Narrative semiotics is a branch of semiotics that studies how meaning is constructed and communicated through narratives, which are structured sequences of events or actions that are typically found in stories, literature, films, and other forms of media. This field applies the principles of semiotics to analyze the elements of a narrative, exploring how these elements function as signs that convey specific meanings.
Origins and Theoretical Foundations
The foundation of narrative semiotics we owe to Algirdas Julien Greimas and his school of thought. The Lithuanian-French linguist and semiotician is considered one of the key figures in developing this semiotic approach. Greimas expanded on the ideas of structuralism and applied them to the study of narratives, building on the work of earlier theorists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Vladimir Propp.
The goal was to establish a universal method of studying discourse as a sign process in all of its hierarchical complexity. In this sense, Narrative semiotics is a semiotic approach to discoursive analysis.
A key distinction ought to be made. Narrative semiotics is significantly different from narratology, as narratology is a part of discourse analysis that studies narratives and could also be called “narrative theory” or “theory of narrative text”.
Narrative is a type of discourse (therefore, text) characterized by an objective description (oral or written) of a sequence of chronologically and causally related events.
Due to the fact that a big part of the narratives are fictional texts, some authors perceive narratology as a literary analysis, or as a linguistic analysis of literature, both of which it is not.
The term narrative is used in a narrow sense (as a type of text) from the discourse analysis and literature.
In semiotics, on the other hand, the term narrative has a much wider meaning.
A narrative is a semiotic representation of a sequence of events, connected chronologically and causally. Movies, stage plays, comics, novels, movie reviews, journals, chronicles, etc. All of these are narratives and could be created by a wide range of semiotic environments: written or oral speech, images, gestures, and actions, as well as any combination fo those. Each semiotic construct, everything, made by signs, could be called a text.
Therefore we can talk about many, many types of narrative texts: linguistic, theatrical, visual, cinematic, etc.
The term “narrative” could be ambiguous. It has at least two meanings. Wide, the one we just took a look at, and narrow, the one previously mentioned.
There is a tendency, a causeless tendency we might add, for narratology to be perceived as Semiotics of text or narrative semiotics.
Yet, narrative semiotics encompass a wider range than narratology. Narrative semiotics, as seen by its founder Greimas, is the semiotics of text as a whole. No matter whether this text is a narrative or not. Maybe it would be better if we were to call Narrative semiotics Semiotics of text. And to, therefore, avoid any misconceptions. While Greimas was the one to lay the foundations for narrative semiotics, subsequent scholars have expanded and refined his theories. For instance, Roland Barthes further explored how narratives operate not just as structures but also as vehicles for ideology and cultural values. Umberto Eco and Julia Kristeva also contributed to the field by examining the interplay between narrative structures and broader cultural and social contexts.
