical (and, implicitly, subjacent) com binations, the colum ns ap p e ar closer to ‘planes’ whose elem ents are form ally identical to those on the next plane. In this conception ‘herbivorous anim al’ is (analogous to) a signifier o f a signified content /agriculture/. (In this case ‘raven’ is a signifier o f the signified content /carrion-eating anim al/ which is neither hunting nor agriculture.) In this way ‘level’ and ‘plan e’ are con fused; Lévi-Strauss’s analysis is figurative linguistics, a m etaphorical gram m ar.

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Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales In div idu al an d collective universes In C h apter 1 I described how G reim as m ight inscribe LéviStrau ss’s schem e within the elem ental structure o f signification o f the sem iotic square. T h is transform s Lévi-Strauss’s linguistic figures into linguistics as such by situating the analysis on determ inate levels. Sem antically (that is, actantially) this is effected by reinscribing the sen der and receiver in the description o f narrative signification. T h u s fo r G reim as the Russian w ondertale can be inscribed in a semiotic square which seem ingly unites ‘the social d o m ain ’ and ‘the individual or interindividual dom ain ’ (SS: 241; see p. 243 for follow ing term s): Figure 4.1 'social contract'

'affirmation of individual freedom'

'social rupture'

'renunciation of individual freedom'

H ere the m ediation between the social contract and social ru ptu re is contained in the figure o f the ‘individual’, but that figure itself is ‘ex p lo d ed ’ into constituent parts conceived o f as inhabiting another level o f analysis. In this way the ‘individual’ sub-contrary level o f this square describes neutralisation in a technical way; it describes what G reim as calls the ‘explosion ’ o f the com plex term into its com ponents. T h e contest o f the w ondertale, G reim as argu es, could well be the mythical representation o f the explodin g o f the com plex structure, that is to say, o f the m etalinguistic operation where the denial o f the negative term lets only the positive term o f the elem entary structure stand . . . W hatever else it may be, the contest already app ears as the expression o f m etalinguistic activity, in the sense that it does not possess any p ro p er c o n te n t. . . (SS: 245) Unlike Lévi-Strauss, who translates his analysis o f myth into 137

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales what Propp calls ‘philosophical’ term s (1984b: 68), G reim as translates his into the semiotic squ are and into linguistic and m etalinguistic terms. D oing so he attem pts to account, not sim ply fo r the social fact o f narrative discourse, but fo r its linguistic, or m ore generally, its semiotic fact. Such a ‘semiotic fact’ is complex: it conceives o f lan gu age both as a social activity (enunciation) and as a description o f what is (énoncé). T h is com plexity can be seen in the special status o f the w ondertale. In M aupassant G reim as describes two m odels ‘able to account for the elementary articulations o f the semantic universe’. (M: 139) Figure 4.2 Model I: Individual Universe /life/

/non-death/

Model II: Collective Universe /nature/

/death/

/non-life/

/non-culture/

/culture/

/non-nature/

G reim as notes that these m odels are situated on an ‘abstract level (deep and nonfigurative) which perm its the prim ary articulations o f the sem antic universe.’ (This level is that o f the ‘fun dam en tal sem antics’ o f the generative trajectory.) M oreover, he adds, they can be ‘corrolated with elementary figurative structures'. (M: 139) His analysis o f P ro p p ’s w ondertale o ffers such a corrolation: Figure 4.1 fits in the m odel o f the ‘individual universe’ (I). H ere the privileged fourth position, ‘the affirm ation o f individual freed o m ’, reinterprets the ‘social contract’ as a way o f im im ng freedom and thus creating at least an illusory ‘resolution ’ o f the contradiction between the social and individual dom ains. In these term s this inscription jo in s the two m odels within the particular sem antic investm ent o f the w ondertale: not only is ‘the affirm ation o f individual free d o m ’ a negative com plex term , ‘neither life nor death ’, it is also the ‘figurative’ expression o f the sim ple term ‘n atu re’. T h u s while the wondertale (M odel I) seem ingly ‘resolves’ the contradiction between nature and culture, it also generates its own inscription in Model II which ‘ex p lo d es’ that resolution. T h is 138

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales allows us to see that the ‘individual’ term s, ‘life’ and ‘d eath ’, are already ‘collective’: like the natural lan gu age in which they are inscribed, the concept ‘death ’ and its opposite can only be inherited and exchan ged (inheritance, in fact, is a form o f exchange). H ere the ‘reg ro u p in g ’ o f Lévi-Strauss becom es clear. While Lévi-Strauss im agines he is discovering a ‘m ediation’ between nature and culture in myths on the level o f what he calls ‘social fact’ (1976: 193) — as in the postulation that ‘hunting’ resolves the contradiction between ‘w arfare’ and ‘agricu ltu re’ — such a m ediation takes place on an ‘individual’ plane which, positioning the opposition o f ‘life vs d eath ’ as prim ary, obscures ‘n atu re’ complexly conceived as the union o f war and peace. T h e contrary to ‘h u n ting’, ‘exch an ge’, tran sform s the fram ew ork from the individual to the collective. In term s o f life and death — that is, in term s o f the individual — the opposition between ‘agricu ltu re’ and ‘w arfare’ generates a square such as that presented in C h apter 1. But in term s o f the opposition between ‘n atu re’ an d culture’, Lévi-Strauss shifts the level o f his analysis without, seem ingly, being aw are o f it. H e attem pts, like R ousseau, as D errida has argu ed (1976), to privilege nature over culture. B ut he does so, as the ‘triad s’ o f ‘T h e Structural Study o f Myth’ suggests, by perceiving the opposition ‘life vs d eath ’ as a corrolation o f the opposition ‘nature vs culture.’ Figure 4.3 Model I 'agriculture' /life/

'warfare' /death/

'exchange'/non-death/

'hunting'/non-life/ Model II

'herbivorous animals' /nature/

'hunting' (= 'beast of prey') /non-culture/

139

'agriculture' /culture/

'warfare' /non-nature/

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales As this inscription o f his work in G reim as’s m odels suggest, Lévi-Strauss attem pts to describe ‘w arfare’ as ‘u n n atural’ to m an or beast by m ediating between ‘agricu ltu re’ and ‘w arfare’ with the figu re o f the ‘natural m an ’ as hunter. His analysis leaves out G reim as’s fourth position, the ‘explosion ’ o f the m odel. However, the very texts that Propp chose to study, the w ondertales, m akes the corrolation between /life/ and /nature/ im possible by situating his analysis on the individual plane — the plane o f functions ‘p erform ed by differen t p eo ple’ as he says in his response to ‘Structure and F orm ’ (1984b: 75). G reim as accom plishes the reduction o f P ro p p ’s functions LéviStrau ss called for, but he also m aintains P ro p p ’s level o f analysis in his linguistic approach by underlining the differen ce in level between social and individual dom ains. T h ese dom ains are ‘linked’, and even ‘isotopic’ (and, perh aps, ‘isom orphic’); but they are not, as Lévi-Strauss says, ‘equivalent’, ‘corrolated’, ‘con gru en t’, ‘inversions’, etc. Rather, they are ‘im bricated’ and overlapping, with the collective universe inscribed within the individual at the level o f the sen der and receiver o f m essages in term s o f states o f being (life and death) and the individual inscribed within the collective at the level o f the sen der and receiver o f m essages in term s o f possibilities o f ac tion (freedom and the renunciation o f freedom ). H ere again in the opposition o f these m odels is inscribed the complexity o f m essages — o f language — conceived in term s o f utterances that describe the world (énoncé) and social actions within the world (enunciation). Perhaps m ore than any other, this is the ‘contradiction’ articulated in the im brication o f social and individual life that the narratives Lévi-Strauss studies — collective m ythologies — seem ingly resolve.

Collective corpus: semiotics and the social sciences Social discourse T h e im brication o f social and individual life articulates an aspect o f langu age which G reim as found in both Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, what he calls ‘the eminently social aspect o f hum an com m unication.’ (SS: 106) On the basis o f this duality, in Structural Semantics he distinguishes between ‘collective’ 140

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales discourses and ‘individual’ texts. Both myth and folktale are social and ‘an on ym ous’; each describes what G reim as calls a ‘collective corp u s.’ (SS: 106) In this the pow erful influence o f Lévi-Strauss can be seen w orking in G reim as’s semiotics. In fact, such a conception o f lan gu age may account for the fact that in recent years G reim as has conducted his work within the context o f collective research pu rsu ed by the ‘G ro u p de Recherches Sém io-Lin guistiques’ which he directs. T h is m akes explicit the collective side o f his work: many o f the central docum ents o f ‘his’ semiotics — fo r instance, the Analytical Dictionary, ‘T h e Interaction o f Sem iotic C on straints’, the ‘Analyse sém iotique d ’un discours ju rid iq u e ’ — are in fact jo in t and ‘collective’ works, ju st as m uch o f ljiis ‘individual’ work is based upon prior ‘prean alyses’. In fact, volum e two o f the Dictionnaire raisonné (1986) is ‘by’ the G ro u p and simply ‘ed ited ’ by G reim as. T h e study o f the social sciences, in any case, is an inevitable pursuit o f G reim asian semiotics. It follows from S a u ssu re’s social definition o f lan gu age (and especially la langue) and P rop p ’s and Lévi-Strauss’s study o f preem inently social texts. ‘Issuin g from the double heritage o f structural linguistics and the study o f folklore and m ythology,’ G reim as noted in 1979, sem iotics has begun, starting in the sixties, to affirm its auton om ous status as both a general contem plation on the conditions o f the production an d the appreh en sion o f signification and as a ensem ble o f proced u res for the concrete analysis o f signifying objects . . . A lthough this enlargem ent [o f its field o f study beyond folklore and mythology] had been first m ade in the direction o f literature and poetics, research has been widely extended . . . to n um erous nonliterary discourses such as religious, philosophical, legal or socio-political texts. In extending its field o f investigation to very heterogen eous textual or cultural realities, semiotics implicitly claim ed for itself the status o f a theory (and a m ethodology) able to account for . . . a large range o f the form s o f the social production o f m eaning. (1979d: 5) H ere G reim as is situating semiotics in the position o f contem porary social science. T h e differen ce between social science and ‘folklore and m ythology’ is the differen ce between 141

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales ‘archaic’ societies in which the natural lan gu age o f a given cultural com m unity ‘is articulated in d ifferen t “ semiotic system s [langages]” which are m orphologically stable’ and ‘a new type o f culture’ in which social lan gu ages are not fixed, but rather are ‘a kind o f mobile socio-linguistic syntax’: ‘ a relatively fixed socio-linguistic m orphology gives way to a syntax o f polysém ie social com m unication.’ (1971c: 178—79; see 1970c: 5 6 -5 7 ) T h ro u gh o u t his career G reim as has p u rsu ed the semiotic analysis o f the social sciences as well as myth and folklore in ord er to dispel the ‘polysem y’ o f social discourses, the ‘myth’ o f the ‘pluridisciplinarian’ nature o f the social sciences (e.g. 1968b as well as the essays o f SSS\ fo r an application o f G reim asian semiotics to experim en tal psychology see M ergler 8c Schleifer 1985: 183—87). Sem iotics can dem onstrate that, rather than a m ultiple o f disciplines, by virtue o f the ‘discursive m anifestation’ o f the ‘secondary m eta-sem iotics’ which constitutes differen t social discourses (such as liturgical or m agical rituals, kinship structures, etc. (1976c: 90)), the social sciences can be analysed with a single m ethodology (1976c: 82, 85). G reim as calls these ‘secondary m eta-sem iotics’ the ‘connotations’ o f lan gu age constituted by ‘an ensem ble o f secondary signifieds which can convey . . . an entire text en gen dered by any particular semiotic system .’ (1976c: 85) Such ‘social connotations’, G reim as goes on, ‘are simply an ensem ble o f m eaningeffects.’ (1976c: 86; see B arthes 1968) W hatever the content, G reim as argu es, such connotative social discourses assum e ‘a general form o f articulation . . . prior to their linguistic or nonlinguistic m anifestation (for exam ple cinem a, dream , etc.) which can be considered as a form o f the organisation o f the hum an im agination.’ (1976c: 94) T h is form is that o f ‘semiotic g ram m ar’, the analysis o f the gram m ar (sem io-narrative structures) subjacent to social discourse so as to clarify the role o f discursive structures on these discourses. ‘T h e m ethodological hypothesis which we are ad o p tin g,’ G reim as and Landow ski write in the semiotic analysis o f legal discourse, ‘allows us to replace searching for vague analogies between several distant dom ains — legal lan gu age and literary language, for exam ple — with a deductive proced ure which will provide an account o f general narrative sem iotics to exam ine the particular realisations o f narrativity in legal discou rse.’ (1976c: 95—96) 142

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales L e g a l discourse As this suggests, a representative analysis o f ‘social discou rse’ is G reim as’s ‘semiotic analysis’ o f the legal discourse o f the 1966 French com m ercial law govern in g corporations and trusts. T h is is an especially good exam ple o f the semiotics o f social science because o f the special status o f legal discourse. While legal discourse is simply a ‘particular m anifestation’ o f social discourse, ‘definable in its specificity’ am on g other possible discourses in natural lan gu ages (1976c: 95, 80), nevertheless it is am ong the m ost explicit. ‘While very often ,’ G reim as and Landow ski write in ‘Analyse sém iotique d ’un discours ju rid iq u e ’ (Sem iotic Analysis o f a Legal D iscourse), ‘the gram m ar o f social semiotics is implicit, subjacent to the discourses which it p rod uces (as in the case, fo r exam ple, o f the code o f table m anners), legal grammar makes itself explicit and openly sets forth the body o f its ru les.’ (1976c: 8 7-88) In his study o f the semiotics o f law, B ern ard Jack so n o ffers a second reason for the representative n ature o f legal discourse. Unlike other social discourses which rem ain implicit, he argu es, ‘legal langu age derives m uch o f its force from the fact that it constantly anticipates and practises . . . p roced ures o f verification’ (1985: 116), namely legal ju d g m e n ts which explicitly exam ine the code o f legal discourse. T h e ‘Analyse sém iotique’ calls this ‘legal verification’ in opposition to ‘legal prod uction ’. (1976c: 92) Legal Discourse and Double Articulation As I have noted, the Analytical Dictionary distinguishes ‘N atural L an g u ag e’ from other semiotic systems in term s o f its double articulation and processes o f disengagem ent (SL: 169). T h ese two criteria correspond to the two aspects o f the special status o f legal discourse I have ju st m entioned. Ja c k so n ’s description o f the special status o f legal discourse in term s o f its ‘fo rce’ focuses upon the opposition between en gagem en t and d isen gagem ent: judicial rulings, like other discursive enunciations, lend them selves to ‘processes’ o f disengagem ent as the ju d g e moves from the specific case to the general rule. Except for m entioning the ‘initial enunciation’ o f the law governing com m ercial societies (corporations) by the President o f the Republic (1976c: 88; see 111), G reim as and Landow ski rarely touch on disengagem ent in their analysis o f legal discourse. 143

Maupassant and Sémiotiqne et Sciences Sociales T h e reason for this is clear: social discourse, because it is ‘collective’ and anonym ous does not require disen gagem en t; it is ‘d isen g age d ’ to begin with. R ather, the semiotic analysis o f social discourse is centrally concerned with the double articulation o f its discourse Barthes describes in the opposition between denotation and con notation (1968: 89—94). First o f all, G reim as and Landow ski describe legal discourse in term s o f ‘two discursive levels.’ L egal discourse is ‘tarnished by a kind o f duplicity; that is, it unrolls on a double isotopy: the First is represen ted by a legislative discourse com prised o f perform ative and norm ative utterances which institutes’ legal entities, rules, etc. ‘while the second ap p ears u n d er the form o f a referential discourse which, being only an ideological elaboration, a discursive covering o f the world, presents itself nevertheless as the social world itself, anterior to the speech which articulates it.’ (1976c: 84) H ere the ‘relationship between words and things . . . is taken up by general sem iotic theory.’ (1976c: 84) Unlike the ‘semiotics o f literature, which seem s to be a pure gram m ar in differen t to the contents it treats, legal semiotics includes, besides gram m ar, a sem antics.’ (1976c: 87) T h u s, as Jack so n says, unlike literature, legal discourse specifically, and social discourse m ore ge n erally, confronts the world with ‘form s o f social organ isation .’ ( 1985: 137) T h at is, the ‘A nalyse sém iotique’ attem pts to defin e the semiotic status o f social ‘objects’ using the ‘legislative discou rse’ o f law as a defin in g exam ple: ‘secondary semiotic system s based upon natural lan gu ages . . . can and m ust be exam ined from the point o f view o f their adequation to “ n atu ral” semiotic systems, that is to say, to nonlinguistic system s (economic, social and other structures) to which they are, in their sub-articulation, m ore or less isotopic.’ (1976c: 84) T h is is the issue o f semiotic referentiality which I will take up in the next chapter in which I will argu e that reference, in G reim as, is a kind o f ‘lan gu age-effect’ that has to do with reality in a definable semiotic m anner. For to exam ine the relationship between words and things in term s either o f im m anent isotopies or m anifest narrative trajectories is to conceive both words and things as semiotic ‘system s’, the latter a “ ‘vision o f the w orld” u nderstood as a certain organised sem antic investm ent ap p earin g through and across a particular natural lan gu age [which] could be “ distortin g” and “d efo rm in g” in relation to the natural semiotics to which it 144

Maupassant and Sêmiotique et Sciences Sociales corresp o n d s.’ Such a problem atic relationship is taken up by ‘general semiotics and its clarity dep en d s upon the possibility o f com parin g linguistic and nonlinguistic systems, a com parison which can only be envisioned follow ing an isom orphic description o f the two system s.’ (1976c: 84—85) In this conception o f ‘social’ semiotics, ‘double articulation’ is globally conceived: not double articulation between the ‘sem antic content’ and the ‘phonic sh ap e’ o f the lan gu age as M artinet describes it (1962: 26); not even between G reim as’s sem antic and sem iological articulations o f the im m anent plane o f lan gu age; but between the secondary connotative system s o f language and the ‘p h en om en a’ o f ‘n atu ral’ sem iotic system s o f social organisation. H ere is perh aps the central problem o f the nature o f m eaning: the complexity o f sense and reference, o f figurative and literal conceptions o f lan gu age, o f the adequacy o f lan gu age altogether. ‘Any adequate theory o f m ean in g,’ C hristopher N orris has written, will need to preserve the referential status o f lan gu age by accepting . . . that ‘sense determ ines referen ce’, or — what am ounts to the sam e thing — that lan gu age picks out its intended objects through a cluster o f given sem antic attributes. It is this possibility that is lost to view when post-structuralists too easily assum e that ‘naive’ (referential) readings o f texts can be shown up once and for all as products o f a mystified ‘com m onsense’ ideology. T h e result o f such ideas is to cast lan gu age adrift on the seas o f unlimited semiosis, cut o f f from every last anchorpoint o f m eaning and reference, (p. xiv this volum e; see Davis 1985) M eaning, finally, m anifests itself in multi-leveled ‘discou rses’ which, as such, can be ‘accounted fo r’ semiotically in term s o f the com plexity o f double articulation. T o describe such double articulation the ‘analyse sêm iotique’ ranges through the ‘duplicity’ o f legal discourse. It defin es ‘legal sem iotics’ by distinguishing between the ‘lexicon’ and the ‘gram m ar’ o f legal discourse (which together com prise le g a l sem iotics’ (1976c: 87)). M oreover, legal gram m ar is a form o f ‘narrative g ram m ar’ (1976c: 95), and as such it is susceptible to Proppian an th ropom orph ism and ‘narrativisation’ (1976c: 95, 106, 112, 117) ju st as the legal lexicon articulated in the law o f 145

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales com m ercial societies is susceptible to actantial analysis in which roles are distributed to actors ‘in a play or a dram atisation m ore or less com plex.’ (1976c: 92; see 96, 105, 107) T h u s, for exam ple, the study describes the com m ercial society as itself a ‘collective actant’, com prised o f its sh areholders, which nevertheless ‘acts’ in two separate sph eres: as a legal entity governed by its sh areh o lders’ m eetings (i.e. on the legislative level) and as the subject o f its econom ic activity govern ed by its board o f directors (on the referential level). Even particular actants em body a ‘com plex actantial architecture’ inscribed on two levels (1976c: 113). T h is doubling is effected by the fact that social ‘objects’ neutralise ‘the relationship o f logical im plication which norm ally exists between action and the power to act when the subject o f pow er is an individual’: in its d isen gagem en t the ‘decisional p ro ced u re’ o f a social organisation em bodies the power to act and p erform s acts. (1976c: 114). T h at is, ju st as the ‘n orm al’ disen gagem en t o f social discourse allows P ropp and Lévi-Strauss to privilege folktales and myth, so it allows G reim as to see m ore clearly what I have called the global double articulation. In an analysis whose elegance is distinguished by the careful balance between general semiotic categories and a detailed analysis that envisions the functioning o f those categories in a particular legal text, G reim as and Landow ski create a m odel o f social analysis. T h is last point is quite im portant. By using a particular text o f legal discourse (‘loi N 66—537 du 24 ju illet 1966’) rather than m ore implicit social codes, ‘Analyse sém iotique’ is able to create a semiotic readin g o f social institutions that approach es the elegance and thorough ness o f Maupassant. But m ore than this, the particularity o f the text allows the study to rem ain a semiotic analysis on the discursive level o f language, the ju n ctu re between lexicon and gram m ar, rather than on the level o f sem io-narrative structures. Yet even in this specificity legal discourse rem ains social discourse: collective, anonym ous, and finally to be u nderstood in term s o f the ‘duplicity’ o f double articulation. With this text, then, the au thors are able to analyse in contem porary society the relationship between n ature and culture that preoccupies Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology. ‘Legal discou rse,’ they note, ‘com prises two distinct levels: the referential level and the legislative level, the first being the discursive projection o f a “ reality” m ade o f things and events which could be called 146

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales natural, which the second attem pts to make accessible to culture by giving to objects and behaviors form s and rules o f p ro p er functioning.’ (1976c: 103) H ere Lévi-Strauss’s own analytical procedure, his social science, becom es the object o f semiotic analysis.

Individual texts: semiotics of literature Semiotics o f the text G reim as’s m ost elaborate analysis o f individual as op posed to social discourse is his extended ‘read in g’, as he calls it, o f M aup assan t’s short story, ‘D eux am is’ (‘Tw o F rien d s’), in M aupassant, subtitled La sémiotique du texte: Exercices platiques (Sem iotics o f the T ext: Practical Exercises) (1976). H ere the opposition between social and individual discourses is especially pron oun ced: as G reim as says in an earlier short study o f M aupassant, as op posed to the Proppian hero who Finds him self Ίη conjunction with society . . . , the hero o f M aupassant is a solitary hero.’ (1973b: 143) In any case, Maupassant is a m ajor study, a tw o-hundred-and-fifty page analysis o f a six-page story which exam ines in detail the ge n eration and description o f signification in an ‘individual universe’: it describes what G reim as calls ‘the text presented [to the reader] as a schem a o f sim ple com prehension, a “signifying whole” .’ (M : 224) T h e semiotics o f Maupassant is an attem pt to ‘universalise’ (Ai: 11) P rop p ’s (and, implicitly, Lévi-Strauss’s) analyses o f collective narratives. Like the Analytical Dictionary, its aim is sim ultaneously m odest and am bitious. It attem pts, as G reim as says, simply to describe a ‘m ethodological approach best suited to the strategy o f semiotic research at the present tim e.’ (M: 263) But at the sam e time, it attem pts to begin to discover the ‘m odes o f production o f discursive units . . . definable by their gram m atical m ode o f p rod uction .’ (M: 266) T h u s the practical exercises o f Maupassayit have a particular aim which captures this com bination o f m odesty and am bition. ‘It is not a question ,’ G reim as writes, o f either certain knowledge or articulating definitions, but o f a way o f approach in g the text, o f proced ures o f 147

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Scie?ices Sociales segm entation, o f recognising particular regularities and, above all, recognising m odels o f predictable narrative organisation, m odels which apply, in principle, to all kinds o f texts and, follow ing ju stifiab le extrapolations, even to the relationships, m ore or less stereotypical, am on g hum an behaviours. (M: 7) Segmentation: the ‘modesty’ of method Maupassant begins, as G reim as begins here, with m ethods for the segm entation o f ‘D eux am is’. G reim as divides M aup assan t’s story into twelve ‘sequen ces’, and fu rth er subdivides these sequences them selves into what he som etim es calls ‘segm en ts’, som etim es ‘narrative utteran ces’ (abbreviated Έ Ν ’), som etim es simply p arag rap h s and sentences. In the conclusion he notes that the book attem pts to vary its m ethodological approach es to the text as much as possible (M: 263), and in differen t chapters it presents ‘m ultiplication o f criteria for segm entation’. (M: 69) T h u s he uses ‘spatiotem poral’ isotopies (M: 19), differen t sentences (M: 23f), repetition o f sentence fragm en ts (M: 93), Proppian functions (M: 67, 161), repetition o f particular w ords in the text (‘s ’arrêter, ‘Mais' (M: 84, 135)) or particular m orph em es (‘revint’, ‘/rm it’ (M: 253)), repetition o f ‘interpretative action’ o f the characters (Μ: 119), logical and parallel relationships (see M: 144), ‘fo rm al’ oppositions (M: 175), repetition o f physical action (M: 191, 216), and in one case simply the delim iting o f su rro u n d in g seq u en ces.(M: 240) Both form al (or ‘logical’) and sem antic (or ‘discursive’) criteria are used at various times. For exam ple, ‘the oth er’ im plies its logical contrary, ‘the sam e’, and G reim as distinguishes between sequence V III in which the G erm an officer in ‘D eux am is’ says ‘another thing m atters here’ and sequence V II, in which he talks about the activity o f fishing in which the friends en gaged in the precedin g sequence ( s q VI). His discourse in so V II concerns ‘the sam e’ (i.e. fishing) and thus distinguishes itself from ‘another thing’ o f s q V III even though the segm entation occurs in the m iddle o f the o fficer’s speech. T h ro u gh o u t the segm entation o f ‘D eux am is’, however, G reim as seem s governed m ore by discursive, rather than logical considerations, what he calls the 1strategic principle . . . o f the segm entation o f the text into sequ en ces.’ (AÍ: 168) T h u s s q 148

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales X o f ‘D eux am is’ is defin ed discursively (not logically) by the fact that it begins ‘T h e G erm an gave an o rd er in his own lan gu ag e’ and ends with ‘T h e G erm an gave another o rd e r.’ (M: 216) W hether the criterion is form al or discursive, however, the segm entation o f narrative, like that o f phonology, m orphology, or ‘im m anent’ sem antics, is a crucial p rocedure: it defines what can be exam ined, related, structured. It is a form o f ‘decom position ’ that allows readin g and the appreh en sion o f a m eaningful whole. In fact, as both the logical implication in the G erm an ’s discourse and the discursive repetition o f his action o f giving ord ers imply, the segm entation o f ‘D eux am is’ is governed by m ethodological choices that assum e both the ‘w holeness’ o f signification and the efficacy o f the logic o f analysis: in this it repeats the phenom enological structuralism o f the Prague School. T h at is, the segm entation o f ‘D eux am is’ im plies two procedural ‘strategies’ based upon discourse sim ultaneously conceived o f as ‘logical’ and as ‘sem iotic’, correspon d in g to the modal logic and the modal semiotics I exam in ed in the last chapter. For this reason G reim as notes the differen ce between ‘logical disjunctions,’ sequences dem arcated by the logic o f disjunction (such as s q VI and s q V III which are differen tiated by the word ‘but’ (mais)), and ‘topical disjunctions,' sequences dem arcated by the disjunction o f the action (such as s q III which is differen tiated by the repetition o f the word ‘sto p p in g’ (s'arrêter)). Segm entation, then, can take place on either the (discursive) level o f actors and m anifestation or the (semionarrative) level o f actants. Segm entation consists in beginning with actors who are m anifested as discursive subjects endow ed with predicates and attaining actants which can be integrated within the narrative utterances. T h u s the proced ure seeks a narrative organisation subjacent to the discursive m anifestation which will allow the articulation o f the textual surface to be accounted for. In this way the behavior o f discursive actors can serve the segm entation o f the text, while the presence and absence, the appearan ce and disappearan ce, o f the actors and the signifying variations in their predicates can be considered as the demarcators o f the text equal to spatio-tem poral criteria. (M : 67)

149

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales T h e aim that governs the ‘strategic’ choices o f Maupassant is that o f ‘accounting fo r’ the textual surface, o f m aking sense o f the ‘intuitive read in g’ (M: 22) and the experience o f the “ intuitive” reader. (M: 228) Greimas and Barthes: the ‘ambition’ of accounting for everything In its segm entation which aim s at accounting for ‘w holeness’ o f ‘D eux am is’, Maupassant seem s virtually the book that Roland B arthes might have been parodyin g in S/Z (1970), published two years before G reim as began his ‘practical exercises’. In SIZ B arthes exam ines ‘frag m en ts’ (1974: 13) not segm ents — ‘the fragm ent, the shards, the broken architectonic’ (1974: 20) — and he seeks to describe not a m eaningful whole but ‘the plural o f the text’ where ‘everything signifies ceaselessly and several times, but without being delegated to a great final ensem ble, to an ultim ate structu re.’ (1974: 11-12) It is toward such a ‘fin al’ structure that G reim as aim s in M aupassant, o fferin g a pow erful formalist readin g o f a story which, through its strategies o f segm entation and linguistic analysis, accounts for virtually ‘everything’ in ‘D eux am is’. G reim as never m entions Barthes or S/Z in M aupassant, but som e o f his central analytical m etaphors — ‘slow m otion’, ‘decom position ’ (M: 242; Barthes 1974: 12) — uncannily ‘rep eat’ those o f Barthes. M aupassant, G reim as argu es, can be read in the m anner o f readin g a poem — in fact, a ‘symboliste po em ’ (M: 12; see p. 28): ‘the short story, as a ge n re’, he writes, ‘can be considered as the equivalent in prose o f a poem because o f its sim ultaneous paradigm atic and syntagm atic structu re.’ (M: 12) I f SIZ, with its plural readings, its fragm ents, its digressions, its ‘decom position’ (as op p osed to ‘deconstruction’ (see Jo h n so n 1980)) is an archetypal ‘m etonym ic’ reading, the reading o f prose as a signifying chain (B arth es’s term is signifiance; see 1977: 10), then Maupassant can well be an archetypal ‘m etaph oric’ reading, not o f a ‘chain’ o f signifiers, but the readin g o f poetic substitutions o f signifieds. T h u s in a rare digression G reim as consciously excludes from consideration a ‘realistic’ ex p lanation in M aupassan t’s text, argu in g that ‘it is only a stylistic gesture used by M aupassant (and also by Flaubert) aim ed at effacing, by a “ realistic” touch, the symbolist m eaning-effect o f w riting.’ (M: 245) In SIZ, Barthes distinguishes between classical ‘readerly’ texts which are ‘decidable, continuous, totalizable, and unified into a coherent whole based on the 150

Maupassant and Sêmiotique et Sciences Sociales signified’ and ‘writerly’ texts which are ‘infinitely plural and open to the free play o f signifiers and o f differen ce, unconstrained by representative considerations, and transgressive o f any desire for decidable, unified, totalized m ean in g’ (Johnson 1980: 6); in Maupassant G reim as erases this opposition. He offers, instead, a ‘readerly’ totalising readin g that eschews the referential, focusing on the play o f signifieds without being constrained by ‘represen tative’ considerations. Such ‘play’ treats the signified as signifier. T his is because his actantial sem antics, as I have su ggested, explores the signified as if it were a signifier (that is, the second articulation) in the syntactics o f the sem io-narrative level. T h is is not all Maupassant does: as I have already m entioned, it offers a m eticulous form alist read in g that repeatedly startles the read er with symmetry, elegance, harm ony — in a word the ‘w holeness’ — o f its appreh en sion o f the story. B u t most powerfully, following the lan gu age o f linguistics, it o ffers a ‘sem iology’ (in B arth es’ early sense o f the word) o f reading. ‘I f realism is not realistic,’ G reim as notes o f M aupassant, ‘then the sem iotician will not have to trouble him self to dem onstrate that sym bolism, in its turn, is not “sym boliste” , especially in the ontological sense which is usually attributed to the term .’ (M: 12) T h u s G reim as brackets the ontology which inhabits B arth es’ ‘post-structuralist’ goal ‘to make the read er no longer a consum er, but a prod u cer o f the text’ (B arth es 1974: 4) in ord er to exam ine and ‘account fo r’, linguistically, ‘D eux am is’.

Analysis ‘before’ actan ts: poetry T h ro u gh o u t his writing G reim as distinguishes the discourse o f poetry from other form s o f discourse, and before I turn to the linguistic analysis o f M aupassant I want to exam ine his conception o f poetry. I want to do so because, although G reim as o ffers an actantial analysis o f ‘D eux am is’ and repeatedly invokes the actantial categories he developed in his analysis o f Propp (see M: 8, 52, 61, 63, 91, 94, 99, 1 14, 115, 160, 180, 193, 233, 249, 257, 263), the central thrust o f his readin g o f ‘D eux am is’, as he says, it to read it as if it were a poem . Such a reading approach es a text at a sem antic level prior to the level o f actants, and it does so by m eans o f its special lo g ic ’ o f segm entation, that o f poetic closure. 151

Maupassant and Sémiotiqne et Sciences Sociales As in his reading o f ‘D eux am is’ — and, m ore globally, his ‘read in g’ o f signification altogether — G reim as begins his analysis with ‘a certain naive intuition’ that poetry is distinguishable from prose (1972: 6). In the extrem e case o f m odern poetry G reim as notes that ‘poetic discourse — above all when it consciously aim s at “ the abolition o f syntax” — m anifests on its surface, because o f its om ission o f m arks o f redun dan ce, a certain gram m atical incoherence.’ (AÍ: 28) H e op poses this conception to that o f ‘a “ logical” discourse . . . sustained by an anaphoric netw ork’ o f internal cross referen ces (M: 28). It is between these two extrem es, he suggests, that ‘all the m an ifestations o f natural languages occur’ (M: 28), but the extrem e opposition in an im portant one. It is im portant because it suggests a linguistic m ethod o f distinguishing between poetry and prose. ‘We know,’ G reim as says, that the receiver o f any discourse succeeds in elim inating, at the m om ent o f perception, about 40% o f the red u n dancies o f the distinctive phonological features [redondances phemique] unnecessary for the appreh en sion o f m eaning; inversely, the reception o f the poetic m essage can be interpreted as the valorisation o f redundancies which becom e significative with the changing o f the level o f perception, valorisation which would give rise to the appreh en sion o f regularities constituting a new isotopy, o f sound, o f connotation as it were, and not only o f denotation. (1972: 16) For G reim as poetry is ap p reh en d ed on a differen t level from prose: on the level o f ‘ph em es’ (distinctive phonological features) and sem es rather than that o f phonem es and sem em es or that o f m orphem es and syntactical categories. ‘Poetic com m unication,’ G reim as writes, ‘is essentially the transm ission o f semic contents, using sem em es, for instance, in the sam e way daily discourses use gram m atical structure for the m anifestation o f the contents at another level.’ (55: 154) ‘What is com m on to all [poetic] ph en om en a,’ he adds, is the shortening o f the distance between the signifier and the signified: one could say that poetic langu age, while rem aining part o f language, seeks to reachieve the

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales ‘prim al cry’, and thus is situated midway between sim ple articulation and a linguistic double articulation. It results in a ‘m ean in g-effect’ . . . which is that o f ‘rediscovered truth’ which is original and originary accordin g to the particular case. It is in this illusory signification o f a ‘deep m eaning’, hidden and inherent in the plane o f ex p ression, that we can situate the problem o f an agram s. (1967b: 279; see also 1972: 23; 1980: 107) It is in a linguistic analysis such as this that G reim as attem pts to ‘substitute precise gram m atical defin ition s’ for Rom an Jak o b son ’s ‘vagu e’ distinction between ‘m etaph or’ and ‘m etonym y’ in defin ing the differen ce between poetry and prose (M: 30; see Jak o b so n 1956, 1960). In the context o f M aupassant, m oreover, G reim as’s precise gram m atical definition o f poetry calls for a d ifferen t level o f analysis than that o f actants. A ctants, as we have seen are constituted by classem es; they are units that exist on the semionarrative level o f discourse. Poetry, however, utilises elem ents o f langu age that exists on a ‘d e e p e r’ level than that o f actants — the im m anent level o f sem es and distinctive featu res — so that ‘the hypotactic relations between sem es which constitutes . . . sem em es are apparently tran sform ed into relationships o f equivalence.’ (SS: 154) T h u s rather than the syntax o f semiotic gram m ar, poetic analysis calls fo r an exam ination o f ‘logicosem antic tran sform ation s’: ‘in ou r reflections on narrativity,’ G reim as writes, we would like to see the opposition between abstract structures (the locus o f logico-sem antic transform ations) and a m ore superficial syntax, sim ultaneously actantial and m odal; this point o f view is not incom patible with the distinction between levels characterised by semic structures on the one hand and sem em ic structures on the other. (1972: 19) Such a point o f view calls for an analysis in term s o f the logic o f the elem entary structure o f signification that G reim as pu rsu es (in part) in Maupassant. But if the redun dan cies o f gram m atical categories serve the appreh en sion o f signification, then without such categories poetic com m unication can only be ‘ap p reh en d ed ’ if poetic texts — like that o f short stories 153

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales — are limited and closed. ‘T h e concept o f closure,’ G reim as writes, ‘. . . is an elem ent in the definition o f the poetic object.’ (1972: 22) It is this ‘inheren t’ segm entation that m akes poetry possible: like Poe, G reim as defines poetry in term s (albeit, structural linguistic term s) o f length. In this he m arks his differen ce from B arth es’s readin g o f Balzac. T h e poetic text — and the text o f M aupassan t conceived as poetry — is closed an d fo r that reason decidable, continuous, unified into a coherent whole — even though its signifieds ‘play’. M oreover, this very play m akes it susceptible to structural linguistic analysis, best represen ted by Ja k o b so n ’s and L évi-Strauss’s analysis o f ‘Les C h ats’ (Jakobson 1962) which G reim as repeatedly cites in his discussion o f poetry. (1967b; 1972) Such ‘poetic’ closure, o f course, cannot be absolute: poetic texts, G reim as also notes, ‘can be said to open onto other poetic objects’ (1972: 22) and, because o f this, a nonfigurative ‘gram m ar’ o f poetry can be conceived. In Maupassant G reim as describes ‘D eux am is’ opening upon patriotic and Christian ‘isotopies,’ the latter o f which he calls ‘a new figurative isotopy o f reading, subjacent to the first.’ (AÍ: 238) While such readings dep en d on ‘the receptive competence o f the re ad e r’, still such com petence can only function ‘with the aid o f semiotic o p e rations which characterise his interpretative activity.’ (M: 239) T h u s G reim as concludes ‘one would be w rong to im agine that everything can be thus reduced to a subjective com petence o f a read er and to confirm the theory o f a “infinite num ber o f possible read in g s” .’ (M: 239) Finally, for G reim as, texts are ‘readerly’, and whatever ‘writerly’ qualities they possess are them selves ‘without difficulty attributable to the sen d er.’ (M: 239)

The linguistic analysis o f “M a u p a ssa n t” For these reasons G reim as pu rsu es a linguistic analysis in M aupassant, not in term s o f a ‘figu rative’ gram m ar such as B arth es’ five codes in S/Z which he never again utilises in an analysis o f discourse, but as an analysis that is ‘practical’ in the sense that it offers a m odel o f analysis presenting ‘a limited num ber o f principles o f structural organization o f narrative units, com plete with rules for the com bination and functioning o f these units.’ (1971b: 794) T h e c h ie f‘principles o f structural 154

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales organization ’ that Maupassant presents are the two he uses to define ‘natural lan gu ag e’ (langue) in the Analytical Dictionary, double articulation and the processes o f disengagem ent. (SL: 169) At the end o f M aupassant G reim as notes that the ‘m echanism s o f “discursivisation” (mise en discours; see SL : 85) . . . are so badly u n d ersto od ’ that only two m odes o f production o f discursive units — at least those which we have seen in the text o f M aupassant we have studied — can be distinguished at present: first are the proced ures o f disengagement and engagement creating the unequal and varied distances between instances o f enunciation and those o f utterance, which institute auton om ous discursive units defin able by their gram m atical m ode o f production; and second are the proced ures o f isotopic connection which assure the coherence o f discourse, despite the variations o f the planes — abstract and figurative — o f sem antic m an ifestations. (M: 266) T h e second proced u re G reim as describes in term s o f the relations between planes o f lan gu age correspon d s to the ‘global’ double articulation o f discourse I exam ined earlier in term s o f the social sciences while disengagement and engagement, as it is described in Maupassant, lends itself to a non-actantial ‘poetic’ analysis as G reim as un d erstan ds it. Both are ‘gram m atical’ in a nonfigurative sense: isotopic connections involve the sem io-narrative level o f actants, while disengagem ent involves a d eeper ‘poetic’ level, neutralising the opposition o f enunciation and utterance by substituting the unm arked term , ‘u tterance’ in its ‘poetic’ sense o f ‘prim al cry’. The semio-narrative level In sofar as Maupassant offers an actantial analysis o f ‘D eux am is’ — distinguishing between subject (the dual subject o f the two friends) and object (their fishing expedition), sen der (‘life’ figu red by the ‘su n ’ and by ‘w ater’) and the receiver (‘peace’ figured by the friends) — it presu p p o ses the double articulation o f discourse in term s o f the ‘discursive significance’ o f the first articulation and the ‘actants’ o f the second. D ouble articulation is further elaborated in the actantial analysis o f ‘Deux am is’ in term s o f V/ double narrative program whose utter155

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales anees [énoncés] — in their totality or only partially — are su perim posed and correlated .’ (M: 163) T h e second ‘narrative p ro g ram ’ p resu p p o ses an ‘anti-subject’ (the Prussians figu red by the G erm an officer), its object (the passw ord the two friends possess that will allow them to return to Paris), a sen der (‘d eath ’ figu red by M ount Valerien and by the sky) and a receiver (‘w ar’ figu red by the Prussians). I am sim plifying G reim as’s rem arkable detailed actantial analysis here whose logic o f exposition ‘accounts fo r’ details as m inute as M aupassan t’s reference to absinthe as ‘the green ’ (see ‘D eux am is’ reprinted in M: 14) in terms o f an actantial analysis o f ‘the extrem e poverty’ o f colours in ‘D eux am is’. (M: 80) Even though the green o f absinthe com bines the ‘re d ’ o f the sun and the ‘blue’ o f the sky, ‘the two colours presented in ou r sequence,’ G reim as writes, ‘are /blue/and /green/, while the /reel/, necessary for the constitution o f /green/, is absent.’ (M: 87) In this way the actantial analysis accounts fo r the alcohol-induced delusion o f the two friends: ‘this takes place as if the trickster [i.e. the absinthe], unable to reprod uce the solar figure, nevertheless proceeds in an allusive way: the com plex term s which are thus dressed out strongly imply the presence o f the sender “S u n ” while m aintaining a negative dominance and presenting the true visage o f the anti-sender “Sky” .’ (M : 87) T his is one exam ple o f the ‘com plexity’ o f the actantial analyses o f Maupassant conceived in term s o f sem io-narrative elaborations o f the double articulation o f discourse: as G reim as says, ‘analytical experience — both ou r own and that o f other sem ioticians — has convincingly dem onstrated that, to account for texts even a little com plex, it is necessary to consider the possibility o f explodin g (éclatement) any actant into at least fou r actantial positions’ inscribed on a semiotic square (M: 63; see also 1973a). Disengagement and etigagement I will have to let this one exam ple stand in a sketchy way for the varied and detailed actantial analyses that attem pt to account for the sem antics o f ‘Deux am is’ simply because the totalising analysis o f Maupassant requires the weaving o f such detailed expositions into its own m eaningful whole. I o ffer it here as an exam ple o f an analysis of the double articulation o f discourse involving the sem io-narrative — i.e. the actantial — level. M ore significantly, I believe, is that the closed nature o f individual 156

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales narratives allow them to be conceived o f as poetic and to be analysed on a level differen t from the sem io-narrative level. A lthough G reim as d o esn ’t explicitly say so, it is this fact that perm its him to o ffer a ‘n on figurative’ actantial analysis o f B ern an os’s work in the last chapter o f Structural Semantics — an analysis which is G reim as’s first description o f actants in the m odal term s elaborated in Du Sens II — and it allows him to present an analysis o f ‘D eux am is’ in term s o f the m ore purely sem antic (i.e. nonsyntactic) term s o f en gagem en t/disen gagem en t alon g with the actantial term s we have exam ined. Such an analysis is nonsyntactic in sofar as it corrolates logical gram m atical categories with gram m atical categories. T h e clearest exam ple, I believe, is G reim as’s discussion o f anaphora. A n aph o ra is a segm ent o f discourse that refers to an other segm ent o f the sam e discourse; pron ou n s referrin g to antecedents are the clearest exam ple (D ucrot & T o d o ro v 1979: 281). In Maupassant G reim as distinguishes between ‘cognitive anaphora which describes ‘the logical relationship o f identity established between any two term s o f disco u rse’ and ‘semantic anaphora which is ‘the relationship o f equivalence (partial semic identity) tying together two term s situated within the discursive content as a textual (not a tem poral) before and after.’ (M: 44) Sem antic an aph ora, situated on the level o f sem es, correspon d to poetic discourse as G reim as defines it. M oreover, situated on the plane o f the content, it allows an analysis o f the content o f discourse in a m anner isom orphic to the analysis o f discourse in general. T h u s G reim as distinguishes between the ‘an ap h o rised ’ (anaphorisé) and the ‘an ap h o riser’ (anaphorisant) in term s directly parallel to the signified and signifier. (Ai: 44; see S L : 13) M ost im portant, the distinction between sem antic and cognitive an aphorics allows the transform ation o f an ‘o p en ’ discourse into a ‘closed’ discourse: it transform s, as poetry does, partial semic equivalences into identities. It does so by neutralising the opposition between enunciation and utterance by taking the disengaged segm ent as a m eaningful whole which itself can be rein tegrated (‘e n g ag e d ’) within the whole o f the story. In the discussion o f an aphorics in M aupassant G reim as exam ines the flashback, early in the wartime description o f Paris in ‘D eux am is’, to the peaceful fishing expedition s o f the two friends b efo re the FrancoPrussian War. T h e flashback com prises s q II, tem porally

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Maupassant and Sêmiotique et Sciences Sociales distinguished from the other sequences. But the sequence itself is a ‘cognitive an aph oric’ relating the past to the present in the m inds o f the friends: it ‘n eutralises’ the opposition between past and present and thus neutralises the opposition between en gagem en t/disen gagem en t upon which the segm entation is based. Such neutralisation, G reim as writes, is effected by cognitive activity, an operation whose result consists in the acquisition o f a knowledge concerning the relationship o f identity between any two term s, in ou r case the identity o f the present M. Sauvage with M. Sauvage situated in the past: the identification therefore constitutes the neutralisation o f the tem poral category present vs past which was used in the disen gagem en t [of this sequence]. In this way the cognitive operation establishes the dom ination o f the relationship o f identity over the tem poral category. For this relationship o f identity is a form al an aphoric relationship relating any two term s: we say that it is a m atter here o f a cognitive anaphoric. (AÍ: 44) In m ore general term s this is the neutralisation o f the distinction between utterance and enunciation. T h e ‘cognitive activity’ is that o f the actor on the plane o f enunciation — that o f M. Sau v age’s friend, M orissot, who ‘recognises’ Sauvage as a friend — while the ‘cognitive an aph orics’ is that o f the read er on the plane o f utterance — who ‘recognises’ the flashback as ‘presen t’ m em ory. T h e plane o f enunciation jo in ed with that o f utterance com prises the level o f discourse. T h ro u gh o u t Maupassant G reim as notes the neutralisation o f enunciation vs utterance in term s o f free indirect discourse (M: 110, 123), in term s o f the opposition o f symbolism vs realism (M: 131), in term s o f narrative levels (M: 156), in term s o f the opposition o f knowledge vs pow er. (M: 187) T h e neutralisation o f utterance vs enunciation is effected by alternating disengagem ent and engagem ent resulting in a ‘pron ou n cem ent’: a seemingly ‘objective’ statem ent which nevertheless suggests the personal authority o f a speaker (see M: 131 for a detailed analysis). As I noted in C hapter 1, the opposition between engagem ent vs disengagem ent is a foundation o f linguistic analysis altogether: it allows the ‘disen gagem en t’ o f the nonlinguistic situation o f enunciation in sem antic analysis. Its neutralisation allows for the com prehension o f discourse as 158

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales a m eaningful ivhole, a whole which is delim ited by the intentionality o f discourse, but nevertheless is disengaged from a particular speaker (subject). (SL: 104, 157) A ccording to G reim as, P rop p ’s analysis o f the w ondertale is simply a ‘special case’ o f this neutralisation which confuses the actants and spatial dislocations (i.e. the functions) o f discourse. ‘H ere are the reason s,’ G reim as says, which have led us, fo r som e time already, to take exception to the Proppian interpretation as simply a special case [trop particulière], and to attem pt, in sep aratin g the two proced u res o f disengagement and engagement, to treat first the spatial organisation o f the narrative utterance [récit-énoncé] in its strict sense, focusing on the spatial disengagem ent which objectifies the spatial representation, and then to describe, separately, the narrative inflections obtained by the interventions characteristic o f the sender. (M : 99) G reim as is describing the distinction between the dictum and the m odality o f discourse upon which he bases his definition and m odal analysis o f actants and functions. B u t he does so in term s directly related to the relationship between the utterance o f lan gu age conceived as its ‘dictum ’ and the enunciation o f langu age conceived in the m odality (the ‘inflections’) that characterises its actants (here the actant ‘sen d er’). M oreover, he is specifically describing the p roced ure o f Maupassant as a whole, best exem plified in the spatial disengagem ent followed by the ‘cognitive’ reintegration o f s q II, and this proced ure, as I have su ggested, is best understood as the semantic n eutralisation o f the opposition utterance vs enunciation.

Linguistics an d 'literature9 T h e neutralisation o f the distinction between enunciation and utterance is effected by the substitution o f the unm arked term, ‘utterance’ — conceived in its double sense o f ‘cry’ and ‘statem ent’ — for the restricted opposition. T h is is why G reim as repeatedly describes enunciation as ‘overdeterm in ed’: as the m arked term in the opposition, enunciation vs utterance, it conveys m ore inform ation. It i s / + voice/in the semantic sense o f 159

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales m arking its statem ent with the ‘voice’ (or nonlinguistic situ ation) o f its speaker. In the individual narratives o f closed m icrouniverses such ‘voicing’ can be seen not as a ‘nonlinguistic situation o f com m unication’ (SS: 175), but as linguistic ph enom en a inscribed in the redun dan cies that characterise a ‘closed signifying universe’ (SS: 105) — inscribed, that is, within the ‘utteran ces’ o f discourse. It is in this sense that G reim as can talk, as we have seen in s q II, o f ‘cognitive activity’ and ‘cognitive an aph o rics’ in the sam e breath (M: 44): the fo rm er is that o f the actors, the latter that o f the reader, but the distinction itself is erased (i.e. neutralised) in sofar as the ‘iden tity’ o f the actor — including ‘his’ voice — is a language-effect. I f we inscribe this relationship in a sem iotic squ are (see Figure 4.4), we can approach a definition o f the individual narrative o f ‘literature’, not in term s o f its figu res or subject m atter or whatever, but in term s o f the imitated voice o f lan gu age that closed m icrouniverses effect. T h at is, ‘literature’, I would argu e, im plicates itself in the problem atics o f reference. Figure 4.4 enunciation /statement/ /+voice/

utterance /statement/ /-voice/

cognitive activity /identity of speaker/ /-voiced/; reference as language-effect

closure of 'literary' discourse neither voiced nor voiceless; anaphorics: 'play' of signified without referents

In this square, / + voice/ is the nonlinguistic situation o f enunciation. If, as I am argu in g, it is true that ‘literature’ can best be conceived o f as ‘closed’, it is because such closure can explain the antinom ies o f literature in linguistic term s: its imitation o f voice and o f voicelessness, its sim ultaneously referential and nonreferential im port, its apparently open and closed nature. Most im portant, as we have seen in G reim as’s sem antic description o f poetry, such a conception o f ‘literature’ can explain its ability to transform the various redun dan cies o f 160

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales language — phonological, gram m atical, syntactic, sem antic — which function to serve com m unication, into signifying elem ents o f discourse. In Writing Degree Zero B arthes distinguishes between speech and writing in term s o f the intention o f com m unication: the aim o f com m unication in speech, he argu es, leads to the redun dan cies o f language, what he calls the ‘expendability o f w ords’ while writing is ‘anti-com m unication’: What m akes writing the opposite o f speech is that the form er always appears symbolical, introverted, ostensibly turned tow ards an occult side o f langu age, whereas the second is nothing but a flow o f em pty signs, the m ovem ent o f which alone is significant. T h e whole o f speech is epitom ized in this expendability o f words, in this froth ceaselessly swept onw ards, and speech is found only where lan gu age self-evidently functions like a devourin g process which swallows only the m oving crest o f the words. W riting, on the contrary, is always rooted in som ething beyond lan gu age, it develops like a seed, not like a line, it m anifests an essence and holds the threat o f a secret, it is an anti-com m unication, it is intim idating. (1967: 19-20) B arth es’s language, even in this early work, is fully figurative even in its global distinction between speech and writing, yet what he is figu rin g here is the transform ation o f the red u n dancies o f langu age into signifying structures. In ordinary discourse (‘speech’), com m unication — the passing on o f a m essage from a sen der to a receiver — is the over-riding ‘intention’ and, as G reim as notes, up to 40% o f linguistic in fo rmation serves this end through repetition. For instance, in the utterance ‘He goes to the store’, the category ‘third-person sin gu lar’ is redundantly presented by the pron ou n ‘he’ and the verbal inflection “goes'. A ‘literary’ reading, however, asks all the inform ation to be read as signifying rather than as com m unicatively (i.e. intentionally) redu n dan t; it ‘initiates discourse full o f gaps and full o f lights, filled with absences and overnourishing signs, without foresight or stability o f intention, and thereby so op posed to the social function o f lan gu age that merely to have recourse to a discontinuous speech is to open the do or to all that stands above N atu re.’ (B arthes 1967: 4 8 -4 9 ) 161

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales T h at is, if B arth es’ distinction between speech and writing can be seen to figure the sem antic distinction between voiced and unvoiced language, then his ‘zero d eg ree’ neutralises this opposition and conceives o f discourse as neither voiced nor voiceless. Such a conception replaces the intention o f signification, which we have seen governs the phenom enology o f the Prague School and even, as G reim as suggests, o f Saussure him self (G reim as 1956: 192), with the play o f the signified. B arthes him self approach es such ‘play’ in his literary criticism, but with only a ‘figurative’ linguistics his ‘play’ never explicitly en gages its opposite, ‘seriou sn ess’, ju st as Paul de M an’s nonfigurative analyses o f the undecidable ‘play’ o f literary discourse finally seem s reducible only to the anxiety o f ‘serio u sn ess’ rather than the ‘pleasu re’ o f play. In any case, B arth es’ conception o f ‘d egree zero’ o f writing points tow ards G reim as’s n onfigurative linguistic distinction between the functions o f redun dan cies in language. T h e redun dan cies o f lan gu age serve the functional intention o f linguistic com m unication. But like every other elem ent o f langu age — and in this fact m ore than any place else we can see the force o f Benveniste’s distinction between lan gu age and other ph enom ena — even the redun dan cies can be ‘taken u p ’ by a d ifferen t level o f lan gu age to function in a d ifferen t capacity. T h u s in literature redun dan cies becom e signifying. B ut the im port o f this analysis goes beyond literature because in depth psychology the redun dan cies becom e signifying as well: not only can any piece o f discourse be read as ‘literature’, its (com m unicative) redun dan cies as signifying elem ents within a ‘closed’ signifying m icrouniverse; it can also be read as ‘cognitive’, its sp eak er’s (or sen d er’s) identity as a languageeffect linked again to the redun dan cies o f language. B ut this opposition, between literature and psychology — like that between the social sciences and the hum anities exam ined in this chapter — itself can be reinscribed in the opposition utterance vs enunciation and itself neutralised. T h at is, ‘play’ — between voice and voicelessness, intention and nonintention, seriousness and playfulness — itself is an unm arked term restrictedly signifying ‘interplay’ (as op posed to substance or referent) and generally signifying the linguistic fact o f positionality and role-playing (including the roles o f relationality, substantification, and referen ce as a ‘languageeffect’). ‘Play’, then, is a defin ing characteristic o f linguistic 162

Maupassant and Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales phenom ena which I will explore in the next chapter in term s o f the ap p ro p riatin g pow er o f lan gu age — its ability to take up and put aside anything at hand for the sake o f its m eanings. Such ‘play’ is inscribed in G reim asian sem iotics u n d er the rubric o f enunciation.

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5 Avatars of Semiotics: Greimas and Poststructuralism

Semiotics in crisis Enun ciation as Discourse A central problem fo r semiotic analysis is the problem o f enunciation. T h is is due to two factors. First o f all, enunciation reinvests discourse with its ‘nonlinguistic situation’; it ‘scatters’, as the Analytical Dictionary says, lan gu age ‘into an infinite num ber o f exam ples o f speech (S au ssu re’s parole), outside all scientific cognizance.’ (SL: 103) G reim asian analysis, Je a n C alloud notes, ‘must be com plem ented by research on the problem o f enunciation, that is, o f the production o f the text’ (1976: 46; see Parret 1983 fo r an argu m en t in favour o f a ‘pragm atic tu rn ’ in semiotics). In fact, he goes on, G reim as is open to such fu rther research. In this we can see the way G reim as’s sem iotics distinguishes itself from that o f many other linguists and sem ioticians m entioned th roughout this study: he attem pts to account not only for the m echanism s o f m eanings — the structures which allow form al und erstan din g o f signification an d/or com m unication while excludin g what H jelm slev calls the ‘sem antics’ o f lan gu age (1961: 79) — but also to account for the ‘sen se’ o f m eaning, the m eaning-effect o f semiotic systems in particular discourses. T o this end G reim as places enunciation within his semiotics ‘as a linguistic dom ain which is logically p resu p p o sed by the very existence o f the utterance (which contains traces or m arkers o f the enunciation).’ (SL: 103) For G reim as enunciation, like the / + voice/ I exam ined in the last chapter, is a 164

Avatars of Semiotics ‘m ediating’ or neutralising term , ‘a dom ain o f m ediation by which discourse is p ro d u ced .’ (SL: 103) T h u s the Analytical Dictionary notes that In between lan gu age (conceived o f as a paradigm atic system) and speech — already interpreted by H jelm slev as a syntagm atic system and now specified in its status as discourse — it is indeed necessary to supply m ediating structures and to im agine how it is that lan gu age as a social system can be assum ed by the individual realm without as a result being scattered into an infinite num ber o f exam ples o f speech. (SL: 103) H ere, then, is the great am bition o f G reim as’s project: its attem pt to account not only fo r the nature o f m eaning, but for the particular m eanings o f enunciation. T h e second reason that enunciation is a central concern for sem iotics is that enunciation, as G reim as and C ourtés defin e it, is the locus o f the problem o f lan gu age generally conceived. It is the place where what Benveniste describes as the essential nonsimplicity o f lan gu age — ‘ph enom en a belonging to the interhum an m ilieu’ (1971: 39) — is m ost clearly delineated. O ne way o f describing this ‘nonsim plicity’ — not the sole one, but certainly a crucial one — is in term s o f the two global goals o f semiotic systems, signification and communication (Eco 1976: 8—9; Ja ck so n 1985: 21—24). T h e first o f these is what Sau ssu re calls the ‘articulation’ o f the ‘uncharted nebula’ o f thought into ‘distinct id eas’: signification is the process by which ‘distinct signs’ com e to articulate inarticulate experience by ‘correspon din g to distinct ideas’. (1959: 112, 10) T h e second is what Benveniste calls the ‘problem ’ lan gu age serves to solve, namely ‘intersubjective com m unication’, instances o f ‘individual discourse, in which each speaker takes over all the resources o f lan gu age for his own b e h a lf in an enunciation, a com m unication-event. (1971: 219, 220) In these term s neutralisation, as I have described throughout this study, is im portant precisely because it attem pts, as G reim as does, to system atise the intersection between the particular com m unicative events o f enunciation and the general signifying structures o f utterance figured by G reim as as the ‘ap p reh en sion ’ o f the m eaningful whole o f discourse. It incorporates the double nature o f ‘linguistic activity’ in G reim as’s conception o f lan gu age: 165

A i >αtars of S emiotics algorithm ic, m orphem ic ‘events’ and the superim position o f ‘a systematic structure’ on these individual events by which lan gu age can be appreh en d ed as a m eaningful whole (SS: 134; see C hapter 1). N eutralisation, like the ‘m ediating’ definition o f enunciation, accounts for the breaches in the system o f language, the crossing and confusing o f the hierarchic levels by which lan gu age is structured. T h is is why I have em phasised the isom orphism between neutralisation and G reim as’s semiotic square. T h e elem entary structure o f signification describes the possibility o f enunciation, which is to say, the possibility always present in lan gu age that its signifying structures can be subordin ated to the function o f communi cation. T h at is, it is at the site o f enunciation that the genius o f lan gu age — its ability to ap p ro p riate ‘everything’ to its double goal o f signification and com m unication — takes place. In this we can see, in small, such a ‘con fusion ’ o f levels. On the one hand ‘com m unication’ p resu p p o ses ‘signification’ (Eco 1976: 9); on the other, com m unication can ap p ro p riate signification as if it were secondary to the com m unicative function so that discourse can com m unicate m ore than is ‘m eant’. H ere we can see most clearly the reasonin g behind the Analytical Dictionary's definition o f ‘N atural L an g u ag e ’ (langue) as a semiotic system whose ‘com binatory power . . . is du e to what is called double articulation and to the processes o f disen gagem en t.’ (SL: 169) N atural language is distinguished from other semiotic systems by its double articulation o f signification and com m unication and its ability to transform enunciation into utterance.

Enunciation an d the Semiotic Square Such doubling is m anifest in G reim as’s two m odels o f the semiotic square. T h e first, the ‘constitutional m odel’, accounts for signification logically, structurally, synchronically. It attem pts to account for what the Analytical Dictionary calls ‘deep semiotic structu res’. (SL: 293) T h e second m odel, his ‘tran sform ational’ or ‘m odal’ m odel, leaves room for the possibility o f change, ‘the intrusion o f history into permanence' (SS: 293), in the com m unicative functioning o f langu age and signification. It attem pts to account for enunciation as such. As Frederic Ja m eso n has described it, the first model involves ‘the 166

Avatars o f Semiotics replacem ent o f the abstract term inology with a concrete content’ in o rd er to perceive (or, as Lévi-Strauss says, ‘arrest’) the ‘logical organization ’ o f the structure o f the content, while the second m odel takes the form ‘o f a search fo r the m issing term . . ., which we may now identify as none other than the “ negation o f a negation” fam iliar from dialectical philosophy’ in ord er to see the (m odal, enunciatory) production o f structu ration. Ja m eso n claims that the transform ation al m odel creates a ‘decisive leap ’, ‘a production or generation o f new m ean in g’ (1972: 166), and G reim as’s figu re fo r this m odel — and its possible inscription on the semiotic square — is the explosion o f significati on (e.g. SS: 245). T his is an apt figu re fo r what he also calls the ‘adven t’ or ‘su dd en ap p earan ce’ (apparition) o f signification in m anifested discourse. M ore technically, however, such ‘explosion ’ is the tran sfo rm ation o f the negative term o f the semiotic square (non s) into the fourth position o f the square, the negative com plex position (neither s nor non 5). Figure 5.1 Si(s

S 2 (non s

S 2 (neither s nor non s)*

S t (both s and non s)

H ere the ‘com plex’ m ediating term (both 5 and non s) is negated or denied and dissociated ‘into a disjunctive category’ (55: 255; see the exam ple o f ‘violence’ in The Transformational Model o f Propp in the third chapter). It is, in part, for this reason that I described ‘dou ble’ effects o f neutralisation in C h apter 2 in relation to the sem iotic square. N eutralisation is ‘constitutional’; it is a m eans o f describing the ph enom en a o f enunciation in systematic term s. Yet radically or ‘negatively’ conceived, as I will argu e Ja c q u e s D errid a conceives o f it un d er his figure o f ‘deconstruction’, it explodes the m ediating function o f enunciation into nonlinguistic situations o f discourse: anxiety, desire, nonsense. In this way, then, G reim as’s sem iotics com es to account fo r its own denial, what G reim as him self calls ‘the avatars o f semio167

Avatars of Semiotics tics’ whose enunciation, he argu es, describes ‘a semiotics in crisis.’ (1980: 109) It is im portant that these ‘av atars’ be u n d erstood in term s o f enunciation, in the first place in term s o f the production o f signification rather than its product, the ‘play’ o f the signifier (signifiant) on the su rface o f discourse, what Barthes calls in a neologism the signifiance o f lan gu age (1977: 10). In other words, the ‘crisis’ in semiotics can be seen as a crisis in the opposition between surface vs depth o f analysis, and m ore generally, as a crisis in the hierarchical structure o f linguistics, semiotics, and discourse theory. T h is crisis has been described by D errida in his ‘deconstructive’ practice. In the second place the poststructural avatars o f sem iotics should be u nderstood in term s o f their particular ‘su rfaces’ o f enunciation, their particular discursive strategies, what G reim as defin es globally as ‘two types o f discursive m anipulation’, the two types o f ‘rhetoric’ described in C h apter 1: ‘hermeticoherm eneutic com m unication’ which G reim as explicitly associates with the discourse o f Ja c q u e s Lacan, and ‘scientific — or so-called scientific — discou rse’ (1980: 110-11) which I associate with the philosophical literary criticism o f Paul de Man.

Poststructural semiotics: the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida B efore I turn to an exam ination o f G reim as’s defin ing characteristic o f lan gu age in term s o f disengagem ent in the rhetoric o f Lacan and de Man I want to exam ine D errid a’s postructuralist critique o f semiotics. T h at critique, deconstruction, can be u nderstood semiotically in term s o f G reim as’s first defin ing characteristic o f langu age, double articulation. Double articulation describes the hierarchical nature o f the structure o f langu age while disengagem ent describes ‘one o f the constitutive aspects’ o f the act o f lan gu age (SL: 88). In this section, then, I will not be exam in ing enunciation as such. Rather, I will try to position deconstruction in relation to the double articulation o f lan gu age in o rd er to situate poststructuralist semiotics in the context o f G reim as’s account o f m eaning in the semiotic square. D errida situates his critique o f western m etaphysics in relation to semantics, which G reim as, unlike Hjelm slev and 168

Avatars o f Semiotics Bloom field, does not exclude from semiotics. ‘How ever the topic is con sidered,’ D errida begins O f Grammatology, ‘the problem o f language has never been simply one problem am o n g oth ers.’ (1976: 6) T h is is because, as he says elsew here (describing H u sserl’s phenom enology) ‘all experien ce is the experience o f m eaning (Sinn). Everything that ap p ears to consciousness, everything that is fo r consciousness in general, is meaning. M eaning is the phenom enality o f ph en om en on .’ (1981a: 30) D errida asserts that ‘the very m odernity o f linguistic science’ can be reconceived in the form ulation o f ‘m odernity as linguistic science, since so m any other “hum an sciences” refer to linguistics as their titular m odel.’ (1982: 139) D errida is m odern in this way as well, using the sem iology o f Sau ssu re as a m odel (o f sorts) fo r his own critique o f semiotics. (1981a: 2 6 -2 7 )

The double articulation o f signification an d communication Saussurean linguistics, like G reim asian sem iotics, can be a ‘m odel’ for m odern thought because it o ffers what D errida calls ‘an entire theory o f lan gu age: a functional, systematic, and structural theory’ (1982: 144) which attem pts to com preh end the phenom ena o f signification. At the heart o f structural linguistics is th g problem o f lan gu age: the doubleness o f linguistic ‘function’ as both a m eans and an end, as both a com m unicating and signifying structure. T h at is, function in P rague linguistics is not a sim ple concept; rather, it is m ediating, or, as the semiotic squ are describes it, ‘com plex’, signifying both function and goal. T h e ‘restricted’ function o f lan gu age is ‘intersubjective com m unication’, but that ‘fu n ctioning’, ‘generally’ conceived, entails signification: distinct signs correspon d in g to distinct ideas. L an gu age, then, in its functioning, establishes m eaning in general and the particular m eanings o f com m unication. And the compatibility o f the diacritical functioning and the signifying goal o f langu age is the central problem, as D errida says, o f language. T his problem is most clearly delineated in the great achievem ent o f the Prague School o f linguistics exam ined in C h apter 2, its developm ent o f phonology between 1929 and 1939 along Saussurean lines. Linguistics, D errida notes in the Grammatology, ‘wishes to be the science o f lan gu ag e,’ and 169

A i >αta rs of S emioties the scientificity o f that science is often acknow ledged because o f its phonological foundations. Phonology, it is often said today, com m unicates its scientificity to linguistics, which in turn serves as the epistem ological m odel fo r all the sciences o f m an. (1976: 29) P rague phonology em phasis the ‘scientific’ aspect o f linguistics by sep aratin g the communicative function o f langu age, achieved by the construction o f differen ces, from its articulation o f meaning. T h at is, the postulation o f the arbitrary nature o f the sign — the basic assum ption o f phonology — requires the separation between what H jelm slev calls the planes o f ‘ex pression ’ and ‘content’ and what M artinet calls the ‘sem antic content’ and the ‘phonic sh ap e’ o f language. Phonology assum es, as G reim as does, that lan gu age is ‘bi-planar’, and thus leads to what M artinet describes as the ‘double articulation’ o fla n g u a g e , the separation o f the articulation o f meaning from the ‘negative’ articulation o f phonological differen ces as such. T h e ‘first articulation’ o f lan gu age constructs a system o f distinct signs correspo n d in g to distinct ideas; it creates its signifying values by m eans o f the reciprocal differen ces o f its elem ents in the m anner o f G reim as’s sem es. T h e ‘second articulation’, however, constitutes the m inim um m eaningful units m ore ‘sim ply’, solely by m eans o f the presence or absence o f physical properties. T h e second articulation functions negatively in term s o f the ‘m ark ed ’ presence and absence o f its elem ents. It is what G reim as calls ‘negative m ean in g’. (SS: 62) Phonem es, M artinet argu es, unlike the elem ents o f the first articulation, can be established by distributional analysis ‘listing all the phonem es that ap p e ar in a given context.’ (1962: 41) T h e significant distinctions o f the first articulation, even though they are constituted diacritically, are ‘additive’, while those o f the second articulation are ‘destru ctive’. T h u s the diacritical opposition, presence vs absence, functions differently on the two planes o f articulation. T h e presence o f a phonem e, M artinet writes, signalizes that any inference, as to the m eaning o f the utterance, which might be drawn from the context considered without it is wrong: if, to the statem ent it is good, I add very, I am ju st ad d in g som e additional inform ation

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Avatars of Semiotics without deleting what was previously there, but if to the statem ent it is a roe I add a /d/ phonem e, the statem ent becom es it is a road; one elem ent o f inform ation roe is deleted and replaced by another one. (1962: 36) Such a hierarchical conception o f lan gu age governs the semiological analyses o f Lévi-Strauss and R oland Barthes. But with this differen ce: the elem ents o f the second articulation in langu age are articulated solely for the p u rpose o f the functioning o f lan gu age in both senses o f functioning; the elem ents o f the second articulation o f other sem iological systems — myth, fashion, food — are found at hand, a kind o f bricolage (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 17—20; see D errida 1976: 138— 39). As B arthes says, ‘in opposition to hum an lan gu age, in which the phonic substance is im m ediately significant, and only significant, most sem iological systems probably involve a m atter which has another function besides that o f being significant (bread is used to nourish, garm en ts to protect). (1968: 68) In semiotic systems, as op posed to natural lan gu age, the second articulation does not exist as such. While lan gu age seem s to differen tiate m ore clearly between the com m unicative functioning and the signifying goal than other semiotic systems and thereby achieves, m ore ‘im m ediately’, as B arthes says, the im m ediacy o f p u rp o se and functioning — the im m ediacy o f ‘significance’ — there are m om ents in lan gu age when this hierarchy breaks down. O ne such m om ent occurs in neutralisation. In neutralisation the second articulation o f lan gu age no longer exists solely fo r the system atic functioning o f language. In the context o f neutralisation the phonem e /t/ is not longer op posed to /d/, but is fou nd at hand — in a kind o f bricolage — to be used as a new archiphonem e which is neither /t/ nor /d/. T h is archiphonem e is not produced by a systematic com bination o f elem ents (distinctive features) from the subjacent level o f langu age, but by a denegation o f those elem ents. M oreover, as we have seen, Ja k o b so n argu es that the neutralisation o f m arked and unm arked term s takes place on the m orphological and sem antic levels o f lan gu age — the plane o f the first articulation — as well as on the phonological level. H ere is the im portance o f inscribing neutralisation on the semiotic squ are (see C hapter 2): it describes not only the ‘d efinite’ m ediation o f neutralisation, but its ‘indefinite’ negation.

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Avatars of Semiotics An exam ple o f sem antic m arkedness and neutralisation I m entioned in C hapter 2 — one which pronounces the alwayspresent political im plications o f this analysis — is the o p p o sition between man and woman. T h e neutralisation occurs ‘d efinitely’ (i.e. positively) in contexts such as chairman in which the unm arked term , man, signifies /person/; it occurs ‘indefinitely’ (i.e. negatively) in contexts such as mankind in which that term signifies /hum anity/ in such a way that the articulate units o f m eaning (i.e. the /discreteness/ o f ‘perso n ’) is negated.

Deconstruction an d the semiotic square N eutralisation involves Sau ssu re’s central conception o f langu age — what Jo n ath an C uller has called ‘the basic structural principle, that items are defin ed by their contrasts with other items and their ability to com bine to form higher-level item s.’ (1976: 50) At the sam e time neutralisation encom passes a ‘plexus o f eternally negative d ifferen ces’ (Saussu re; cited in Benveniste 1971: 36), a double negation o f opposition and its neutralisation. For this reason, I believe, there is a direct relationship between the p roced ures o f D errid a’s decon struction and the doubling o f neutralisation, positive and negative, inscribed in the ‘contradictory su perim pression ’ o f the semiotic square. T o state this relationship succinctly: deconstruction is the contrary — the negation or denial — o f linguistic neutralisation. T h u s in M argins of Philosophy — in fact, on its m argin, in the ‘p reface’ to that volum e — D errida describes ‘philosophical pow er’ in term s that also describe neutralisation: ‘philosophical pow er’, he writes, com bines ‘a hierarchy, an alogous to the hierarchy o f the opposition unm arked vs m arked term s, and ‘an envelopment’ in which ‘the whole is im plied . . . in each p art.’ (1982: xix, xx) In fact, throughout his work D errida is an xious to note that deconstruction is not neutralisation. ‘W h at. . . I am attem pting to p u rsu e,’ he says in Positions, is ‘a kind o f general strategy of deconstruction. T h e latter is to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions o f m etaphysics and simply residing within the closed field o f these oppositions, thereby confirm ing it.’ (1981a: 41) D errida him self goes on to define ‘deconstruction’ succinctly: deconstruction, he says, proceeds by the reversal or ‘overturn in g’ o f classical binary oppositions (in which ‘one o f 172

Avatars o f Semiotics the two term s governs the oth er’ in a ‘violent hierarchy’ ( 1981 a: 41)) — the hierarchy o f what I am calling unm arked and m arked sem antic term s — and then by displacing the differen ce in a kind o f neutralisation which is no neutralisation at all, but rather negates neutralisation, ‘resisting and d isorganizing it,’ as D errida says, ‘without ever constituting a third term , without ever leaving room fo r a solution in the form o f speculative dialectics.’ (1981a: 43) D econstruction does not ‘rest’ in its ‘n eutralising’ term. H ence it is not ‘neutralisin g’; rather, it is transform ational and ‘explosive’: ‘the force and form o f its d isru ptio n ,’ D errida says, ‘explode the sem antic horizon.’ (1981a: 45) Like enunciation, it is inextricably boun d to a particular semiotic field. Let me m ake this clear in the sem antic opposition between ‘speech’ and ‘writing’, to say as o p p o sed to write. In this o p p o sition, ‘to say’ is the unm arked term : the sentence ‘D errida says so and so’ indiscrim inately can m ean that he ‘says’ so in an oral interview (such as Positions) and in a written text (such as Margins); the neutralised sense o f ‘to say’ is /to assert/. On the other hand, ‘writing’ is the m arked term : the sentence ‘D errid a writes so and so’ can only m ean in a text or book. In English ‘to say’ (in the sense o f /to assert/) neutralises the opposition between saying (speech) and writing. D econstruction, then, would ‘overturn ’ this opposition, this hierarchy, and assert that speech, in fact, is a species o f writing, that writing is the originary term o f which speech is the special case: lan gu age itself, D errida asserts in the Grammatology, is ‘a species o f w riting.’ (1976: 52) Such an overturn ing or reversal, however, simply resides in the closed field o f this opposition; it reinscribes the old hierarchy in a negative form . In o rd er to displace this hierarchy, deconstruction presents a new neutralising term, a deconstructive term, which resists and d isorganises the hierarchy. In deconstruction the ‘deep structu re’ o f the semiotic squ are is discursivised; it is put into ‘the dom ain o f enunciation.’ (SL: 86) Deconstruction positions the negative (i.e. m arked) com plex term o f the semiotic square in the (com plem entary) position o f the sim ple positive (i.e. unm arked) term by explodin g the square through repetition (see A rm stron g 1982: 275; and the sequence o f squares at the end o f the Semiotics section o f C h apter 1). Deconstruction, then, inscribes what I called the ‘radical negativity’ o f G reim as’s fourth position in a 173

Avatars of Semiotics particular sem antic field. Like B arth es’s signifiance, this ‘inscription’ never com es to rest: in this way it reorients us in relation to the seem ingly ‘n atu ral’ and ‘self-evident’ m eanings which inhabit ou r language. T h is is p erh aps clearly audible in the use o f the pron ou n she in contexts that call for the neutralised general term he. For instance, in the ‘T ran slato r’s Preface’ to the Grammatology, Spivak notes that ‘as she deconstructs, all protestations to the contrary, the critic necessarily assum es that she at least, and for the time being, m eans what she says.’ (1976: lxxvii) In such contexts we cannot but hear the attem pt at and the failure o f neutralisation, the denial and negation o f neutralisation, in the sam e way we cannot help but note the oddity o f referrin g to som eone as ‘ninety years young.’ She conveys m ore in fo rm ation than simply ‘a critic’, the general critic, the critic as person: we are presented with a ‘fem ale critic’, and that greater inform ation m akes the ‘third term ’ im possible, ‘irreducibly nonsim ple’ (1982: 13). T h e deconstructive term , she, conveys what D errida calls the violence inscribed in the seem ingly ‘n atu ral’ and ‘self-evident’ use o f he to m ean ‘p erso n ’, or man to m ean ‘hum anity’, or old to m ean ‘possessing any age at all.’ T h e deconstructive term is neither m arked nor unm arked, and thus it resists constitution as a ‘third term ’: it is neither second nor third. N either m arked nor unm arked, the deconstructive term is enunciated. Like the definition o f denial (dénégation) in the Analytical Dictionary, this double negation ‘presu p p o ses the existence o f a precedin g utterance’ and ‘implies a syntagm atic perspective’ (SL: 72); it is what Ducrot and T od o rov call modal negation, the ‘rejection o f a prior positive utteran ce.’ (1979: 315) T his locution o f the fourth position o f the semiotic square, neither λ nor non s, is found frequently in D errida. D errida occasionally calls such a m arked unm arked term a ‘g ra ft’, the m ark within the unm arked position the ‘trace’. Such an enunciation is deconstructive rather than neutralising — it is never quite constituted as a third term — precisely because it is constituted as an interplay o f signifiers, a hyphenated, ‘g ra fte d ’ term. ‘Arche-w riting’ is one exam ple, but a kind o f defin in g exam ple, the term for the graft itself, is grammatology, a term which is ‘irreducibly nonsim ple’ precisely because it g rafts together gram, the word for the ‘m ark’ o f writing, and logos, the word for speech: it grafts together, and thus disrupts, 174

Avatars o f Semiotics the hierarchy o f u nm arked vs m arked. In the m orphological exam ple I am using what enunciates the g raft — the n on assim ilation o f significances, the nonneutralisation o f m eanings — is precisely the fact the it uses a sem antically m arked term , she, to articulate the neutralisation, and the m arked term carries with it the sem antic ‘trace’ o f its opposite (woman as a m arked m an, a species o f ‘m an ’; young as a species o f ‘old ’). Such a trace, as I shall argu e, does not have to be m ean in gful; it can be ‘com m unicated’ by the second articulation o f language. But, o f course, what is com m unicated is m ore than difference of meaning (though as a ‘trace’ it is not clear how much m ore it is); it is also the meaning o f difference: a particular m eaning — or rather, ‘explosion ’ o f m eaning — enunciated in a particular context.

De construction an d double articulation Perhaps the most explicit articulation o f deconstruction in D errid a’s writing (as op posed to the spoken interview o f Positions) occurs on another m argin, the last page o f M argins o f Philosophy. Very schematically: an opposition o f m etaphysical concepts (for exam ple, speech/writing, presence/ absence, etc.) is never the face-to-face o f two term s, but a hierarchy and an o rd er o f subordination. Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed im m ediately to a neutralization; it must, by m eans o f a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning o f the classical opposition and a general displacement o f the system . . . . D econstruction does not consist in passing from one concept to another, but in overturn ing and displacing a conceptual ord er, as well as the nonconceptual ord er with which the conceptual o rd er is articulated. For exam ple, writing, as a classical concept, carries with it predicates which have been subordin ated, excluded, or held in reserve by forces and accordin g to necessities to be analyzed. It is these predicates (I have m entioned som e) whose force o f generality, generalization, and generativity find them selves liberated, grafted onto a ‘new’ concept o f writing which also correspon d s to

Avatars of Semiotics whatever always has resisted the fo rm er organization o f forces, which always has constituted the remainder irreducible to the dom inant force which organized the — to say it quickly — logocentric hierarchy. T o leave this new concept the old nam e o f writing is to m aintain the structure o f the graft, the transition and indispensable adh erence to an effective intervention in the constituted historic field. And it is also to give their chance and their force, their power o f communication, to everything played out in the operation s o f deconstruction. (1982: 3 29-30) T h e ‘old n am e’ is the m arked term , and deconstruction functions by this displacement o f m arking. H ere again D errida asserts that the subordination o f writing to speech is necessary to the ‘form er organization o f forces’ in the Sau ssu rean sense that it articulated that order. W hat is articulated is the neutralised generalisation o f that o rd er — assertions, m ankind, agedn ess — in which the organisation o f forces cam e to rest. But that generalisation itself is diacritically established in relation to what resists it, to what is, as D errida says, a ‘remainder irreducible to the dom inant force.’ I f speech serves to com m unicate intentional m eaning, then writing, conceived as D errid a conceives it as the play o f differen ces, as noncommunicative signification, as a ‘dead letter’, is ‘irreducible’ to the dom inant force. T h u s, if the neutralising term creates the ord er, then its denial deconstructs it, not with a new order, but an ‘explosive’ play and playing o f forces. T h e ‘g ra ft’ and ‘trace’ create this ‘explosion ’: by using a m arked term — ‘w om an’, ‘w riting’, ‘white’, ‘m ark’ itself — deconstruction conveys m ore inform ation than neutralisation perm its. It this way it ‘ex p lo d es’ neutralisation in the enunciation o f its own intervention. The first articulation In this p assage D errida distinguishes between the ‘conceptual’ and ‘nonconceptual’ o rd er displaced by deconstruction, and this opposition precisely describes the first and second articulations o f language. T h e ‘conceptual’ o rd er o f deconstruction focuses on what D errida calls the ‘logocentric hierarchy’. T h is ord er is m ost clearly delineated in H egel (whom D errida takes to be the epitom e o f philosophy in general), and throughout his work D errida describes deconstruction as the contrary to 176

Avatars o f Semiotics the restricted economy o f H egelian dialectics which he says ap pro priates everything to meaning. Rather, deconstruction is a general economy which acknow ledges what cannot be included, what D errida calls ‘nothingness and pu re non-sense.’ (1978: 130) In his discussions o f H egel, D errida retranslates Aufhebung (literally, ‘to raise u p ’), H egel’s term for the synthesising o f binary opposites, into a concept which sim ultaneously supercedes and ‘envelops’ them, into the French relever (literally, ‘to lift again ’). T his translation ren d ers the synthesising force o f Aufhebung into a nonsynthesis, a ‘neither . . . n or’, what D errida recurrently calls its displacement. In H egel Aufhebung is a kind o f neutralisation; it is sem antic neutralisation. Both neutralisation and such ‘philosophical pow er’ as H egel’s Aufhebung can be described as ‘transcen den tal’ in the linguistic sense in which D errida uses it in his discussion o f Benveniste, ‘T h e Su pplem en t o f the C opula: Philosophy B efore Linguistics’: ‘W hat Benveniste discovers, then,’ he writes, ‘. . . is the absolute unique relationship between the transcendental and language. H ere we are taking the word “ transcendental” in its most rigorou s accepted sense . . . . T ran scen den tal m eans transcategorial.’ (1982: 195) T h e categories D errida is describing are linguistic, sem antic categories. T h e neutralising term , /agedn ess/ for instance, transcends the categories young and old; /person/ transcends the opposition man vs woman. Philosophy and neutralisation aim at what D errida calls in relation to H egel ‘conceptual unities’ (1978: 272); ‘neutralization,’ D errida writes, ‘is prod uced within knowledge and within the syntax o f w riting.’ (1978: 274) D errid a’s translation o f Aufliebung as relever displaces the conservative unity o f neutralisation into a repetitious nonunity. Such displacem ents recur th roughout D errida — relever displacing Aufhebung, writing displacing speech, etc. M oreover, they create what D errida calls a ‘radical’ negativity positioned in what I am calling the fourth position o f the ‘contrary su perim pression ’ o f G reim as’s semiotic square. T h e blind spot o f H egelianism , around which can be organized the representation o f m eaning, is the point at which destruction, su ppression , death and sacrifice constitute so irreversible an expen ditu re, so radical a negativity — here we would have to say an expen ditu re 177

Avatars of Semiotics and a negativity without reserve — that they can no longer be determ ined as negativity in a process o f a system. In discourse (the unity o f process and system), negativity is always the u nderside and accom plice o f positivity. Negativity cannot be spoken of, nor has it ever been except in this fabric o f m eaning. Now, the sovereign operation, the point o f nonreserve, is neither positive nor negative. It cannot be inscribed in discourse, except by crossing out predicates or by practicing a contradictory su perim pression that then exceeds the logic o f philosophy. (1978: 259) As m entioned in C h apter 1, Sh oshan a Felm an describes this ‘radical negativity’ as ‘fundam entally fecund and affirm ative, and yet without positive reference, [it] is above all that which escapes the negative!positive alternative’ (1983: 141), and Ju lia Kristeva calls it ‘the fourth “term ”’ o f H egel’s dialectic, ‘what rem ains heterogen eous to logic even while p rod ucin g it through a m ovem ent o f separation or rejection.’ (1984: 112) H ere we can see why deconstruction is not a ‘m ethod’ even though what I am describing here seem s so m ethodical: decon struction is not a ‘p ro ced u re’ that precedes or antedates the ‘m aterial’ it acts upon; it is not a ‘d ep th ’ to be discovered within that m aterial. Rather, as a procedure it proceeds from that m aterial, from precisely the ‘particularities’ fo r which H egel says ‘philosophy provides no g ro u n d s’ (D errida 1982: ix); it is only articulated ‘by crossing out predicates or by practising a contradictory superim pression that exceeds the logic o f philosophy.’ (1978: 259) It is, above all, enunciation. The second articulation T h e ‘nonconceptual o rd er with which the conceptual ord er is articulated,’ unlike H egel, is at the m argins o f philosophy; it is linguistics conceived as a science. In deconstructing the o p p o sition between speech and writing, or, m ore generally, between ‘sign ’ and ‘m ark ’, D errida positions deconstruction in relation to linguistic neutralisation and linguistics in general. He does so, as I have argu ed , with the ‘old n am e’ — the marked nam e — o f writing, now conceived as ‘arche-w riting’ and with that other nam e, neither old nor new, the nam e for the graft itself, ‘gram m atology’. D econstruction ‘e x p lo d es’ and ‘exceeds’ the logic o f linguistic as well as philosophical neutralisation — the ‘classical’ 178

Avatars o f Semiotics generalisations D errida m entions — by m eans o f its graftin g o f m arked and unm arked term s together. In lan gu age, decon struction asserts, nothing is unm arked. N othing, not even the binary oppositions o f phonology, not the zero sign, not neutralised distinctive features, are the ‘p u re ’ absence o f ‘eternally negative d ifferen ces.’ Yet nothing — no m eaning — is not traced or m arked by such negativity, such absence. While D errida uses semantically m arked term s in the classical unm arked position, he also uses u nm arked term s as a m ark, in ord er to m ark. A chief exam ple is D errid a’s m ost fam ous ‘new nam e’, différance (spelled with an ‘a’), a French neologism which he defines at the beginn ing o f Margins of Philosophy as ‘neither a word nor a concept.’ ( 1982: 3) Différance is the m ost abstract term D errid a develops in his deconstructive practice; it is the least tied to the particularities o f textual context, the least ‘en unciated’. Instead o f crossing out predicates, it adds them, by su pplem en tin g the spatial significance o f différeyice (spelled with an ‘e ’), the English sense o f ‘d ifferen ce’, with the tem poral and polem ical sense o f ‘d e fe rrin g1 and ‘d ifferin g ’. (1982: 8) B ut it does so by m eans o f a phonological neutralisation, by the fact that in French in the position precedin g In/ the phonological opposition between /a/ and /e/ is neutralised. In Dissemination D errida enunciates the sam e neutralisation to describe ‘white on white’, ‘a false true blank sense [sens blanc], without a blank [sans blanc]' (1981b: 260), and Gayatri Spivak also uses it in the ‘T ran slato r’s P reface’ to Grammatology to describe the book as ‘an entire text where “ p en ser” (to think) carries within itself and points at “ p an ser” (to dress a w ound)’.(1976: lxxxvi) In his e ssa y ‘D ifférance’ D errida says that T his in itself — the silence that functions within only a socalled phonetic writing — quite opportunely conveys or rem inds us that, contrary to a very w idespread prejudice, there is no phonetic writing . . . . And an exam ination o f the structure and necessity o f these nonphonetic signs quickly reveals that they can barely tolerate the concept o f the sign itself. Better, the play o f differen ce, which, as Saussure rem inded us, is the condition for the possibility and functioning o f every sign, is in itself a silent play. Inaudible is the differen ce between two phonem es which alone perm its them to be and to operate as such . . . . If 179

Avatars of Semiotics there is no purely phonetic writing, it is that there is no purely phonetic plume. T h e differen ce which establishes phonem es and lets them be heard rem ains in and o f itself inaudible, in every sense o f the word. (1982: 4 -5 ) Such ‘inaudibility’ includes the ‘sen se’ ‘non-sense’ — the nothing, as Wallace Stevens says, which is not there — and beyond that, ‘nothingness and pu re non-sense’, the nothing that is. T his silence is the silence o f neutralisation, the zero sign which com m unicates m eaning through absence and the absence itself upon which m eaning is inscribed. In the decon structive neutralisation o f differance the hierarchic opposition between the first and second articulations o f lan gu age is deconstructed: phonological neutralisation is n egated and denied — or, as Felm an says, it is fecundly affirm ed — as a semantic m ark, a m ark which, m anifested in neutralisation, is u nm arked, no m ark, neither m eaningful nor nonsensical. Deconstructive practice an d G reim asian semiotics T h e relationship between deconstructive practice and G reim asian semiotics — what has m ade linguistics a ‘m odel’ for deconstruction which D errid a both follows and dism antles — can be seen in Sau ssu re’s in au gu ratin g insight o f the arbitrary and differential nature o f the sign. From this follows the defin ing characteristic o f language (as op posed to other sem iotic systems), namely its double structuration in relation to its double articulation: its hierarchic structure. O ther semiotic system s — o f gesture, for instance, or dress, or even the structure o f literature into literary genres — are structured by a single articulation, by the articulation o f signification by m eans o f the arbitrarily chosen elem ents o f the ‘bricoleur’ which function to com m unicate in a diacritical but nonsystematic m anner. T h ere is no closed system o f (or an alogous to) the phonological plane o f langu age in nonlinguistic semiotic systems. T h is is why structural linguistics distinguishes between the planes o f lan gu age which, as H jelm slev says, ‘are structured in quite an alogous fashions.’ (1961: 60) A nalogous or not — M artinet argu es that the planes o f lan gu age are not isom orphic (1962) — double articulation allows for the systematic hierarchy o f language. T h u s systematic neutralisation — neutralisation in its restricted linguistic sense — does 180

Avatars o f Semiotics not take place in nonlinguistic semiotics. In these term s linguistics, as Sau ssu re asserted (1959: 16), would, in fact, be a special case o f sem iology, a case m arked by double articulation, hierarchy, and neutralisation. H ere linguistics, and especially the scientific phonological m odel prod uced by its double articulation, is a ‘m ark ed ’ version o f general semiotics. But the arbitrary nature o f the sign in lan gu age also allows for another striking feature o f lan gu age: nam ely the fact that any elem ent o f the hierarchical linguistic structure may function as any other, what D errida calls ‘the always open possibility o f its extraction and g raftin g .’ (1982: 317) In such cases, G reim as says, the ‘edifice’ o f lan gu age ‘a p p e ars like a construction without plan or clear aim ’ in which, for instance, ‘syntactic “ functions” transform gram m atical cases by m aking them play roles for which they are not ap p ro p riate; entire propositions are reduced and described as if they behaved like sim ple adv erb s,’ and so forth. (SS: 133) T h is ‘can be su m m arized,’ G reim as notes, ‘in the statem ent that discourse, conceived as a hierarchy o f units o f com m unication fitting into one another, contains in itself the negation o f that hierarchy by the fact that the units o f com m unication with d ifferen t dim en sions can be at the sam e time recognized as equivalent.’ (SS: 82) T h u s while M artinet correctly defines the phonem e as possessing ‘a phonic shape, but no m ean in g’ (1962: 40) there are contexts in which phonem es are signifying units, what he calls m onem es. I do not mean the ‘bi-planar’ case o f the phonem e /ay/ constituting the m onem e ‘I’. I m ean cases like that o f différance in which a ph onem e as phoneme signifies. O r cases in which gram m atical m orphem es and units, such as the word between, come to signify. (D errida 1981b: 221) O r cases in which agram m atical strings, such as ‘the green is o r’, com e to signify. (1982: 320) O r cases in which signifying elem ents o f language, such as the dative case, are em ptied o f signification and function communicatively and not meaningfully. (D errida 1 9 7 8 :9 5 ) T h ese are all exam ples o f ‘deconstruction’, and they are all cases in which the ‘deep structu res’ o f lan gu age — including, most im portantly, the ‘deep structu re’ which is the sem iotic square (G reim as 1968a: 87) — are grafted onto su rface m anifestation as enunciation. T h at is, they are cases o f neutralisation as such — the ‘gen eral’ or ‘deconstructive’ neutralisation o f the fourth position on the semiotic squ are — 181

Avatars of Semiotics in which the hierarchical structure o f linguistics and lan gu age is displaced. As the seem ingly ‘m argin al’ category o f phonological neutralisation suggests, this constantly takes place and is the condition o f ‘lan gu ag e’ and ‘linguistics’ — its seem ingly first condition — which are now conceived o f as including the special case o f sem iology (see B arthes 1967: esp. 11). In this conception ‘lan gu ag e’ app ro p riates everything (including its deep structure) to its enunciated m eanings. N either inside nor outside the G reim asian linguistic ‘m odel’, gram m atology asserts that no m eaning is unm arked and that the hierarchy established by the un m ark ed over the m arked — the hierarchy o f positive science, o f the first articulation over the second — is itself a kind o f m arking susceptible to the ‘overtu rn in g’ neutralisation o f deconstruction and the radical negativity — ‘neither pu re contiguity nor a logical im plication’ (SS: 244) — o f the semiotic square.

Enunciation and the surface of ‘things’: knowledge and power in Lacan and de Man In calling into question the constitutive opposition between the first and second articulations o f lan gu age, deconstruction is an exam ple o f the ‘epistem ological attitude’ o f ‘the hum an sciences in the twentieth century.’ (SS: 7) T h is ‘attitude’, as I have already m entioned, eschews the ‘dep th s’ o f m etaphysical constructs for a sense o f the palpable surface o f things and the ‘play’ o f elem ents on the su rface m uch the sam e way that Poe situates the ‘truth’ in ‘the Purloined L etter’ in plain sight waiting to be discovered (see Lacan 1972; and Davis 1984b: 1000—03). D errida m entions such ‘play’ in his deconstruction o f the phonetic sign and the double articulation o f language. B ut this is not simply the deconstruction o f the planes o f langu age, o f one approach to linguistic science; it is decon struction itself, radical negativity and the ‘crisis’ o f semiotics. As many o f the passages I have quoted from D errida suggest, such play m akes the su rface o f lan gu age, D errid a’s very discourse, in som e way an alogous to S a u ssu re’s ‘uncharted n ebulae’ — an alogous to what G reim as calls a ‘Saussurean “ great cloudiness’” (SS: 67) — the discursive ‘play’ o f enunciation. An even greater cloudiness is the enunciation o f Ja cq u e s 182

Avatars o f Semiotics Lacan in which he attem pts to discover desire on the su rface o f discourse in much the sam e way that the unconscious is discovered in the enunciation o f the psychoanalytical patient. Ja n e G allop notes that ‘Lacan says . . . that F reud discovered that truth m anifests itself in the letter rather than the spirit, that is, in the way things are actually said rather than in the intended m ean in g.’ (1985: 22) I f this is the locus o f truth, then we are faced with a great obscurity indeed. T h e obscurity o f readin g Lacan, Ja n e G allop argu es, is the encounter it creates with ‘the oppressive pow er’ o f L acan ’s paradoxical ‘m astery’ o f his ‘own’ discourse, a m astery he had ‘against his will, in other w ords he was not m aster o f his m astery but subject to it.’ (1985: 32, 42) G reim as explicitly calls the obscurity o f L acan ’s discourse that o f a ‘subjectivising cam ou flage’, a ‘m odern avatar o f “the discourse o f parab les’” which m ust be u n d erstood to contain a ‘secret’ and ‘suggests an an agogic plane [of signification] to be decip h ered .’ (1980: 110) T h e ‘secret’ o f L acan ’s discourse is what is ‘unconscious’ in it: ‘Lacan writes about the oppressive rule o f m ean in g,’ G allop notes, ‘and in his style he imitates that op pression . . . . T h e unconscious or the signifier becom es not only the subject m atter but, in the gram m atical sense, the subject, the speaker o f his disco u rse’ (1985: 37; see all o f C h apter 1 in G allop for an excellent discussion o f ‘R ead in g L acan ’s Écrits). T h e signifier is the ‘subject’ o f enunciation as op posed to utterance. T h e seem ing opposite to this ‘herm etico-herm eneutic com m unication’ o f Lacan is what G reim as calls the ‘objectivising cam ou flage’ o f ‘scientific — or so-called scientific — discou rse,’ which ‘attem pts to ap p e ar not as the discourse o f a subject’ — the ‘o racu lar’ discourse o f Lacan (M: 183) — ‘but as the pu re utterance o f the necessary relation between things, effacin g, as far as possible, all the m arks o f enunciation.’ (1980: 110) An exam ple o f this discursive utterance is what C hristo p h er N orris calls ‘the disciplined rigo u r’ o f the argu m en ts o f Paul de Man, the ‘constant dem and for logical precision’ in his enunciation. (1985: 194, 195) I f L acan ’s discourse enunciates the unconscious in a discourse o f m astery, then that o f de M an, as Ju liet M acCannell has argu ed , enunciates ‘the drive to otherness, “ toward a conscious other” ' in an ‘effacin g’ o f lan gu age, a ‘rhetoric o f (anti -) position.’ (1985: 62, 58) T h ese two discourses, then, establish contradictory relations to ‘things’ and to ‘tru th ’: ‘in the first case,’ G reim as writes, 183

Avatars of Semiotics we are confronted with a presented but ‘false’ subject and hidden but ‘tru e’ know ledge; in the second case, knowledge is presented as ‘tru e’ and the hidden subject as ‘false’. Tw o differen t, even contradictory procedures, but procedures all the sam e, designed to produce truthfulness. (1980: 111) Such truthfulness, as he suggests elsewhere, is related to the enunciatory ‘su rface’ o f discourse rather than to ‘things’ or ‘objects’ in the world. ‘T h e object,’ G reim as writes, ‘is a syntactic concept, a limiting-term [terme-aboutissant] o f ou r relation to the world . . . . Enunciation prod ucin g an utterance causes a value m anifesting and determ in in g an object to ap p e a r.’ (1973c: 23) In this way, G reim as situates ‘thin gs’ — and the ‘truth’ o f things — as effects o f language. Lacan and de M an, in their ‘contradictory’ rhetorics, likewise pu rsu e this semiotic conception o f the ‘thing’, yet they do so in ways that do not resolve, but rather exacerbate the crisis o f semiotics (see G reim as 1980: 109).

E nunciation as discourse: desire in the lan gu ag e o f Ja c q u e s L ac an F or Lacan the unconscious isn’t a ‘thing’ — much less a Freudian thing. Rather, it is inscribed in language, in enunciation, as the differen ce between what the subject o f discourse m eans and what his words say: ‘what this structure o f the signifying chain discloses is the possibility I have, in so far as I have this lan gu age in com m on with other subjects, that is to say, in so far as it exists as a lan gu age, to use it to signify something quite other than what it says.’ ( 1977: 155) T h e structure o f the signifying chain is G reim as’s opposition between en gagem en t and disengagem ent: the subject o f discourse enunciates a discourse that is ‘d isen g age d ’ from his intended m eaning — the ‘discourse o f the O th er’, as Lacan calls it — yet that discourse enunciates the ‘unconscious’ o f the subject, what he is most ‘en g ag ed ’ in, his own desire. T h is is why discourse is so im portant to Lacan: ‘even if it com m unicates nothing, the discourse represents the existence o f com m unication; even if it denies the evidence, it affirm s that speech constitutes truth; even if it is intended to deceive, the discourse speculates on 184

Avatars o f Semiotics faith in testim ony.’ (1977: 43) It is in the context o f such discursive ‘desire’ that the intersection o f Lacan and G reim as — that is, Lacan and semiotics — is most clearly delineated. Desire in Lacan ‘It is precisely because desire is articulated that is is not articulable,’ Lacan writes in one o f his ‘oracu lar’ enunciations (1977: 302). J u s t as G reim as’s puns con fuse isotopies o f discourse, in the term s design ating /articulation/, Lacan confuses two levels o f articulation, that o f enunciation and that o f utterance. In this way, L acan ’s pun describes a ‘split’ in the subject. D esire is situated on the level o f enunciation: ‘whatever . . . any enunciation speaks o f,’ says Lacan, ‘belongs to d esire.’ (1978: 141) But the ego inhabits a differen t level from desire: ‘the / . . . becom es a signification, en gen dered at the level o f the u tterance, o f what it produces at the level o f the enunciation.’ (1978: 139; see 1977: 314) T h e first level posits, as F reud says o f psychosis, a conflict between an ego and the outer world; while the second, like neurosis, like systematic structural analysis, constitutes the subject in relation to its functions by positing, as F reud says o f neurosis, a conflict between the ego and the id (1963: 185). ‘P araph rasin g L acan ,’ G reim as writes, ‘we can say two kinds o f m adness await m ankind: on the one side, schizophrenia, the exaltation o f total freedom in com m unication, en din g in n oncom m unication; on the other side, a com pletely socialized and iterative speech, Q u en eau ’s “you talk, you talk, that’s all you know how to d o ,” which is also the negation o f com m unication, discourse deprived o f in form ation.’ (SS: 39) L acan ’s pun, like enunciation as op posed to utterance, arises in a differen ce that cannot be categorised within the logical categories o f o p p o sition yet is m ore than pure accident, pure contiguity. T h e relationship between enunciation and utterance is neither pu re contiguity nor a logical implication (see SS: 244), neither the contiguity o f enunciation’s socialised and iterative speech (its algorithm s) nor the necessary succession o f the utterance’s system atic structure. T h is seem ingly im possible differen ce is perh aps best visualised in the optical illusion, the outlined cube, for instance, whose forw ard side can also be seen as its bottom , but never both at the sam e time. Such an optical illusion m ust ‘articulate’ or ‘space’ its double perception, and its doubleness — its opposition — is neither logical implication 185

Avatars of Semiotics nor pure contiguity. T h is sam e ‘optical illusion’ effect is inscribed in G reim as’s actantial analysis o f the ‘bi-isotopic’ n ature o f ‘linguistic activity’. (G reim as him self claims that psychoanalysis prop oses ‘its own m odel for sem antic description’ (SS: 215), which is, like his, an actantial m odel; in both m odels desire is central.) T h at activity, G reim as suggests, is essentially split between what he describes as the ‘pow er’ o f enunciation and the ‘know ledge’ o f utterance. T o articulate this split G reim as distinguishes, as we have seen, between the Subject and the Sen der (see SS: 207). Figure 5.2 Sender -

Object

« Receiver

(knowledge)

(desire) Helper-

Subject

Opponent

(power)

Desire, as this diagram suggests, is both dep en d en t on and situated outside the Sym bolic level o f ‘know ledge’; it creates the space o f discourse, the possibility o f dialogue. As G reim as’s arrow s suggest, the Symbolic level moves linearly in time, while the Im aginary level o f ‘pow er’ refers everything to the subject. T h e two levels o f G reim as’s diagram correspon d to L acan ’s distinction between the Im aginary and the Symbolic, two ord ers o f experience. (L acan ’s third term , the Real, is neither Im aginary nor Symbolic. It inhabits the fourth position on the semiotic square, whose positive com plex position, both Im aginary and Symbolic, would be the Sym ptom .) T h e Im aginary is the locus o f binary oppositions seem ingly possessing their own value, and, as Régis D uran d notes, it em phasises ‘discontinuity, oscillation, and non -differentiation.’ (1981: 50) T h e Symbolic, on the other hand, is the realm o f what Alan Sheridan calls ‘differential elem ents, in them selves without m eaning, which acquire value only in their m utual relations’; thus the ‘symbols referred to here are . . . sign ifiers.’ (in Lacan 1978: 279) In these term s the Symbolic is the m arked term, the Im aginary unm arked. D esire is situated between them (as it is between L acan ’s ‘n eed’ and ‘d em an d ’) as the space which is both cause and effect o f the opposition. W ithout the diacritical 186

Avatars o f Semiotics separation created by desire, discourse im plodes ‘neurotically’ into what G reim as calls pure ‘affab u lation ’ (SS: 139) in which discourse is reduced to its ‘point’, the p ure assertion o f utterance — the im possible extrem e o f a non-figurative allegory. At the sam e time without this separation discourse explodes ‘psychotically’ into the what he calls the ‘non sense’ o f unconnected linguistic elem ents — the other extrem e where lan gu age is elem entally literal, a kind o f pu re enunciation. T his is what Lacan m ight call an Im aginary reduction o f discourse into a binary opposition: the allegory o f neurosis, where allegory’s figu res becom e literal sym ptom s, oscillating with the dissociations o f psychosis, where the elem ents o f lan gu age rem ain unconnected. In Lacan the Sen der is the O ther, the level o f ‘know ledge’ in Figure 5.2 that o f the D iscourse o f the O ther. In this actantial diagram we can see why Lacan asserts that the unconscious is structured like a langu age. We can also see why both he and Freud find the know ledge o f the unconscious — and thus neurosis rather than psychosis — m ore am enable to analysis than the pow er o f psychotic hallucination. F or the D iscourse o f the O ther is a product o f the sam e effect as the optical illusion: the space between the m essages o f know ledge and power, like the optical illusion’s double vision, articulates the split subject so that the power o f inter-subjective com m unication, in sofar as it is trans-subjective, presents know ledge from which the speaker is excluded. In the space o f this opposition desire arises as a kind o f language-effect. D esire m anifests itself indirectly, as a ‘resonance’ o f lan gu age (1977: 102); this is why Lacan so insistently identifies desire and metonymy. D esire cannot be fulfilled because, inscribed within the Im agin ary , it erases its object — it ‘m u rd ers’ the thing (1977: 104) — in its own articulation: in G reim as’s narrative scheme, it does not recognise that the object o f desire becom es an object o f know ledge through which a m essage passes from Sen d er to Receiver, subject to subject. Yet desire can inscribe itself within the Symbolic — it can becom e a ‘little’ m etaphoric (see Finem an 1981: 44) — when it denies itself (in denegation) and renounces its object altogether to recognise the m ortal dialogue o f subject to subject. As Lacan says, this is the only life that en du res and is true since it is trans187

Avatars of Semiotics mitted without being lost in the perpetu ated tradition o f subject to su b je c t. . . nothing, except the experim en ts to which man associates it, distinguishes a rat from the rat, a horse from the horse, nothing except this inconsistent passage from life to death — w hereas Em pedocles, by throw ing him self into M ount Etna, leaves forever present in the m em ory o f men this symbolic act o f his being-fordeath. (1977: 104) T h e nature o f desire, like denial, is enunciatory: it requires a situation and instance o f discourse for its articulation. T h e possibility o f signification — the possibility in G reim as’s term s o f establishing the m essage as an ‘objectivizing projection’ — arises in the interplay o f desire and hum anity: ‘the m om ent at which desire becom es hum an is also that in which the child is born into lan gu ag e.’ (1977: 103) The Lacanian thing H ere is the staging o f an enunciatory theory o f discourse situated within the ecology o f hum an life. ‘T h e symbolic function,’ Lacan writes, presents itself as a double m ovem ent within the subject: m an m akes an object o f his action, but only in ord er to restore to this action in du e time its place as a groun din g. In this equivocation, op eratin g at every instant, lies the whole process o f a function in which know ledge and action alternate. (1977: 73) T h is is the realisation o f desire oscillating between the ab su rdity, what G reim as calls the ‘non sense’ (SS: 139) o f ou r needs and the plottedness, the ‘fable’, o f ou r dem ands, between the self and the other: ‘the first object o f desire is to be recognized by the oth er.’ ( 1977: 58) Such recognition is what Lacan m eans by the Freudian ‘thing’ which only exists, like the library call slip he speaks of, in a system o f d ifferen ces that is a cultural (or interhum an) artifact. (1972: 55) Lacan com pares this recognition to the analytical situation which he describes as a kind o f enunciation, ‘an indirect discourse, isolated in quotation m arks within the thread o f narration, an d, if the discourse is played out, it is on a stage im plying the presence not only o f the chorus, but also o f spectators.’ (1977: 47) T h e patient m ust 188

Avatars o f Semiotics recognise his or her own enunciation, recognise the desire inscribed in language. T h is is the ‘goal o f analysis’: ‘the subject,’ G allop writes, ‘m ust com e to recognize his own drives, which are insisting, unbeknow nst to him, in his discourse and his actions. T h at recognition is reached through the m ediation o f the analyst. T h e analyst returns to the subject what the subject was saying so that the subject can recognize it and stop saying it.’ (1985: 109) T h is activity (or ‘production ’), G allop concludes, is the ‘something — the Freudian thing — that Lacan seeks to return to psychoanalysis. T h u s Lacan defines the ‘thing’, like desire, like enunciation, as m etonymic rather than m etaphoric. D esire is not a pole in a binary opposition, but arises, metonymically, out o f such an opposition. It is the condition o f the Symbolic. N evertheless, it can becom e m etaphoric as the ‘space’ o f desire I have m entioned; it can becom e a kind o f ‘thing’ — a Symbolic kind — if it renounces (denies) the object o f desire and contents itself to be desire as such. H ere is the hidden ‘truth’ o f the subjectivising cam ou flage o f L acan ’s enunciation. But how can desire be desire without an ‘object’? What, after all, is the object o f desire? G allop asks what if the object o f desire were not yet an ‘object’ but an indefinable som ething radically indefinable, the result o f prim ary repression (Urverdrangung)? . . . What Lacan calls desire is precisely the result o f this prim ary repression and yields up a nostalgia beyond nostos, beyond the drive to return, a desire constitutively unsatisfied and unsatisfiable because its ‘object’ simply cannot ever be defin ed. (1985: 151) T h e object o f desire cannot be defin ed, but desire itself can be, if it ‘ren ou n ce’ the desired object and recognise in its enunciation — in the discourse o f desire — the m ortal desire for death. T h e distinction I am m aking is between the Im aginary desire for a particular object and m ore global desire, the negative space o f desire altogether which is both the cause and result o f discursive enunciation. Lacan identifies this desire with the m ortal desire for death. In ‘The Discourse of Rome’ in another gnom ic saying Lacan o ffers three figures o f m an ’s freedom : the renunciation o f desire im posed by the m enace o f death, the consented-to sacrifice o f life fo r ideals, and ‘the 189

Avatars of Semiotics suicidal renunciation o f the vanquished partn er.’ O f these figu res o f d eath ,’ he writes, the third is the su prem e detour through which the im m ediate particularity o f desire, recon querin g its ineffable form , rediscovers in negation a final trium ph . . . T his third figure is not in fact a perversion o f the instinct, but rather the d esperate affirm ation o f life that is the purest form in which we recognize the death instinct. (1 9 7 7 :1 0 4 ) H ere in Lacan, as in D errida, negation becom es an explosive vehicle for affirm ation , a vehicle which is fully enunciatory in the sam e way negation is m odally m anifested in discourse. T h at is, negation, like the sem io-narrative level on which m odality occurs, is m ediatory, a kind o f recognition and return. In the sam e negative way, the psychoanalyst is the m ediator o f value, his m edium is language, and his rhetoric is an enunciation articulating utterance that transform s the reflection o f desire into a spacious dialogue, the dyad o f the analytical situation into a ‘gam e for fo u r players.’ H e preten ds he is dead, ‘cadaverizes his position’ and, ‘under the respective effects o f the symbolic and im aginary, he m akes death p resen t.’ (1977: 140) Such negation, like deconstruction and the fourth position o f the semiotic square — like enunciation itself — is radically negative, a being-for-death, F re u d ’s death instinct. In this negativity — the negativity o f desire — is cam ou flaged the ‘truth’ o f enunciation and the effacem en t o f the analyst. ‘It is clear,’ Lacan notes, that the analyst’s abstention, his refusal to reply, is an elem ent o f reality in analysis. M ore exactly, it is in this negativity in so far as it is a pure negativity . . . that lies the junction between the symbolic and the real . . . . . . . when the subject’s question has taken on the form o f true speech, we give it the sanction o f ou r reply, but thereby we have shown that true speech already contains its own reply and that we are simply ad d in g ou r own lay to its antiphon. (1977: 95) Enunciation, then, can efface the ‘false’ subject and reveal the 190

Avatars o f Semiotics ‘tru e’ know ledge G reim as speaks of, but only where ‘subject’ and ‘know ledge’ and ‘enunciation’ itself are negatively conceived.

Enun ciation as utterance: the anxiety o f reference in P a u l de M an The referential functum o f language I f Lacanian enunciation finally effaces itself after the su prem e, ‘m asterfu l’ detour o f its subjectivising discourse, then the objectivising discourse o f Paul de M an effaces itself from the beginning in its attem pt to m ake a place fo r the gu aran tor o f ‘truth’, the referen ts o f language. ‘T o u n d erstan d ,’ de M an has written, ‘prim arily m eans to determ ine the referential m ode o f a text and we tend to take for gran ted that this can be d o n e.’ ( 1979a: 201 ) T h e opposite o f this, the suspension o f reference, aptly describes the experien ce o f readin g Lacan (see G allop 1985 : C h apter 1) ; it is the ‘arbitrary power play o f the sign ifier’ which ‘from the point o f view o f the subject . . . can only be experien ced as a dism em berm ent, a beheadin g or a castration.’ (de Man 1979a: 296) De Man calls lan gu age without referen ce ‘the entirely gratuitous and irresponsible text’ (1979a: 296) that ‘contem porary sem iotics’ seeks to analyse (1979a: 207). Such a text can be seen in G reim as’s structural sem antics. For instance, when he uses the word ‘h ead ’ to describe the organisation o f the sem es within a particular word, G reim as notes that while the ‘fundam ental definition from which all the others derive . . . is its representation as “part (o f the body),’” ‘none o f the exam ples cited by Littré illustrates the word tête as part o f the body.’ (SS: 47) T h at is, the most extended exam ple that Structural Semantics offers is one that explores signification in term s o f what G reim as calls ‘a radiating source o f “ m ean in gs” m ore or less “ figurative”’ and nonreferential (SS: 47): headsplitting noise, head o f cattle, to be over on e’s head in debt, head o f a line, head o f a pin, etc. In this G reim as dem onstrates the constant gesture o f linguistics to su spen d the opposition between the figurative and the literal by postulating minimal semic oppositions that inform signification. T h e opposition between the literal and the figurative can be su sp en ded because in significant ways enunciation is effaced 191

Avatars of Semiotics and reference is su spen ded. Sum m in g up the philosophical debate about the nature o f reference, Jo h n Searle describes it as ‘referen ce to’ a unique pre-existing object', ‘a fully consum m ated referen ce is one in which an object is identified unam biguously for the h earer.’ (1969: 82; see Davis 1985) T h at is, the referen t is, as de Man says, ‘extralinguistic’ and has ‘prior existence’ to its reference (1979a: 106, 121). But both G reim as and structural linguistics in general attem pt, as de Man says, to create a gram m ar ‘that functions independently o f its referential m ean in g.’ ( 1979a: 268) G ram m ar, like the law, has to be blind; it has to su spen d what Benveniste calls ‘the instances o f discou rse’ ( 1971: 217), and with that the possibility o f reference. For this reason de Man argu es that an enabling postulate o f ‘contem porary sem iology’ is the reduction o f the referential function o f lan gu age ‘to being ju st one contingent linguistic property am o n g oth ers’ (1979a: 207) and G reim as substantiates this in calling for ‘the rejection o f the supplem entary dim ension o f the referent.’ (SS: 12) ‘Any discourse, we know,’ he writes, ‘p resu p p o ses a nonlinguistic situation o f com m unication. T h is situation is covered by a certain num ber o f m orphological categories, which m ake it explicit linguistically but introduce at the sam e tim e in the m anifestation a parameter of subjectivity which is not pertinent to the description . . .’ (SS: 175). Linguistics, G reim as continues, m ust elim inate categories o f person, time, deixis, and the phatic elem ent in general. It is the science o f utterance. T h at is, gram m ar m ust function without regard to person or position, like a machine rather than a m onarch — who has in his person, as de Man says, the power to execute, and is defin ed against the law (1979a: 266). ‘M achine’, as de M an goes on to show, is a go od m etaph or fo r gram m atisation because it is defin ed against the body: ‘T h e text as body, with all its im plications o f substitutive tropes ultimately always retraceable to m etaphor, is displaced by the text as m achine an d, in the process, it su ffers the loss o f the illusion o f m ean in g.’ (1979a: 298) T h u s it is precisely against the symbolism o f Gilbert D urand, based upon ‘an apparen t systematization o f bodily g estu res’ (SS: 62), that G reim as defin es the sem iological level o f language. ‘B eh ead in g’, then, is what linguistics attem pts: to suspend the silly ‘(silliness being deeply associated with referen ce)’ (de Man 1979a: 209), the accidents o f em otion (fear, self-love, 192

Avatars o f Semiotics doubt, even anxiety), and what Felm an calls the ‘trivial’ (1983: 116), in favour o f describing lan gu age in a way that excludes psychic energies. ‘As soon as the text is said not to be a figurai body but a m achine,’ cle Man writes, . . . far from seeing lan gu age as an instrum ent in the service o f a psychic energy, the possibility now arises that the entire construction o f drives, substitutions, re p ressions, and representations is the aberrant, m etaphorial correlative o f the absolute random n ess o f lan gu age, prior to any figuration or m eaning. It is no longer certain that language, as excuse, exists because o f a prio r guilt but ju st as possible that since langu age, as a m achine, perform s anyway, we have to prod uce guilt (and all its train o f psychic consequences) in o rd er to m ake the excuse m eaningful. (1979a: 299) T h e confusion concerning the priority or antecedence o f guilt is the confusion o f enunciation and utterance, the confusion o f referentiality: it is not the confusion o f possible referen ts but the confusion — the ‘undecidability’ — o f whether or not referentiality is possible. T h e m ore the text denies the actual existence o f a referent, real or ideal, and the m ore fantastically fictional it becom es, the m ore it becom es the representation o f its own pathos. Pathos is hypostatized as a blind power or m ere ‘puissance de vouloir,’ but it stabilizes the sem antics o f the figure by m aking it ‘m ean’ the pathos o f its undoing. (1979a: 198-99) H ere the ‘path os’ o f enunciation becom es a signifier o f truth in the sam e way Lacan ‘discovers’ truth in enunciation. ‘Pathos’ is a recurrin g word in de Man — alon g with ‘seduction’ it is the term he uses to describe the effects o f lan gu age — and, as I shall argu e, it m arks the problem o f the body in discourse, the question o f ‘b eh eadin g’, which is closely tied, as a defin ing case, to referentiality. For ju st as the law m ust intend yet su spen d referentiality and linguistics m ust assert yet suspend the m eaning-effects o f language, so the opposition between discourse and the body — what Felm an calls ‘the dichotom y between self-referentiality and linguistic referentiality’ (1983: 193

Avatars of Semiotics 81) and de M an describes as the dichotom y between cognition and act — is both enabling and distortive. For a central concern o f lan gu age — whether it be literary criticism or depth psychology or even structural linguistics — is the question o f how it is that lan gu age can provoke (to use a term o f G reim as’s) physical responses, what psychology calls conversion reactions. How is pathos — the quality or power, the dictionary says, in literature, music, speech, or other expressive form s, o f evoking a feeling — possible? T o ‘b eh ead ’ lan gu age is to m ake its pathos ‘m ean ’; it is to ap p reh en d enunciation as utterance. T h is is the structuralist en terprise — not only G reim as in his elim ination o f the phatic elem ents o f language, but also Lévi-Strauss in his attem pt, as he says in The Raw and the Cooked, to inscribe the m ateriality o f body functions such as the heartbeat and the pulse within the signifying structures o f m usic (1975: 14). It is also an aspect o f Lacanian discourse. T h u s in ‘T h e Freudian T h in g ’ at one point ‘an tistroph e’ replies to ‘stroph e’: “ ‘Everything is lan gu age: . . . if my patient flinches at the throbbing o f an aeroplan e at its zenith it is a way o f saying how she rem em bers the last bom b attack” .’ (1977: 124) H ere is the centre o f de M an’s philosophical literary criticism. Criticism for de M an is the read in g o f utterance against enunciation (strophe and antistrophe), the spirit against the letter, the ethics o f (im possible) gram m atical m ean in g against the pathos o f (illusory) m aterial reference. In the first h alf o f Ju lie , he argu es, ‘the value system and the narrative prom ote each oth er’s elaboration .’ (1979a: 206) In the second part, however, when Ju lie turns from the love o f Saint-Preuve to the love o f G od, the concatenation o f the categories o f truth and falsehood with the values o f right and w rong is disru pted , affecting the econom y o f the narration in decisive ways. We can call this shift in econom y ethical, since it indeed involves a displacem ent from pathos to ethos . . . . T h e passage to an ethical tonality does not result from a transcendental im perative but is the referential (and therefore unreliable) version o f a linguistic confusion. (1979a: 206) T h e two value-systems that de Man describes as subject to this structural interference are the system s o f utterance and enunciation: the nonreferentiality o f gram m ar in terfering with the referentiality o f rhetoric. In ‘Pascal’s Allegory o f 194

Avatars o f Semiotics Persuasion ’ de Man approvingly cites H egel’s distinction between allegory and enigm a ‘in term s o f allegory’s “aim fo r the m ost com plete clarity . . . T h e difficulty o f allegory,’ de Man continues, ‘is rather that this em phatic clarity o f rep resen tation does not stand in the service o f som ething that can be rep resen ted .’ (1981: 1) In the sam e way, de M an’s own clarity stands in the service o f an unreadable object, a ‘radical dyslexia’ not unlike the enunciation o f a Lacanian ‘thing’. Redoubtable discourse : the anxiety o f reference T h e clarity and ease with which de M an moves from a tropological to a cognitive sense o f lan gu age, from pathos to ethics, is rem arkable: it is, I believe, parallel to the ease with which Lévi-Strauss moves from bodily functions to semiotic systems and the ease with which G reim as can dism iss what he might call the ‘affectivity’ o f language. For G reim as, the ‘reception’ o f lan gu age is purely cognitive: the problem in lan gu age, he argu es, is that o f ‘ap p reh en d in g’ signification. (SS: 144) Yet the pathos o f lan gu age is not cognitive but tropological: ‘sed uctive’, ‘fo rcefu l’, a kind o f ‘pow er’. It is what de Man calls ‘the referential error . . . called d esire,’ the error o f ‘m etaphor that confers the illusion o f p ro p er m eaning to a su spen ded open sem antic structu re.’ (1979a: 198) Such tropin g is the will to power de Man describes in Nietzsche’s conception o f ‘positing’ rather than ‘know ing’ (1979a: 121). Knowing, in this sense, is referential: ‘to know’, de Man writes, ‘is a transitive function that assum es the prior existence o f an entity to be known and that predicates the ability o f knowing by ways o f p rop erties.’ (1979a: 121) What know ledge does most o f all is erase ‘the pathos o f a tem poral predicam ent in which m an ’s self-definition is forever d e fe rre d .’ (1979a: 199) It does so not simply for those who naively im agine an unproblem atic referent for discourse, but (m ore pathetically) for de Man him self. Know ledge is ‘a dism em berm ent, a beheadin g or a castration,’ yet its violence, for de M an, respon ds to the greater violence o f ‘ran d om ’ and m eaningless power. T his is a result o f the fact that, despite de M an’s argu m en t that pathos becom es the ‘m ean in g’ o f lan gu age conceived as utterance, pathos itself — the pathos o f affect — cannot ‘m ean’: T h e heterogen eous texture o f R o u sseau ’s allegorical 195

Avatars o f Semiotics narratives is less su rprisin g if one keeps in m ind that his radical critique o f referential m ean in g never im plied that the referential function o f lan gu age could in any way be avoided, bracketed, or reduced to being ju st one contingent linguistic property am o n g others, as is postu lated, for exam ple, in contem porary sem iology which . . . could not exist without this postulate. . . . Su sp en d ed m eaning is not, for him, disinterested play, but always a threat or a ch allen g e.. . . B u t since the convergence o f the referential and the figu rai signification can never be established, the referen ce can never be a m eaning. In R o u sseau ’s linguistics there is room only fo r ‘wild’ connotation; the loss o f denom inational control m eans that every connotation has claim to referential authority but no statute in which to gro u n d this c la im .. . . (1979a: 2 0 7 OS) R eference can never be m eaning because lan gu age acts within and upon a world that, unlike L acan ’s unconscious, is not ‘structured like a linguistic system but that consists o f a system o f needs.’ (1977: 209) Pathos, here, is precisely the pathos o f needs, o f necessity beyond lan gu age, the necessities o f contingent bodily existence: the fact that ‘nonverbal entities’ are ‘ran d om ’ rather than m eaningful, in an u n spon sored world where sense and referen ce cannot coincide and the pleasures o f aesthetics do not allow us to forget the ‘threat’ and ‘challenge’ o f su spen ded m eaning. N ot only does de M an su ggest that psychic energies are possibly ‘the aberrant, m etaphorical correlative to the absolute random n ess o f lan gu ag e’ (1979a: 299), but m ore darkly he asserts that bodily death is enunciated in language. The Triumph o f Life, he writes in ‘Shelley D isfigu red ’, is inscribed with — indeed, ‘m utilated’ by ( 1979b: 67) — its ‘decisive textual articulation: its reduction to the status o f a fragm en t brough t about by the actual death and subsequent disfigurem en t o f Shelley’s body.’ (1979b: 66) ‘The Triumph o f Life,9he concludes, warns us that nothing, whether deed, word, thought or text, ever happen s in relation, positive or negative, to anything that precedes, follows or exists elsewhere, but only as a random event whose power, like the pow er o f death, is d u e to the random n ess o f its occurrence. (1979b: 69) 196

Avatars o f Semiotics T h e pathos o f su spen ded m eaning, then, is ‘worse than m adness: the m ere confusion o f fiction with reality, as in the case o f Don Q uijote, is mild and curable com pared to this radical dyslexia.’ (1979a: 202) In what is perh aps the most chilling assertion o f Allegories o f Reading de Man cites Nietzsche: “ O n ly as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world {or justified” '. the fam ous quotation, twice repeated in The Birth o f Tragedy, should not be taken too serenely, for it is an indictm ent o f existence rather than a panegyric o f art.’ (1979a: 93) T his indictm ent is located in the nonconvergence o f the random possibilities o f referen ce and the certainty o f m eaning, a nonconvergence which de Man figu res as the deconstructive indeterm inacy o f lucidity and darkness. What m akes this — and de M an’s ‘objectivising’ discourse in general — so chilling is precisely its discursive disengagement from its own utterance. H ere, as we saw in D errida, lan gu age ap pro priates another level o f discourse for its ‘signification,’ but it does so by inscribing — by enunciating — enunciation within utterance. I f pathos becom es ‘represen tative’, ‘hypostatised’ and, as we saw in Lacan, a kind o f ‘m etaph oric’ utterance, then in de M an utterance enunciates a pathos, a ‘chill’, an anxiety that floats free within the utterance like a repressed sym ptom . ‘T h e readability o f the first p art’ o f Ju lie , he writes, ‘is obscured by a m ore radical indeterm inacy that projects its shadow backw ards and forw ards over the entire text. D econstructions o f figurai texts en gen d er lucid narratives which produce, in their turn and as it were within their own texture, a darkness m ore redoubtable than the error they dispel.’ ( 1979a: 217) T h e term redoubtable — com m unicating /strength/, enunciating /repeated doubts/ — articulates an enunciation that retraverses lan gu age and text backw ards and forw ards with a random power unrelated to anything that precedes or follows it to constantly discover and lose m eaning am id its shadows, its figu red darkness. T his ‘redoubtable dark n ess’ is the origin o f and opposite to discourse, both its referen t (in the rhetorical sense o f antecedent) and its m eaning (in the gram m atical sense o f ‘the possibility o f unproblem atic dyadic m ean in g’ — 1979a: 19). It is this random absence o f relations which gives rise to the linguistic assertion o f relations: the darkness o f death. ‘D iscourse,’ D errida has written,

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Avatars of Semiotics if it is originally violent, . . . as the avowal o f violence, is the least possible violence, the only way to repress the worst violence, the violence o f prim itive an d prelogical silence, o f a unim aginable night which would not even be the opposite o f nonviolence: nothingness and pu re nonsense. (1978: 130) For de Man ‘n eed s’ — necessity beyond lan gu age — o ffers a referent, like ‘d ark n ess’, ‘threat’, and the unserenity o f ‘path os’, which lies in the lesser (discursive) violence o f the uncertainty between reference and m eaning: ‘the entire assum ption o f a nonverbal realm govern ed by needs may well be a speculative hypothesis that exists only . . . fo r the sake of lan gu ag e.’ (1979a: 210) Such an u n d erstan din g o f needs creates the possibility o f m eaning against darkness and unim aginable night: ‘n eed’, de Man concludes, ‘reenters the literary discourse as the aberrant p ro p er m eaning o f m etaphors against which the allegory constitutes itself.’ (1979a: 210) But it does so at the cost — and with the anxiety en gen d ered by — the loss o f reference. I f L acan ’s unm astered m astery — the analyst’s final silence — creates the illusion o f a presid in g subject o f discourse possessing the ‘secret’ o f enunciation — an illusion that is fully actantial — then de M an’s effaced m astery cam ou flages an overw helm ing anxiety in relation to knowledge, m eaning, and referen ce in the diacritical fwictiojiing o f its discursive enunciation. L acan an d de M a n : enunciation an d affectivity T h e definition o f und erstan din g in referential term s forces de Man to ‘u n d erstan d ’ L acan ’s ‘desire’ in term s o f ‘n eeds’, o f necessity beyond language. For Lacan desire is a ‘radically in definable’ som ething which is ‘alienated in n eeds’: that which is ‘alienated in needs constitutes an Urverdrangung (prim al repression), an inability, it is su ppo sed, to be articulated in dem and, but it re-appears in som ething it gives rise to that presents itself in man as desire.’ (1977: 286) M oreover, such desire in Lacan is ‘beyond dem and. . . . T h u s desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction [o f a need], nor the dem and for love, but the differen ce that results from the subtraction o f the first from the second, the phenom enon o f their splitting.’ (1977: 2 8 6-87) 198

Avatars o f Semiotics T h u s Lacan attributes what Felm an calls in The Literary Speech Act ‘radical negativity’ to desire, a negativity which is enunciatory, a ‘saying n o.’ Radical negativity (or ‘saying n o’) belongs neither to negation, nor to opposition, nor to correction (‘norm alization’), nor to contradiction (o f the positive and the negative, the norm al and the abnorm al, the ‘seriou s’ and the ‘u n seriou s’, ‘clarity’ and ‘obscurity’) — it belongs precisely to scandal·, to the scandal o f their nonopposition. T his scandal o f the outside o f the alternative, o f a negativity that is neither negative nor positive. . . . (1983: 141—42) T h e ‘scan dal’ Felm an is speaking o f is, as the French title o f her book says, Le Scandale du corps parlant, ‘the scandal o f the seduction o f the hum an body in sofar as it sp eak s.’ (1983: 12) It is, as she suggests, the scandal, not o f referentiality, but o f the affectivity o f langu age, its possibility o f creating bodily responses (such as fear, or passion, or distrust, or even anxiety). As de Man says, this is the ‘im possible’ situation where ‘the ethical lan gu age has to act upon a world that it no longer considers structured like a linguistic system ’ (1979a: 209) yet which, im possibly, it still affects. T h e scandal o f the speaking body is precisely the nonopposition o f the d ifferen ce between body an d word, what both Felm an and de M an describe as the ‘seductive’ pow er o f lan gu age (the form er in term s o f pleasure, the latter in term s o f pathos). In Allegories of Reading de Man n arrates the scandalous negativity — the negativity o f deconstruction — in term s o f the opposition between utterance (‘statem ent’) and enunciation ju st as Lacan inscribes that ‘scan dal’ in his very enunciation: deconstruction does not occur between statem ents, as in a logical refutation or in a dialectic, but h appen s instead between, on the one hand, m etalinguistic statem ents about the rhetorical nature o f lan gu age an d, on the other hand, a rhetorical praxis that puts these statem ents into a question. T h e outcom e o f this interplay is not m ere negation. The Birth of Tragedy does m ore than ju st retract its own assertions about the genetic structure o f literary history. It leaves a residue o f m eaning that can, in its turn, be translated into statem ent, although the authority o f 199

Avatars of Semiotics this second statem ent can no longer be like that o f the voice in the text when it is read naively. T h e nonauthoritative secondary statem ent that results from the readin g will have to be a statem ent about the limitations o f textual authority. (1979a: 98—99) T h is ‘residue o f m ean in g’ is ‘ignorance’ which is very d ifferen t from ‘the residue o f obliteration’ by which L acan defin es desire. (1977: 287) Ignoran ce is always in de M an — u n d er the denotations o f ‘im possibility’, ‘undecidability’, ‘indeterm inacy’, ‘an intolerable sem antic irresolution . . . worse than m adness: the m ere confusion o f fiction with reality . . . is mild and curable com pared to this radical dyslexia’ (1979a: 202) — the scandal o f reference. T h e central will to truth in de M an — his sense, as he argu es throughout Allegories o f Reading that the opposition truth vs falsehood (based upon the traditional sense o f referentiality) cannot be su spen ded, that its ‘con fusion ’ is a threat, a challenge, a pathos, an occasion fo r anxiety that cannot lightheartedly or easily be dism issed — underlines the differen ce between the referen ce and gram m ar o f lan gu age which L acanian enunciation erases. De M an needs this opposition, as we can see in his definition o f ‘u n d erstan d in g’, to m ake know ledge itself possible, yet he continually sees it decon structed in R ousseau and the other texts he exam ines: ‘all lan gu ag e,’ he asserts, ‘has to be referential but can never signify its actual referen t.’ (1979a: 160) F or him lan gu age leads to selfcontradiction and ‘ap o ria’: it m ust, yet cannot be referential. M oreover, he presents his aporetic vision in a discourse, as N orris says, which adh eres ‘to the protocols o f logical argu m en t no m atter how strange or paradoxical their u psh ot.’ (1985: 197) T h u s de Man does not — it seem s he cannot — ‘u n d erstan d ’ the persuasive power o f rhetoric beyond the ‘intricate set o f feints and ru ses’ o f ‘seduction’. (1979a: 159) Like the hypostatization o f pathos, for de M an, ‘seduction’ is m ore ‘fo rm al’ than ‘m aterial’, a function o f the gram m atical aporetic ‘illusion’ o f referential m ean in g rather than an activity o f lan gu age in the world. T h u s he writes o f ‘the seductive plays o f the signifier’ (1979a: 207) and ‘sem iological fantasies about the adequation o f sign to m ean in g.’ (1979a: 262) For de Man ‘responsiven ess’ has to be tem pered by cognition. Seduction for him then, is not the Lacanian scandal o f the 200

Avatars o f Semiotics speaking body — the scandal to thought o f the ‘non opposition ’ o f enunciation — but the scandal o f lan gu age, defin ed (according to de M an by R ousseau) as ‘the possibility o f contingent erro r.’ (1979a: 156) T h at is, lan gu age is scan dalously defin ed in opposition to a nonlinguistic world an d thus institutes the im possible opposition s o f m ean in g and re fe rence, know ledge and ignorance. With a twist o f the wrist langu age, as Felm an argu es, can becom e positive, fecund, affirm ative; it can becom e, as Lacan would say, ‘full’. Yet de M an, with his aporetic im agination in Allegories o f Reading, never quite escapes the uncertainty o f ‘the negative/positive alternative.’ For him, unlike Lacan, this uncertainty is sim ply an xiou s — an anxiety about the possibility o f know ledge that is itself rem arkable. Ignoran ce, the impossibility o f truly u n d erstan din g what one is do in g with lan gu age, what lan gu age itself could possibly do in referen ce to the world, rather than any possible contingent m istake, m ost troubles de M an: ‘the problem ,’ he writes, ‘is not that Ju lie r e g a in s m ystified, but that a totally enlightened lan gu age . . . is unable to control the recurrence . . . o f the errors it ex p o ses’. (1979a: 219n) Yet unlike Lacan he does not m ake the pathos o f this ‘problem ’ — a subjective feeling, ‘bliss’, ‘fe ar’, ‘anxiety’ itself — a criterion fo r deciding (or even deciding ‘undecidability’ best ‘u n d erstan d s’ the situation). T h e contrary o f ‘know ledge’ fo r de M an is not the ‘illness’ o f ‘em pty speech ’ as it is, finally, fo r Lacan. It is ignorance. In Felm an the contrary o f know ledge is pleasure (i.e. ‘bliss’), which is simply the contradictory o f de M an’s ign o rance; in D errida it is play; while in G reim as it is power.

Reference and enunciation: Greimas and poststructuralism Power, fo r G reim as, is a com plex category that, as in A ustin’s speech-act theory, m odifies the syntax o f know ledge with the m odalities o f adverbs. G reim as describes pow er as the pow er to do, as know-how (savoirfaire), or, m ore generally, as a function o f the m odal category o f ‘will’ — ‘we would be som ewhat tem pted to consider it as a m odulation o f will’ (SS: 152) — or ‘will to act’. (SS: 206) T h at is, while he describes knowledge in term s o f a syntactic m odel (what de Man describes as the self-

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Avatars o f Semiotics consistent, nonreferential logic o f ‘gram m ar’), he situates power in relation to m odal ‘aspects’ o f discourse, em bodied, for instance, in the adverbial m odifiers ‘willingly vs unwillingly (SS: 206) or the actantial category helper vs opponent. T h is is the enunciatory m odel o f Lacan (see F igu re 5.2). J . L. Austin also calls attention to adverbs in a p assage Felm an cites as an exam ple o f the radical negativity o f A ustinian speech-act theory: ‘A b elief in opposites and dichotom ies en courages, am ong other things, a blindness to the com binations and dissociations o f adverbs that are possible, even to such obvious facts that we can act at once on im pulse and intentionally.’ (1983: 141 ) As I have argu ed elsewhere, the introduction o f m odalities which ‘lack a syntactic m odel’ (SS: 205) to describe actants puts into question the nonfigurative aim o f G reim as’s structural sem antics an d thus is a breach in the ‘gram m atization ’ o f his sem antics (Schleifer 1983: xlix-liv). Since, as de Man argues, figu res always imply a referen t (1979a: 90), the category power reinscribes the referen t in G reim as’s sem antics. T h at is, adverbs — which, m odifying sentences as a whole, seem to be m etalinguistic and, as Felm an says ‘without positive referen ce’ (1983: 141) — breach de M an’s opposition o f p u re rhetoric vs pu re gram m ar (1979a: 9) and L acan ’s opposition o f ‘full’ and ‘em pty’ speech (1977: 40 f; see SS: 64). With this breach, adverbs introduce a ‘radically negative’ conception o f the referen t into G reim asian semiotics, what I could call the G reim asian thing.

The act o f enunciation: the G reim asian thing When D errida asserts that ‘m eaning is the phenom enality o f ph enom en on ’ (1981a: 30), when Lacan describes desire as the reappearan ce o f ‘the particularity’ abolished by dem and (1977: 287), when de Man defines m etaph or as presenting ‘m ere possibility’ as certain ( 1979a: 151), they are all strugglin g with the relationship o f lan gu age and enunciation to refe rence, what G reim as calls ‘the relationship between words and things.’ (1976c: 84; see C hapter 4) ‘Phenom enon’, ‘d esire’, ‘m ere possibility’ are what G reim as describes as the ‘Saussurean “great cloudiness” ’ (SS: 67) o f H jelm slev’s conception o f the u ndifferentiated ‘substance o f the content’: ‘an unanalyzed, am orph ou s continuum , on which bou n daries are 202

Avatars o f Semiotics laid by the form ative action o f the lan gu ag es.’ (H jelm slev 1961 : 52) G reim as bases his definition o f the elem entary structure o f signification on this H jelm slevian m odel, and he locates both the ‘form o f the content’ and the ‘substance o f the content’ within the linguistic universe (argu in g that the sem antic axes o f lan gu age constitute the ‘substance’ — see SS: 26—28). In this conception, the problem o f referentiality is not ‘su sp e n d e d ’ as simply one contingent linguistic property am on g others, but m ade in significant ways a function o f lan gu age (in both the ordinary and m athem atical senses o f the word: what lan gu age does and what is d ep en d en t upon language). ‘W ithout lan gu ag e,’ Sau ssu re notes, ‘thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. T h ere are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the ap p earan ce o f lan gu ag e.’ (1959: 112) On the basis o f this conception o f lan gu age H jelm slev distinguishes between the ‘form o f the content’ and the ‘substance o f the content’: ‘I f we maintain S au ssu re’s term inology,’ he writes, ‘it becom es clear that the substance dep en d s on the form to such a deg ree that it lives exclusively by its favor and can in no sense be said to have independent existence.’ (1961: 50) In Structural Semantics G reim as borrow s H jelm slev’s ‘now fam ous exam ple o f the color spectrum (Prolegomena, p. 53)’ to dem onstrate this structural distinction: gwyrdd green blue glas gray llwyd (S S : 27 )

brown

As this chart shows, colours articulated in English and Welsh do not coincide. Rather, as Hjelm slev notes, ‘behind the paradigm s that are furnished in the various lan gu ages by the designations o f color, we can . . . disclose such an am o rph ou s continuum , the color spectrum , on which each lan gu age arbit203

Avatars of Semiotics rarily sets its b ou n d aries.’ (1961: 52) Such a conception o f lan gu age m akes the ‘objects’ o f reference problem atic. It accom plishes, as Felm an argu es in The Literary Speech Act (not in term s o f H jelm slevian linguistics, but in term s o f Lacanian psychoanalysis), a ‘change in status o f the referen t as such.’ (1983: 75) C ontrary to the traditional conception o f the referen t,’ she writes, referential know ledge o f lan gu age is not envisaged here as constative, cognitive know ledge: neither for psychoanalysis nor perform ative analysis is lan gu age a statement o f the real, a sim ple reflection o f the referen t or its mimetic representation. Q uite to the contrary, the referen t is itself prod uced by lan gu age as its own effect. . . . T h is m eans that between lan gu age and referen t there is no longer sim ple opposition (nor is there identity, on the other hand): lan gu age m akes itself part o f what it refers to (without, however, being all that it refers to). R eferential know ledge o f lan gu age is not know ledge about reality (about a separate and distinct entity), but knowledge that has to do with reality, that acts within reality, since it is itself — at least in part — what this reality is m ade of. T h e referen t is no longer simply a preexistin g substance, but an act, that is, a dynam ic m ovem ent o f m odification o f reality. (1983: 7 6-77) R eference, in specifically G reim asian term s, is an act o f enunciation. D espite the gesture in G reim as (and in H jelm slev as well) seem ingly to ‘bracket’ the referent, this ‘sem iotic’ conception o f reference, in fact, reinscribes referentiality in relation to the ‘gram m atical’ relationships that define language. T h is change in status escapes the oppositional alternatives o f lan gu age and referen t, phenom enality and phenom enon, desire for som ething and desire as such, certainty and possibility. A negative exam ple should m ake this clear. When Searle asserts that colour is a referential ‘object’ in the world that preexists its linguistic ‘description ’ (not ‘articulation’) — ‘it is essential to realize,’ he writes, ‘that even in “ Little Red R iding H o o d ” , “re d ” m eans re d ’ (1969: 79) — he fails to take into account the enunciatory semiotics o f reference implicit in G reim as’s und erstan din g o f m eaning. T h ro u gh o u t Speech Acts Searle uses colours as recurrin g exam ples o f objects o f re fe r204

Avatars o f Semiotics ence. In an exam ple he add u ces to explain the relationship between N om inalism and Realism , he writes: I f two philosophers agree on the truth o f a tautology, such as e.g. ‘everything coloured is either red or not re d ’, and from this one concludes that the property o f being red exists, and the other refu ses to draw this conclusion; there is and can be no dispute, only a failure to u n d erstand. Either they m ean som ething differen t by the described proposition or, counter to hypothesis, they do not u n d erstan d the original proposition in the sam e way. (1 9 6 9 :1 0 5 -0 6 ) T h e ‘u n d erstan d in g’ that Searle does not take into account is to see the naive sense o f referentiality in the hypothesis: ‘either red or not red ’, as H jelm slev shows in the com parison o f English and Welsh colour articulations, is not exhaustive. T h ere is also the fourth position o f the semiotic square, ‘neither red nor not re d .’ Besides the colour spectrum (which, it could be argu ed , functions like Locke’s ‘secondary characteristics’), H jelm slev also o ffers five sentences in d ifferen t lan gu ages (the English version o f which is ‘I do not know’) to show that this p u rp o rt could be ‘analyzed from many points o f view, to be subjected to m any differen t analyses, u n der which it would ap p e ar as so m any differen t objects.’ ( 1961: 51) G reim as, too, ad d s that the articulations o f the form and content o f the substance ‘characterize, o f course, not only the color spectrum but a great num ber o f sem antic ax es.’ (SS: 27) Unlike H jelm slev, however, G reim asian sem antics does not aban don the ‘givenness’ o f ap p reh en d ed m eaning — even when that m eaning, referentially, ‘has to do with reality.’ Rather, it reconceives such reference as enunciated. ‘It seem s to be tru e,’ H jelm slev notes, that a sign is a sign for som ething, and that this som ething in a certain sense lies outside the sign itself. T h u s the word ring is a sign for that definite thing on my finger, and that thing does not, in a certain (traditional) sense, enter into the sign itself. But that thing on my finger is an entity o f content-substance, which, through the sign, is o rd ered to a content-form and is arran g ed under it together with various other entities o f content-substance 205

Avata rs of Semiotics (e.g., the sound that com es from my telephone). T h at a sign is a sign for som ething m eans that the content-form o f a sign can subsum e that som ething as contentsubstance. (1961: 57—58) H jelm slev’s exam ple, the bi-isotopic ring, like D errid a’s ‘g raft’, L acan ’s puns, and de M an’s redoubtable ‘figu res’, inscribes reference in enunciation. B u t Hjelm slev o ffers this simply as an exam ple o f an ‘unn am ed entity’ in the glossem atic ‘algebra o f lan gu age’ prior to lan gu ag e’s confrontation with the world. ( 1961: 79) G reim as, on the other hand, sees the account o f the apprehension o f m eaning, including ‘referen tial’ m eaning, as the goal o f semiotics. D oing this, his sem iotics denies H jelm slev’s project o f elim inating referential ‘contentsubstance’ from glossem atics. Like the linguistic p erform an ce o f m arriage Austin describes (1962) or its breach in seduction Felm an describes, reference, in G reim as, is ‘a sign fo r som ething’ which is neither simply a signified nor simply som e thing. R ather, the enunciatory activity o f referen ce always occurs within another context in which referen ce ‘has to do with reality.’ R eference, in this conception, can be com pared to a child’s enunciation im itating that o f his parents: his word refers to the object his paren ts hold and nam e — a w edding ring, for instance — but such ‘referen ce’, like the ring itself, occurs within other networks o f relations (such as love or fear or simply the desire fo r com m unity) which are enunciated, which do occur, as de Man says, as pow erfully as death precisely because they are as ‘ran d o m ’ as death.

Conclusion: Greimas an d the nature o f m eaning Such a G reim asian conception o f reference, then, forces us to reconceive what de Man says (and H jelm slev implies) about the avoidance, bracketing, and reduction o f the referential function in contem porary semiotics. In fact, it forces us to reconceive what I am calling the ‘nature o f m ean in g’ altogether and situate it within the econom y — the semiotics — o f hum an life. In these term s the question o f reference is m ore com plicated than de Man seem s to indicate in his distinction between certainty and possibility in his discussion o f m etaphor. T h at is, the only ‘certainty’ (which de Man and, despite appearan ces, 206

Avatars o f Semiotics Lacan seem so anxious to achieve) is the am biguous, culturally determ ined ‘certainty’ o f linguistic enunciation. De M an’s term ‘m etaph or’, like D errid a’s ‘g ra ft’ and L acan ’s ‘true speech ’, is a poststructuralist figure fo r what G reim as defin es in m ore purely linguistic term s as ‘enunciation’. T h u s de Man writes T h e distinction between m etonym ic ag gregates and m etaphorical totalities, based on the presence, within the latter o f a ‘necessary link’ that is lacking in the form er, is characteristic o f all m etaphorical systems, as is the equation o f the principle o f totalization with natural process. A fter the deconstruction o f the m etaphorical m odel has taken place, the attribute o f n aturalness shifts from the m etaphorical totality to the m etonym ic a g g re gate, as was the case for the ‘state o f n atu re’ in the Second Discourse or for ‘sensation’ in the Profession de foi. (1979a: 259) T h e distinction between metonymic aggregates and m etaphorical totalities, like that between blue and grey in the English articulation o f the colour spectrum , is purely an arbitrary and perform ative one. M etaphor creates certainty by substantifying experience through the principle o f totalisation, yet that substantification can always be deconstructed since, given the relational n ature o f lan gu age, the ‘certainty’ and unity o f substance can always be ‘ex p lo d ed ’ through denial (or ‘postulated n egation’) into the aggregation o f relationships: ‘W henever one opens on e’s m outh to speak o f relationships,’ writes G reim as in Du Sens, ‘they transform them selves, as if by m agic, into substantives, that is into term s whose m eaning we m ust negate by postulating new relationships, and so on and on .’ (1970a: 8) T h e shift from m etaphorical totality to metonymic a g g re gation is the shift, described in this chapter, from structuralism to poststructuralism , from a semiotics o f utterance to one o f enunciation. In an im portant way the project o f G reim as’s career, as I hope I have dem onstrated, is to account for both structuralism and poststructuralism ; it is to to account for the m eaning-effect o f denial or denegation as well as for affirmation: for non-sense as well as sense, for obscurity as well as clarity, for aporias as well as decisions. But m ore than this G reim as 207

Avatars of Semiotics positions both structuralism and poststructuralism in his u n d erstan din g o f the nature o f m eaning. M eaning, fo r G reim as, is not simply the positive and positivistic unities o f intention, consciousness, and referen ce poststructuralism deconstructs in one way or another. M eanings, fo r G reim as, are the com plex ‘objects’ o f hum an appreh en sion , its cause and result, which have to do with hum an life. M eanings are m eaning-effects which include the felt sense o f substance an d relationship, the felt sense o f bew ilderm ent and incom prehension, and ‘felt sen se’ — affectivity — in general. In his semiotics G reim as has developed a ‘m ethod’ to account fo r m eaning in all its com plexity, including the ‘m ean in g’ o f a poststructuralist figu re such as de M an’s ‘m etaph or’. ‘M etaphor’, as de M an uses it, is a n eutralising term m ediating between ‘m etaph or’ conceived as sim ple (i.e. ‘totalizin g’) substitution (de Man 1979a: 146) an d ‘m etonym y’ conceived as contiguous (i.e. ‘ag g reg a tin g ’) substitution; in its neutralised sense ‘m etaph or’ signifies /trope/. Such a tropologicaI conception o f lan gu age characterises poststructuralism . B ut in the context o f G reim asian analysis it suggests its own com plex contrary; it casts the radical negation o f the fourth term o f the semiotic square across itself in lan gu age conceived as literal. H ere the literal is reconceived, negatively conceived; it is the denial or denegation o f poststructuralism located in G reim as’s ‘object’ o f study, the ‘a p p reh en d ed ’ m eaning-effects — literal m eaning-effects — provoked by enunciation, which include the negative m eaning-effects o f the noncom prehension o f signification and the nonsignifying affectivity o fla n g u a g e . For above all, G reim as begins with such global ‘m ean in gs’ as literally given at the m om ent o f enunciation in o rd er to account for all the form s, positive and negative, o f signification within the econom y o f hum an life. G reim as follows such an accounting through linguistics, semiotics, and the theory o f discourse in an attem pt, th rou gh out his career, to m ake sense o f m eaning.

208

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A rticles cited 1956 ‘L ’Actualité du saussurism e’ Le Français Moderne, 24, pp. 190— 203. 1962/63 ‘La Linguistique statistique et la linguistique structurale’ Le Français moderne, 30, 241—52; 31, 55—68. 1963a ‘La mythologie com parée’ in D S I , pp. 117—34. 1963b ‘Comment définir les indéfinis? (Essai de description sém antique)’ Études de Linguistique Appliquée, 2, pp. 110—25. 1966a ‘Considérations sur le langage’ in D S I , pp. 19—38. 1966b ‘Preface’ to Louis Hjelmslev, Le Langage, Minuit, Paris. 1966c ‘Structure et histoire’ in D S I , pp. 103-15. 1967a ‘La structure des actants du récit’ in D S I , pp. 249—70. 1967b ‘La linguistique structurale et la poétique’, in D S I , pp. 271-83. 1968a with François Rastier, ‘The Interaction o f Semiotic Constraints’ Yale French Studies, 41 (1968), 86—105. Reprinted as ‘Les jeux des contraintes sémiotiques’ in D S I, pp. 135—55. 19681) ‘Conditions d ’une sémiotique du monde naturel’ in D S I , pp. 49-91. 1969 ‘La structure sémantique’ in D S I, pp. 39—48. 1970a ‘Du sens’ in D S I , pp. 7—17. 1970b ‘La quête de la peur: Réflexions sur un groupe de contes

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Bibliography populaires’ in D S I , pp. 231—47. 1970c ‘Sémiotique et communications sociales’ in 555, pp. 45—60. 1971a ‘The Interpretation o f Myth: Theory and Practice’ trans. Kipnis Clougher, in Pierre Maranda and Elli K. M aranda (eds) Structural Analysis of Oral Tradition, University o f Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 81-121. Translation o f ‘Pour une théorie de l’interprétation du récit mythique’ (1966) in D SI, pp. 185— 230. 1971b ‘Narrative Gram m ar: Units and Levels’ trans. Phillip Bodrock, Modern Language Notes, 86, pp. 793—807. 1971c ‘Réflexions sur le objets ethno-sémiotiques’ in 555, pp. 17585. 1972 ‘Introduction’ to Essais de Sémiotique Poétique, A. J . Greimas (ed), Librairie Larousse, Paris, pp. 6—24. 1973a ‘Les Actants, les acteurs, et les figures’ in D S2, pp. 49-66. 1973b ‘Description et narrativité à propos de “La Ficelle” de M aupassant’ in DS2, pp. 135—55. 1973c ‘Un problème de sémiotique narrative: les objets de valeur’ in DS2, pp. 19-48. 1974 ‘Interview’ in Herman Parret (ed) Discussing Language, Mouton, The Hague, pp. 55-71. 1976a ‘Pour une théorie des modalités’ in DS2, pp. 67-91. 1976b with Josep h Courtés, ‘The Cognitive Dimension o f Narrative Discourse’ trans. Michael Rengstorf, New Literary History, 7, 4 3 3 47. 1976c with E. Landowski, ‘Analyse sémiotique d ’un discours ju ridique’ in 555, pp. 79—128. 1976d ‘Du discours scientifique en sciences sociales’ in 555, pp. 9—42. 1979a ‘Les accidents dans les science dites humaines’ in DS2, pp. 171-212. 1979b ‘De la modalisation de l’être’ in DS2, pp. 93—102. 1979c ‘La Soupe au pistou ou la construction d ’un objet de valeur’ in DS2, pp. 157-69. 1979d with E. Landowski ‘Introduction’ to Introduction à L'analyse du discourse en sciences sociales, A. J. Greimas and E. Landowski (eds), Hachette, Paris, pp. 5-27. 1980 ‘Le contrat de véridiction’ in DS2, pp. 103—13. 1981 ‘De la colère: Étude de sémantique lexicale’ in DS2, pp. 225—46. 1982 ‘Le défi’ in DS2, pp. 213-23. 1983 ‘Introduction’ in ¿ 5 2 , pp. 7-18.

Cited Works by Other Authors Anderson, Perry (1983), hi the Tracks of Historical Materialism, New Left Books, London. Armstrong, Nancy (1981), ‘Inside Greim as’s Square: Literary Characters and Cultural Restraint’, in Wendy Steiner (ed.) The Sign in Music and Literature, University o f T exas Press, Austin,

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Bibliography Cam bridge University Press, Cambridge. Souriau, Etienne (1950), Deux cents milles situations dramatiques Flammarion, Paris. Spivak, Gayatri (1976), ‘Translator’s Preface’, in Derrida (1976), pp. ix—lxxxvii. Steiner, George (1975), After Babel, O xford University Press, New York. Steiner, Peter (1982), ‘T o Enter the Circle: The Functionalist Structuralism o f the Prague School’, in Peter Steiner (ed.) The Prague School, University o f T exas Press, Austin, pp. ix-xii. T rnka, Bohumil et al. (1958), ‘Prague Structural Linguistics’, trans. Jo se f Vachek in Vachek (1964), pp. 468—80. Trubetzkoy, N. S. (1969), Principles of Phonology, trans. Christine Baltaxe, University o f California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Originally published in 1939. Vachek, Jo s e f (ed.) (1964), A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. ----- (1966), The Linguistic School of Prague, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

216

Index Definitions for technical terms are the first page entry and follow the word defined. actants defined 84; 11, 13, 88-90, 92-5, 98, 100, 123-4, 149, 153, 156, 159, 198 actantial analysis defined xxii—xxiii; 38, 41, 80, 86, 92-3, 104, 109, 113, 119, 133, 146 approach 88 categories 96-7, 107-8 model 102 order 101 commutation o f 125 constituted 127 double status 91, 110 relationship between subject and object 105 semantic classification 99 semantic investment 121 o f wondertale 120 actors defined 94; 92, 95, 149, 160 actualisation defined 86; 85, 90, 102 affabulation 187 affirm ation 108 agrammatical/asemantic 78 anaphora defined 157 cognitive and semantic 158 Anderson, Perry xiii-xiv archiphonemes defined 51 ; 52-3, 171 see also Trubetzkoy archisemene defined 54 Armstrong, Nancy 27 assertion defined 108; 109 Austin, J . L. 34, 210-2

Pleasure of the Text 39 SIZ ix, 150, 154 Writing Degree Zero 161 see also double articulation, readerly, semiology, signifiance, speech/writing, tmesis, writerly, ‘zero

degree’ Benveniste, Emile 8-9, 11, 33, 4 2 ,4 4 -6 , 48, 5 2 ,6 1 ,7 8 , 89-90, 162, 165, 177, 192 bi-isotopic defined 2; 105, 186, 206 binarity 20, 56 Bloomfield, Leonard 44 Bloomfield School 44, 46, 5 8 -9 ,6 1 ,6 5 , 79, 82, 83, 93, 132, 168 behaviourist assumptions o f 67 descriptive linguistics 45 empirical contiguity 57 field methods 58 bricolage defined 17; 114, 116, 118, 120, 171 bricoleur 180 see also Lévi-Strauss

C alloud,Jean 95, 165 Chomsky, Noam 74, 82-3, 85 classeme defined 71; 75, 87, 153 circumstants defined 95; 109 combinatory defined 17; 49 communicative function o f language 170—1 complementary relationship 28,109 consecution defined 127 contradictory relationship defined by Jakobson 24, 28, 108-9, 115 contrary relationship defined by

Barthes, Roland x, 39, 63, 6 7 -9 ,7 8 ,8 3 -5 ,9 4 ,1 1 0 ,1 4 4 , 168, 171 Elements of Semiology 41—2, 65

217

Index diectic expression 126 différance 179-81 see also Derrida discourse 34, 92-3, 197-8 grammatisation o f 111 trans-sentential defined 87;

Jakobson 2 4 ,2 8 , 108, 115 contrast and combination 1, 4, 8-9, 16-17, 20, 25, 70 Copenhagen School o f Linguistics 44—7, 57, 73 see also Hjelmslev Courtés, Jo sep h 4, 128, 130, 165 Culler, Jonathan X , 1-2,79, 172 Structuralist Poetics x Cyrus 53

88

discoursivisation (Greimas and Courtés) 3 8 -9 ,1 3 0 ,1 5 5 ,1 7 3 criticism 38 disengagem ent/engagem ent defined 21; 128, 143, 156-9, 184 disengagem ent 38, 146, 155, 166, 168, 197 dissemination 79 distributional analysis defined 46; 5 8 - 6 1 ,7 4 -5 ,9 3 ,9 6 , 98, 112, 119-20, 170 see also Bloomfield School double articulation defined by Martinet 17, defined by Barthes 69-70; 21, 77, 80, 8 3 ,8 5 ,8 7 ,9 1 ,1 1 1 ,1 1 3 ,1 2 8 , 143-6, 155-6, 168-70, 175, 180-2 first articulation defined 70; 75, 170-1, 176-8, 182 second articulation defined 70; 7 2 -3 ,7 5 , 151, 170-1, 175-6, 178-80, 182 see also Martinet double aspect o f speech defined 13 Dundes, Alan 119 duplex defined 25, 133 Duran, Régis 186

deconstruction defined 172; 38, 78, 167-8, 173-8, 180-2, 199, 207 see also Derrida deixis 34, 120, 192 De Man, Paul xi—xii, xxiv, 23, 35 ,4 0 , 106-7, 162, 168, 183-4, 191-3 198,201-2, 206-8 Allegories of Reading 197, 199-201 ‘Pascal’s Allegory o f Persuasion’ 194—5 Rousseau (Julie) 194-5, 197,

200-1

‘Shelley D isfigured’ 196 denial 109, 127, 174, 188 Derrida, Jacques xi-xii, xxiv, 24, 3 4 ,4 0 , 5 5 ,7 9 , 139, 167-70, 172-4, 177-82, 190, 2 0 2 ,2 0 6 -7 Dissemination 179 Margins of Philosophy 173, 175, 179 O f Grammatology 168—70, 173-4, 179 Positions 173, 175 Speech and Phenomena 34 ‘The Supplem ent o f the Copula: Philosophy Before Linguistics’ 177 see also deconstruction, différance, iterability, logocentric hierarchy, transcendental desire 185-91, 199 see also Lacan diachrony defined 9; 75, 92 diacritical 9

Eco, Umberto 79 elemental structure o f signification 3 see also semiotic square Englis, Karel 47 ensemble 42 enunciation/utterance (énonciation!énoncé) defined 13; xxiv, 21, 138, 140, 155, 157-60, 163-6, 168, 173-4, 176, 178-9, 181-91, 188-91, 193-4, 197, 199, 200, 204, 207-8

218

Index Dictionnaire de VAnçien Français xix Du Sens 1 3, 101, 207 Du Sens I I 3, 82—129, 157

enunciation into utterance 166 m ediating 165 two types 35 exteroceptive defined 73

‘T he Interaction o f Semiotic Constraints’ xx-xiv, 30, 141 ‘The Interpretation o f Myth: Theory and Practice’ 76, 117 Maupassant 3, 76, 81, 96, 105, 117, 130-63 ‘Pour une Théorie des modalités’ 101

Felman, Shoshana 29, 178, 1 8 0 ,1 9 2 -3 ,2 0 1 -2 The Literary Speech Act 199, 204 figurative analysis 110, 114, 136 linguistics 136 folklore 117, 119 folktales 22, 113 see also wondertale form/structure 47, 55—6, 60, 67, 103 see also Lévi-Strauss Foucault, Michel xi, 42 Freud 183, 185, 187 psychoanalysis xv ‘thing’ 188-9 see also Lacan functionalism 46-8 functional linguistics 45, 55 see also Prague School functions (narrative) defined 110-11; 131 functional analysis 69, 98, 110-11, 113, 123 syntagmatic schemas 124 see also actants

Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary xviii,

xxi, xxiv, 4 -4 3 ,5 5 , 85—8, 102, 115-16, 127-8, 130, 141, 143, 147, 155, 164-6, 174

Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales 3 ,1 3 0 -6 3

Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method ix,

xviii, XX, xxiii—xxiv, 3, 5,

7, 10-11, 13-16, 18-19, 2 1 ,2 3 ,2 6 , 3 0 -1 ,3 4 ,4 1 , 44-129, 141, 157, 167, 191,203 Guiraud, Pierre xiii, 73-6, 83 Haberm as, Jü rg e n xiv-xv Harris, Zellig 59-60, 82

Methods in Structural Linguistics 58

Gallop, Ja n e 189

Reading Lacan 183 Garver, Newton 34 generative trajectory defined 86-7; xxiv, 39, 80, 126-30, 138 glossematics 45, 62 see also Hjelmslev Godzich, Wlad 5, 37 grammatology defined 174; 178, 182 Greimas, A. J . ‘Analyse sémiotique d ’un discours juridique’ 141, 143-4 ‘Comment définir les indéfinis’ 53-5

Hartman, Geoffrey 38—40 ‘The Voice o f the Shuttle: Language from the Point o f View o f Literature’ 37 Hawkes, Terence x Hegel, G eorg xii, 2 9 ,5 5 ,1 7 6 -8 , 195 hermeneutics xv Hjelmslev, Louis xviii, 3, 14, 19-20, 4 7 ,6 1 -8 , 7 2 ,7 4 , 80, 8 2 -3 ,8 5 ,9 3 , 116, 164T5, 168, 170, 180, 2 0 2 ,2 0 4 -6

Prolegomena to a Theory of Language xvi, 62, 66, 203 see also Copenhagen School o f Linguistics, glosse-

219

Index Landowski, E. 142-4, 146 language defined 42; 8, 85

matics, planes o f language Holenstein, Elm ar 2 ,2 4 ,4 7 ,5 3 , 60, 63-5, 77 homologation defined 121 ; 112, 122-3, 132, 135 hypotaxis defined 75; 100—1, 153

see also Analytic Dictionary

language defined xxiii; 75 bi-planar defined 11 ; 170, 181 language/speech 20 langue defined 8; 20, 80, 82, 85, 155 Natural Language 166

ideology xiv, xxi, 29 immanence/manifestation xxiv, 86-7, 93, 99 immanent semantic universe defined 70 manifested semantic universe 70, 85, 89 implication 28 see also direct presupposition interoceptive defined lb interpretation 38 isomorphism defined 116; 115, 157, 166, 180 isomorphic 87, 110 isotopy defined 76; 75, 77, 79-80, 87, 144, 148, 154 iterability 104 see also Derrida

see also Analytical Dictionary,

Saussure Leach, Edm und 121 legal discourse 142-6 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 16-18, 22, 34, 37-8, 47, 50, 55-7, 6 0 ,6 5 ,6 7 ,8 8 ,9 2 -3 ,9 7 ,1 0 1 , 103-4, 112-21, 125,128, 133-5, 137, 139-41, 146-7, 154, 167, 171 The Raw and the Cooked 194 Structural Anthropology 16 ‘The Structural Study o f Myth’ 30, 134, 139 ‘Structure and Form: Reflections on the Work o f Vladimir Propp’ 12, 50, 5 5,88, 97, 103, 119, 132, 140 see also bricolage, contradiction, form/structure, mediation, myth, structuralism lexemes defined 69; 70, 87 tête as example 71 Liberman, Anatoly 104, 115-16, 119, 121, 133 linguistics defined by Saussure 41; xxiii-iv, 41, 94, 192 linguistic activity 90, 100 literature linguistic definition 159-63 logic 104 logical relations 7 logocentric hierarchy 176 see also Derrida Lyons, Jo h n 57-8, 82, 84, 87

Jackson, Bernard xx, 143-4 Jakobson, Roman 2, 10, 16, 20, 23-6, 46-50, 53, 65, 97, 153-4 Fundamentals of Language 24 Selected Wntings 46 see also metaphor/ metonymy, Prague School, structuralism Jam eson, Fredric xxi, 26, 28—9, 3 1 ,6 2 -3 , 166-7 Kant, Immanuel xi—xii ‘Antinomies o f Pure Reason’ xiii Kristeva, Ju lia 29, 178 Lacan, Jacques xi, xv, xxiv, 23, 35 ,4 0 , 107, 168, 183-5, 187-8, 196-202, 204, 206-7 The Discourse of Rome 189—90 ‘The Freudian T hing’ 193-4 see also desire, Freud, metaphor/metonymy, Symbolic

MacCannell, Ju liet 183 markedness defined 50; 51-5 o f distinctive features 50

220

Index marked 176, 186 m arked/unmarked 24, 70, 159, 171-4, 179, 182 marking 52, 55 unmarked 52-3 Martinet, André 17, 58, 69, 73, 145, 170-1, 180-1 see also double articulation meaning defined by Derrida 169; xviii, xix, 40, 56, 72, 115, 208 meaning-effect defined 62-3, xvii, 7 ,6 4 , 1 9 3 ,2 0 7 ,2 0 8 meaningful whole 33, 64—5, 158-9, 166 unity o f entire communication 67 signification defined by Barthes 41; 25, 47, 165, 169 achronic 133 mediation 133-4, 136, 139-40 contradiction 133-5, 140 see also Lévi-Strauss m etalanguage 5, 7, 8, 10, 14 metalinguistic 77-81, 90 metaphor/metonymy 187, 189, 202, 207-8 see also de Man, Jakobson, Lacan modality modal xx logic 104, 149 model 105 negation 174 semantics 149 semiotics 104 modalisation defined 101 ; 99-102, 121, 131-2 see also transformational model morphemes 34, 45, 85, 148, 152, 181 morphology 17 myth 21, 34, 113, 115, 132-5, 137-42, 146 see also Lévi-Strauss

narrative gram m ar 94 negativity 173, 177-8, 182, 190, 199, 202, 208 neutralisation defined 50—1; 52-5, 105, 119-20, 132-5, 157-9, 165-7, 171-4, 176-7, 179-81 Nietzsche, Friedrich xii, 90, 135, 195 The Birth of Tragedy 197, 199 N orris, Christopher 145, 183,

200

oppositions 11, 23, 57, 122 antonymic/hyponymic

defined 12

decidable/undecidable 107 denotation/connotation 144 form/content defined 132 helper/opponent 107 identity/alterity 10 intelligible/tangible 10 knowledge/power 11-13, 42, 125, 158, 186 contraries o f knowledge

201 see also power languelparole 10

life/death 139 man/woman 172 nature/culture 139 paradigmatic/syntagmatic 10 past/present 158 plot/content 132 presence/absence 170 same/other, nobody, none 55 sender/receiver 95, 105, 107-8 subject/object 95, 104 substance/form 116 symbolism/realism 158 synchrony/diachrony 10 truth/falsehood 200 paradigm atic interpretation 92, 126 parole defined 8; 80, 82, 85, 164 see also Saussure Parret, Herm an xviii

narrative defined 131; xxiv, 85, 110, 127, 130-6 narrative analysis 113, 130

221

Index Patte, Daniel xviii Peirce, Charles Sanders xviii, 83 phemes defined 152 phonemes defined 49; 45, 152, 170, 181 phonetics defined 49 phonology defined 48—50; 17, 57 planes o f language 10 content-plane 20—2, 25, 44, 6 2 -3 ,6 6 - 9 ,7 1 - 3 , 116, 157, 170, 203 invested content 87-8, 91 expression-plane 20—1, 23, 35, 44, 46, 62-3, 66, 83, 116, 170 invested expression 88 see also Hjelmslev poetry defined 154; 152—7 poststructuralism xi—xv, 4—5, 33-6, 207-8 power defined 201-2; 42, 125 Prague School 44—8, 50-1, 5 5 -7 ,5 9 -6 3 ,6 9 ,7 3 ,9 3 ,1 0 3 , 119, 126, 149, 162, 169-70 commutation (test) defined 61; 7 4 -5 ,9 6 , 98, 119-20 see also Jakobson presupposition direct 28 reciprocal defined 9-10; 13, 5 5 ,9 1 , 115 Propp, Vladimir xxiv, 92-3, 96-8, 100-1, 104, 106-7, 110, 112-14, 116-21, 123-8, 131-2, 135, 140-1, 145-8, 151 Morphology of the Folktale xx, 30, 3 8 ,8 8 ,9 1 ,9 5 - 6 , 98, 111, 113, 118-21, 124 see also wondertale Rastier, François xx, xxiii, 30 readerly defined 150; 151, 154 see also Barthes rhetoric 34, 36 discourse o f human sciences 37 Ricoeur, Paul xi, 92, 111, 126 roles defined 94; 92

222

see also actors Ryan, Michael xxiii Safouan, M oustafa 113 Sam pson, Geoffrey 28,51 Saussure, Ferdinand de xiv, xx-xxi, 1-2, 8-10, 13, 16, 2 0 - 2 ,2 6 ,4 1 ,5 1 ,5 7 ,6 4 - 5 , 7 3 ,8 3 ,8 5 , 140-1, 162, 164-5, 169, 172, 181-2, 202-3

Course in General Linguistics 1 see also langue, linguistics, parole, semiology scientificness defined 14-15

Searle, Joh n 34, 192 Speech Acts 204 segmentation defined 97; 148-9, 151, 158 semantics xiii, 3 ,6 6 -9 ,1 1 7 ,1 6 8 aim o f semantics 66 semantic investment xxi, 26-7, 2 9 -3 0 ,6 1 , 104, 109 semanticism defined 27 o f wondertale 138 structural semantics 74-5 semantic/semiological levels 74—5 sememe defined 71 ; 152-3 semes defined by Greimas 69; 12, 15,26-7, 50, 7 0 ,1 5 2 -3 nuclear seme defined 71 ; 72-3, 75 semic analysis 87 variant/invariant semes (classeme/nuclear seme) 72 semiology defined by Greimas xiii, defined by Saussure 83 see also Barthes semio-narrative level defined 85; xxiv, 86, 90, 99, 130-1,142, 146,151.153,155,157, 190 semiotic square defined 25; xx—xxiii, 26-36, 3 9 ,49, 52, 5 4 -5 ,9 6 , 100, 102-3, 107-9,113, 123, 127, 133, 136-8, 156, 160, 166-9, 171-4, 177, 181-2, 186, 190, 208 constitutional model 111, 133,166

Index synonymy 73—4, 76 syntactic structure 102

negative complex term 26, 28-9, 55, 109, 167 positive complex term 26, 28, 29-30, 35, 55 temporal succession 31 semiotic theory 19

taxonomy 6, 10, 42 taxonomic doing 8, 15-19 text 37, 147 tmesis 39 see also Barthes totality 42 transcendental defined by Derrida 177 transformational model 111, 133,166-7 see also modality Trnka, Bohumil 44—6 ,4 9 Trubetzkoy, N.S. 28, 48, 50—2, 59, 119 PHnciples of Phonology, 48, 119 see also archiphonemes, neutralisation

see also Analytical Dictionary

semiotics xxii—xxiii, 6, 22, 36-40, 8 3 ,8 5 , 141-2 translinguistics defined by Barthes 85 sentence 33 Sewell, Elizabeth nonsense defined 76 Sheridan, Alan 186 short story 150 signified defined 21 ; 2 0 ,4 1 —2, 4 7 ,5 6 ,7 2 ,8 4 ,1 3 6 ,1 5 1 ,1 6 2 , 183 signifier defined 2 1 ,4 1 ; 20, 42, 4 7 ,5 6 , 7 2 ,8 4 , 136, 151, 183 signifiance 173 see also Barthes simultaneity/succession defined

value (linguistic) xx-xxii exteriorisation/interiorisation 109 objective/subjective 109 ‘vocabulary’ 132

20

Souriau, Étienne 98, 112

L ?s Deux cent milles situations dramatiques 95 spectacle 91-2

wondertale defined by Propp 98; 95, 100-1, 105, 107, 114, 121, 127, 137-8 actants o f 120 functions o f narrative 96,126 gram m ar 119-20 plot 119 Propp’s analysis o f 159 ‘T est’ 124 see also folktales, Propp writerly defined 151 ; 154 see also Barthes

speech-events 58 speech/writing 161-2, 173, 176, 178 see also Barthes Spivak, Gayatri 174, 179 Stevens, Wallace 180 structuralism xii—xiii, 6, 9, 15-19, 3 7 ,9 1 ,2 0 7 -8 see also Jakobson, LéviStrauss substantification defined 41 ; 89-91, 101, 135,207 Symbolic 189 Symbolic/Imaginary 186 see also Lacan synchrony defined 9; 75, 92 syncretic manifestations defined 97

Yücel, Tahsin 113 ‘zero degree’ 162 see also Barthes zone o f entanglement 2 5 ,3 0 ,3 3

223