Jacques Fontanille

LE TOURNANT MODAL EN SEMIOTIQUE

o autor apresenta inicialmente uma analise das operacoes demodalizacao enunciativa para, em seguida, desloca-las para o plano da semioticanarrativa. Assim procedendo, passa a trabalhar com os efeitos de sentidopassionais que caracterizam o sujeito, defendendo o ponto de vista de que odesenvolvimento da teoria semiotica das modalidades conduz necessariamente ateoria das paixoes. Salienta que o sujeito da paixao nao se confunde com o sujeitodo fazer modalizado. Destaca, igualmente, que a dinâmica modal das paixoes naoesta inscrita nas estruturas modais, sendo mais um efeito de seu uso. Por essarazao, distingue modalizacao de modulacao.

Who said it? Voices in news translation, from a semiotic perspective

Abstract In Translation studies, it has long been understood that when translation is integrated into journalism, concepts such as equivalence and authorship become highly problematic. However, there is still no reference to a general method that might explain why news production impacts the very process of translation and affects the translated texts themselves. In this paper, we introduce a new semiotic approach that measures shifts in translated texts by using semiotic modalities and relates these shifts to axiologies by actants of the practice of translation. Translated texts by an Italian weekly magazine are adopted as a case study and an analysis of the textual corpora is coupled with think-aloud protocols by editors. The semiotic approach reveals that the actantial dynamics are conflictual: while the translators’ performance is compatible with the equivalence value, journalists endorse values that result in the content of the original being altered. The divergence between the axiology of the actant initiating the practice and the axiology pursued by the translators affects the way the concept of translation is generated.

Praxis and enunciation: Greimas, heir of Saussure

Enunciative praxis was defined as comprising all the operations that produce, through assuming the system of narrative deep structures, semiotic configurations sufficiently stabilized to be available for other uses. The practice of enunciation implies an operations chain, organized in collective time, and a capacity for creation and renewal in meaning figures production, under the constraint of cultural conditions. This conception of enunciation is not an invention of Greimassian semiotics in general. It is present already in Saussure, when he describes signs praxis and life of languages. The founding moment of his reasoning is the substitution of substance by action: the sign is not an abstraction obtained by discretization of the substance, the sign is a “class of executions”, a praxeological class. The Greimassian enunciative praxis can be defined as all acts by which discourses are convoked, selected, handled and invented by each particular enunciation. This conception strengthens the relationship with Saussure’s speaking mass, since the praxis in question belongs to no one, and it is not even assignable to a precise linguistic community. Finally, we may propose to analyse enunciation praxis as a sequence of reflection and exploration , which mediates between primary experience and the semiotic object.

La sémiotique de Greimas : un projet scientifique de long terme

Résumé Greimas définissait sa sémiotique comme un « projet scientifique », mettant ainsi l’accent sur une construction en cours. Il nous faut donc comprendre pourquoi elle se présente comme un programme ouvert dans de multiples directions. La sémiotique de Greimas définit une série de problèmes à traiter, et pose des jalons au très long terme. Greimas lui-même ne traite qu’une partie de ces problèmes, et les autres restent en attente des réponses que ses successeurs peuvent apporter. Dans cette perspective, il avait lui-même encouragé ses collaborateurs à se répartir les différentes voies ouvertes dans son programme. Ces différentes évolutions sont connues : la sémiotique subjectale, la sémiotique tensive, la sémiotique morpho-dynamique, la sociosémiotique, la sémiotique de la perception, notamment. Il est donc possible aujourd’hui d’évaluer les effets de ces parcours de recherche. Mais de nombreux problèmes restent encore ouverts : le parcours génératif de l’expression, la diversité, les conditions et l’instabilité des sémioses, le dialogue avec les autres « sciences du sens ». Et enfin, le projet lui-même doit être reconfiguré et mis à jour sous toutes les dimensions de son ancrage dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, près de soixante ans après sa conception.

Semiótica y ciencias humanas: encuentros interdisciplinarios alrededor de las pasiones

espanolSe presenta en este trabajo una serie de reflexiones correspondientes a la semiotica de las pasiones. Esta ultima surge de la consideracion de dos rasgos caracteristicos de la semiotica que se manifiestan de manera simultanea. El primero esta relacionado con el caracter interdisciplinar y el segundo con el caracter indisciplinar.Se postula la tesis de que la semiotica de las pasiones es un excelente terreno de busqueda para estudiar las interacciones entre las disciplinas del dominio de las ciencias del hombre y la sociedad. La cuestion de los afectos, de las emociones, de las pasiones no le pertenecen por supuesto en exclusividad a ninguna de ellas, y para constituir su objeto especifico, la semiotica de las pasiones ha tenido que componer a la vez con la mayoria de ellas (psicoanalisis y psicologia, filosofia e historia de las ideas, ciencias del lenguaje y retorica, antropologia y sociologia, etc.), y trazar su camino en cuanto dominio y objeto de investigacion autonomo. EnglishIt is introduced in this work series of corresponding reflections to the semiotics of the passions. The latter arises from the consideration of two characteristic features of semiotics that manifest simultaneously. The first is related to the interdisciplinary nature and the second to the no discipline feature.It is postulated the thesis that the semiotics of the passions are an excellent field of research to study the interactions between the disciplines of the domain of the sciences of man and the society. The question about affections, of emotions, of passions does not, of course belong exclusively to any of them, and to constitute its specific object, the semiotics of the passions has had to compose at the same time with the majority of them Psychoanalysis and psychology, philosophy and history of ideas, language sciences and rhetoric, anthropology and sociology, etc.), and to trace their path as the domain and object of autonomous research.

Cercle de corde, cercle de jeu

A child, interacting with an educator, in a playroom for children with difficulties, is playing with cords. He moves them, arranges them in a circle. He enters the circle, and introduces a balloon; the educator suggests various interactions to him: enter the circle with him, share another, pass the balloon back and forth, undo and remake the circles, make the circles concentric, etc. The sequence is analyzable as a narrative structure and modal, over successive trials that are ordered in an almost canonical fashion. But the canonical sequence does not reveal the “meaning” of this ordering. To get at this, it is necessary to go back to the details of the vocal and physical expressions, the elemental predications that they manifest and the entirety of the interaction, including the acceptances and rejections made by the child, elucidating thus: he systematically defines, assumes and defends a particular enunciative space, imposing on this one singular mode of interaction, on the basis of which he refuses all other propositions. Key words: interaction, narrative structure, space.