69249454-chandler-semiotics

118
SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
suggestions as to what themes these columns represent, I will avoid
authorial closure and leave it to readers to speculate for themselves.
Suggestions can be found in the references (Larrucia 1975; Silverman
and Torode 1980, 314ff.).
The structuralist semiotician and literary theorist Algirdas
Greimas (who established ‘the Paris school’ of semiotics) proposed a
grammar of narrative which could generate any known narrative structure
(Greimas 1966 and 1987). As a result of a ‘semiotic reduction’
of Propp’s seven roles he identified three types of narrative syntagms:
syntagms performanciels – tasks and struggles; syntagms contractuels
– the establishment or breaking of contracts; syntagms disjonctionnels
– departures and arrivals (Culler 1975, 213; Hawkes 1977, 94;
Greimas 1987). Greimas claimed that three basic binary oppositions
underlie all narrative themes, actions and character types (which he
1 Grandmother's
illness causes
mother to
make
grandmother
food
2 Little Red
Riding Hood
(LRRH) obeys
mother and
goes off to
wood
3 LRRH meets
(wolf as) friend
and talks
4 Woodcutter's
presence
causes wolf to
speak to LRRH
5 LRRH obeys
wolf and takes
long road to
grandmother's
6 Grandmother
admits (wolf
as) LRRH
7 Wolf eats
grandmother
8 LRRH meets
(wolf as)
grandmother
9 LRRH obeys
grandmother
and gets into
bed
10 LRRH
questions
(wolf as)
grandmother
11 Wolf eats
LRRH
FIGURE 3.5
Source: Larrucia 1975, 528
Little Red Riding Hood