Herman Parret

Semiotics and Pragmatics: An Evaluative Comparison of Conceptual Frameworks

Looking at the ‘semiotic landscape’ – the panorama of constituted semiotics – two traditions seem to have developed separately and without interpenetration. Anglo-Saxon semioticians consider the Peircean framework to provide the adequate conceptual apparatus, whereas so-called ‘Continental’ semioticians refer to the sign theory in Saussure and in its interpretation by Hjelmslev (for instance, the Ecole semiotique de Paris ). Evaluating each other’s projects, methods, and results could lead to a balanced view. The purpose of this monograph is to get the best out of the adequate insights from both sides, and to make suggestions how the semioticians from the Peircean or Saussuro-Hjelmslevian school can be removed from their isolationist positions. A comparison and homologation of these two orientations will be carried out from the angle of the impact of pragmaticism on both semiotic orientations. How intentionality, action, conventionality, interlocution are integrated in both orientations will be given particular emphasis.

Regularities, rules and strategies

Abstract Strategies are regularities externalized by a communicative competence—they are chains of reasons and thus based on processes of reasoning. Discourse, for the pragmatician, is a totality of regularities (recognizable because of their generality) expressing theoretical and practical reasoning. These strategies are inferential (not logical inferences, however, because they are realized in and by means of natural language use). Inferential activity here is, in fact, a procedure of transposition of meaning from one object-level to another paraphrastic level of discourse. Pragmatics manipulates a triangular model: reasoning is not determined by its relation to the real (whereby rationality would be reduced to a faculty of reconstructing the truth), but by the intermediation of the concept of a rational being or a reasoner. A pragmatic notion of rationality stresses the fact that one reasons — and one understands — within the generality of purposes which are common to the speaker and understander. The paper intends not so much to be a criticism of the classical grammatical notion of ‘rule’ (Chomskys, for instance), but rather to disentangle within the broad panorama of pragmatic theories the very many alternative notions of ‘strategy’ which have been proposed. I intend—in the ‘metapragmatic’ perspective—a criticism of the proconceptions (some of them are ideological, other ones methodological and/or epistemological) underlying pragmatic efforts.

Peirce and Hjelmslev: The two semiotics

Abstract Two traditions seem to have developed separately and without interpenetration in the ‘semiotic landscape’. That is, Anglo-saxon semioticians consider the Peircean framework to provide the adequate conceptual apparatus for their empirical research, whereas the so-called Continental semioticians refer to the sign theory in Saussure and in its interpretation by Hjelmslev (for instance, the Ecole semiotique de Paris : A.J. Greimas and followers). The two orientations, apparently, have ignored each other and manifested mutual distrust. It may, therefore, prove to be of importance and interest to go back to the central intuitions of Peirce, on the one hand, and of Saussure/Hjelmslev, on the other, in order to weigh possible solidarities and contrasts between them. The evaluation of their projects, methods, and results could, thus, lead to a more balanced view. And the purpose of my paper is to get the best out of the adequate insights from both sides, and to make som suggestions of how the semioticians from the Peircean and Saussuro-Hjelmslevian school can remove themselves from their isolationist positions. In the couse of my discussion, the objective of comparing and homologating (in part) the two semiotics will be carried out from three angles: first, the context of origin of both semiotics, then the typology of sign relations in Peirce and Saussure/Hjelmslev, and finally the impact of pragmaticism on both semiotic orientations.

L’esthétique de Greimas face aux sensibilités valéryennes

Abstract In De l’imperfection (1987), A. J. Greimas presents elements of a semiotic aesthetics based essentially on the poetic analysis of the five senses (especially vision, hearing, touch, and smell). His philosophical engagement is platonizing. However, his reading of the texts of Tournier, Calvino, Tanizaki, and Cortazar makes us discover a Greimas who is deeply interested in polysensorial and synesthetic experiences. Without mentioning explicitly one or another relation between his aesthetic analyses and Paul Valéry’s writings, Greimas shows a similar sensibility, mainly concerning the aesthetic potentialities of tactility. The praise of the touching and caressing hand is very prominent in De l’imperfection, and Greimas, just like Valéry, enthusiastically theorizes the relation of the eye with the hand. The two authors also similarlyconceive of the materiality of the artistic object, formed by a tormented creator. We have noticed that Greimas and Valéry develop a similar aesthetics of the aesthetic shock – they present a parallel, even analogical speculation with regard to the haptic organization of sensorial life.