CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI

THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF ALGIRDAS JULIEN GREIMAS’

STRUCTURAL SEMIOTICS

BELIAUSKAS ZILVINAS

It is a great challenge to present a man as a scientist, for that is, first, to uncover as objectively as possible his views and ideas. Second, however, one must convey also the essence of his under-standing of meaning -- the central problem of his works. For Greimas this focus is on language.

Language should be associated primarily with meaningful signs and sign systems. At the same time there is need to understand the inner structure of language, and how it is capable of transmitting meaning. This requires an analysis of language by means of another language, a metalanguage, describing language as if from outside and understanding it in a much broader sense than the traditional linguistic view. Thus, the effort to understand the world with the help of the basic linguistic tools needs to go beyond the usual boundaries of this discipline and to look at other broader horizons.

A.J. Greimas has directed the French Language and Grammar Department in Ankara (Turkey) and teaches at Istanbul University. He is acquainted with modern logic and is interested in automatic translation and the application of statistical methods in linguistics. In 1960, together with other initiators of the application of precise methods to language analysis, he established the Societé d’étude de la langue francaise, which marked the revival of scientific linguistics in France, as opposed to the traditional philological language studies. In 1962 A.J. Greimas was appointed professor of linguistics at Poitiers University, but insights from Egypt made him consider language as in need of a broader investigation, namely, as a system contained in itself, transmitting -- and, under special conditions, generating -- meaning, as well as providing ways to perceive it. This required a more systematic or, as it was called then, structural analysis of language. The general theoretical intellectual context of A.J. Greimas’s work contained two main trends of semiotic investigations in the middle of the 20th century: structural linguistics and logical philosophy.

The first, through L. Hjelmslev, has its roots in the ideas of F. de Saussure. L. Hjelmslev intended to formalize the language theory of Saussure and added to the existing dichotomy of langue/parole the dichotomy of system/process. Also he enriched the concept of meaning with the dichotomy of form/substance, thus making it possible to talk about significant form (forme signifiante).1 The second or logical philosophy trend developed into a philosophy of language analysis, connecting in one line such thinkers as G. Frege, L. Witgenstein, R. Carnap, J. Austin, W. Quine, J. Searle, N. Chomsky, D. Davidson, J. Hintikka and many others with their own peculiarities and inner divisions as regards language, speech acts, communication etc. Here meaning is explained with the help of such terms of modern logic as truth, reference and information, as well as with terms defining various modalities: necessity, knowing, be-lieving, possible worlds and others. This kind of investigation is predominant in the USA and England.

The linguistic structuralist approach is quite diversified, for there are different semiotic trends in the various countries. In France in particular there have been two main semiotic schools since the 60s. The first is known as the Greimasian or Paris school, the other, not less popular, tends more towards metaphorical, philosophical and aesthetic thinking. It concentrates mainly on the analysis of literary texts: a sort of art of texts about texts. The most prominent names associated with this school are Roland Barth, Gerard Genet, Julia Kristeva, Michael Foucault and many others. The post-structuralists or deconstructionists are closer to the second group and oppose themselves to the Greimasian camp.

To situate A.J. Greimas’s structuralistic semiotic conception in even wider contextual framework, one must note the fundamental philosophical tradition of phenomenological-hermeneutics. In its own way it too is search for meaning, but does this by trying to solve in depth the very problem of the understanding of texts, i.e. what verbal and non-verbal conditions -- historical, cultural, individual -- should be taken into account in order that the genuine meaning of a written or spoken text be disclosed. The attitude towards the concept of intentionality puts that tradition in sharp opposition with the positivist and analytic philosophy of language. This outstanding, magnificent philosophy is built upon the works of Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heiddeger, as well as of such more contemporary thinkers as Hans G. Gadamer and Jurgen Habermas. It was in this context of different theories and schools dealing with the problems of meaning that A.J. Greimas’ created his semiotics as a model for a description of texts and discourses. This work was located in a triple tradition.

THE SAUSSURIAN SCHOOL

This was developed by L. Hjelmslev, who attempts to describe language systems in general (Langage), rather than just language (Lange) characterized as a system of signs. He develops this in a deductive form, claiming for linguistics the same formal rigor as that of natural sciences. L. Hjelmslev goes beyond Saussure with regard to the notion of the sign by adding the form-substance and content-expression dichotomies to the initial one of signifier-signified. Thus he provides a much stronger conceptual apparatus, better suited for the description of discourses and systems of non-linguistic signs, which is the proper and specific project of semiotics. As L. Hjelmslev states: Linguistic theory is led by an inner need to recognize not merely the linguistic system, in its schema and usage, its totality and individuality, but through language also man and human society behind language and the whole human sphere of knowledge. At this point linguistic theory has reached its prescribed goal: humanitas et universitas.2

This Saussurian tradition, as developed by L. Hjelmslev and others, including A.J. Greimas, does not consist of a series of strict derivatives in obedience to F. Saussure as an unquestioned teacher. The common point is the epistemological choice to take as a starting position natural language instead of a sign. A.J. Greimas adopts the same solution, arguing that every sign is translatable into a natural language, but that the contrary is not true. The translatability of a system of signs into the system of signs of spoken language is the main principle underlying the Saussurian tradition in the history of contemporary semiotics. This epistemological orientation in the works of A.J. Greimas is connected with a particular methodological model of theoretical structural phonology developed by R. Jakobson and the Prague linguistic school. A.J. Greimas clearly stated his attachment to this tradition in his article "L’ actualite du Saus-surisme".3 On the foundations of such dichotomies he declares his faithfulness to the following principles:

(a) Language is a formal object -- an entity of relationships; as such it is comparable to other formal objects and is subject to scientific analysis. Language can be described by another language, i.e. a metalanguage consisting of defined terms with a single meaning.

(b) Language is a semantic object -- an architecture of forms containing meaning.

In this regard it is not we who speak language, but language itself which speaks via us. We are submerged in language as in social reality. Such a broad attitude towards language makes it possible to compare it to another structure, for instance to plastic forms, or to musical structure as also covering extremely broad social regions. The same attitude suggests looking for all possible comparable and interrelated structures in the natural and humanitarian sciences. The most noticeable advances were made in phonology, a branch of linguistics, that made it possible to overstep the limits of linguistics. This was due to working with the minimal universal elements found in the basis of every language structure, that is, the principle of binary oppositions.

THE STRUCTURAL STUDY OF MYTH: COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY

The same search for basic general structural elements was characteristic of comparative Indo-European investigations of mythology by G. Dumazil,4 who personally persuaded A.J. Greimas to introduce Lithuanian mythology into active Indo-European cir-culation. G. Dumazil considered myth and language as a system of collective representation, a figurative form of social ideology. This implied a mutual sympathy between structural linguistics and anthropology. The linguistic principle of binary oppositions and the concept of transformation as transition from one systemic level to another offered an opportunity to work out a more general system. This was capable of describing a yet broader field of cultural and social symbolism, which F. de Saussure called "general semiology". Some of the most significant ideas influencing A.J. Greimas’s scientific views were generated by the founder of structural anthro-pology, C. Levi-Strauss, namely, the argument that kinship terms as well as phonemes are elements of signification and that they acquire their signification only when integrated into "elementary kinship systems".5 The distinction of deeper and superficial levels of systems provided the possibility of uniting different myths, texts and various ways of reading the same myth according to these levels: the vertical-paradigmatic and horizontal-syntagmatic (see L. Hjelmslev’s system process dichotomy) inspired A.J. Greimas’s theoretical vision.

C. Levi-Strauss enlarged the structural description of folk tales, initially proposed by V. Propp,6 and ventured an analysis of the Oedipus myth.7 It was shown that a syntagmatic reading of myth is compatible with its paradigmatic reading and contains in itself all the problems of cultural origin because of a clash of contradictory understandings of kinship patterns. The correlation of two binary categories made of contradictory elements make up the initial structure of signification, which is able to generate or deduce all possible Oedipus myths or their interpretations, including that of Freud. Such an analysis confirming the twofold semantic structure of a system and realizing Hjelmslevian idea of a significant form could not be contained in the framework of the traditional science of language. A.J. Greimas considered it his task to show precisely that the essence of narrative discourse or syntagmatic action is nothing other than a projection of deeper paradigmatic categories to a syntagmatic level of text.

THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PERCEPTION

This tradition is represented most prominently by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who develops the main thesis that we perceive only differences and that, living in the social world, we are doomed to meaning.8 It is characteristic of this world to which we are related that it reveals itself to a subject through effects of meaning, which we perceive psychologically. Since differences and discontinuities are the premises of our perception, any meaning can be understood as immanent to linguistic form. A.J. Greimas considered this a natural extension of Saussurian thinking.

Due to the scope of Greimas’s works he is sometimes consi-dered a representative of different areas of the humanities. For some he seems to be a lexicographer, for others a dialectologist, a theore-tician of language, a founder of a semiotic project, or, as he is mostly known and read in Lithuania, a mythologist. But the problem of meaning or sense, as he himself has repeatedly stressed, always has been central to his numerous and vast preoccupations.9

Another basic characteristic of A.J. Greimas’s approach is that he does not concentrate on the dislocation of philosophical definitions or analyses of meaning in signs, beyond signs or just in our heads. Rather, he focuses on what meaning actually means or its concrete content and on how it can be deciphered in all possible sign systems. Of itself, meaning for him is a kind of a given, since we happen to live in a society and therefore inescapably signify a world of communication and relationships. Meaning is conveyed, exer-cised and exchanged by the "class of grown-ups", i.e., sharing some-thing believed to be common sense acquired in the process of communication and education. Meaning is always pregnant with the effect on us of the surrounding world. But mythological data, sign systems and/or texts-discourses are complex, and very often insufficient, and hence are in need of special semiotic tools to disclose, restore, understand, interpret and integrate a particular knowledge into general knowledge and/or a heritage of belief. A.J. Greimas sees genuine knowing very often as a realization of faith and trust.

Thus, while claiming to avoid philosophical and psychological involvement, he launches a gnoseological discussion of the relation-ship of knowing and believing. This is not only a case of trespassing into the neighboring fields of semeiotics. The main tendency in A.J. Greimas’s works is a continuous effort to work out reliable ways and methods and to invent proper tools for knowing. He is in search of an objective scientific sense in all areas of the human environment. This always consists of signs and signification bearing meaning, which is susceptible of a logic of articulation and is limited in its essence to a certain number of isotopes. This epistemological super-task diminishes the traditional division between the natural and human sciences, because the data of both is presented by means of their own languages and signs. These should be translatable into another coherent descriptive language articulating meaning units which are intangible at first sight. The latter translation is to be raised to a more formalized epistemological level, setting an exhaustive number of possible readings of any discourse of literary, scientific, cultural, gestural or whatever origin. One epistemological level is a previously designed logical model which can be applied only deduc-tively. It is capable, not only of interpretation, but also of restoring missing parts or details in a field of investigation. Again the best example is mythology.

This is a possible hierarchical structure, stemming from the structure of language itself as the most sophisticated system. It is capable of articulating, and, by means of transformation from one epistemological level to another, of tracing the whole semiotic field leading to the deepest nucleus of meaning. Thus meaning can be called a possibility of translation from one language (language-object) into a stricter metalanguage of description, and then into an epistemological language. This is supposed as an already fixed and tested structure for the principles of verification and deduction.

All this requires a great deal of formalization and elaboration found in the books and articles of A.J. Greimas. He was constantly aware of the danger of critique from all sides. He was creatively inclusive and at the same time autonomous in his theory. He sought a middle way between logic, philosophy, psychology, literature, history and other surrounding sciences. The result is a narrative grammar and theory of modalities which are absolutely necessary when attempting to expand the limits of the semiotic approach to the whole of human activities and to cover such fields as axiology, aesthetics and the world of feelings.

A.J. Greimas was always conscious of the incompleteness of his model. He regarded it as under continuous creation, correction, improvement and enlargement. He had no great hopes of completing this, but longed to see his beginnings carried on by others. The project is marked by principles of continuity, flexibility and dynamics; it is as A.J. Greimas puts it in one of his last books, De l’imperfection: "There is but one way leading to aesthesis -- a vitalization of the passions of body and soul". This takes place only when ordinary objects of our everyday life are resemantisized, i.e., when new meaning is found, or when we seek to escape from boring monotony and transfer ourselves somewhere else. In every case this turns out to be an interruption of what is common, a change of distance between subject and object, and a special waiting for something. After reaching and passing various distant domains the circle again closes on man and the problem of his existence in this world.10

From the perspective of contemporary times the appearance of Structural Semantics in the late 70s played a revolutionary role. It was the first ambitious attempt to bring to life the structuralist method in its full-scale systematic form. It promised to transform not only linguistics, but every branch of the human sciences and to bring a marked shift in the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis and literary criticism. According to some authors like Christopher Norris,11 the role of A.J.Greimas is nearly mythical in the history of rapidly changing visions and revisions of European structuralism and semiotics. For quite a long time he remained unfamiliar to Anglo-Saxon readers, because another branch of semiotics developed by Charles Peirce is mostly employed in the USA and the Saussurian tradition was unknown or rejected. Now the situation has changed and nearly all of A.J. Greimas’s works are available to the English reader and discussed in the publications of those scholars. From the philosophical point of view, this introduced a broad neo-Kantian tradition marked by the anthropomorphic character of his theory.

Lithuanian Institute of Culture and Arts

Vilnius, Lithuania

NOTES

1. Louis Hjelmslev. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961).

2. Ibid., p. 127.

3. Algirdas Julien Greimas, "La actualite du Saussurism", Le francais modern, 3 (1956).

4. George Dumazil, L’Heritage indo-europaene Rome (Paris, 1949) and La Saga de Hadingus: du myth au roan (Paris, 1953).

5. Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plan, 1958), p. 40.

6. C. Levi-Strauss, "La structure et la forme: reflexions sur un ouvrage de V. Propp", Cahier de l’Institut Des Sciences Economi-ques Appliques, 99 (1960), 3-36.

7. C. Levi-Strauss, "La structure des myths" in Anthropo-logie sructurale (Paris: Plan, 1958).

8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la percep-tion (Paris, 1945).

9. Algirdas Julien Greimas, Semantique structural (Paris), p. 5.

10. Algirdas Julien Greimas, De l’imperfection (Paris), p. 99.

11. Ronald Schleifer, A.J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1987), p. x.