La semiotica strutturale generativa di Algirdas Julien Greimas

The essay analyses Algirdas J. Greimas’ semiotics, paying particular attention to the theoretical influences that has contributed to its elaboration (the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss on the conception of the “semiotic square”; the combined influences of Propp’s narratology and of Tesnière’s structural syntax on the “narrative program”, the development of Benveniste’s ideas regarding the problem of enunciation). The core of Greimas’ generative semiotics – that is to say the element essential to the unity and to the coherence of the “trajectory of meaning” on its three levels – is identified in the thymic flow which stems from the deep assiologies of a text (“thymisme”) and permeates its whole structure. In this perspective, the contribution highlights the potentialities of the model, especially the indications for a detailed analysis of emotions in their cultural and textual concretizations (the “semiotics of passions”). In its last part, the study also highlights some weaknesses of the model, in particular the inclination to consider values only like a product either of the social discourse or of a textual option whose nature is exclusively emotional. It is argued that this statement could be an obstacle to the exhaustive analysis of the decisions which are made by the characters of a narrative text.