From Structural Semantics to the Semiotics of Cultures

Abstract

Saussurean and Greimassian linguistics initiated a tradition of semantic study characterized by a systematic description of contexts and texts. Interpretative semantics advances a unified theory that begins with the word and extends to the text and the corpus. Since the global determines the local, the corpus of description has an impact on the meaning of the text, which in turn determines the meaning of its elements. Applications go from the description of Amerindian languages to computational linguistics. Interpretative semantics proposes a new articulation between text linguistics, philology, and hermeneutics. The methodology adopted is historical and comparative. Interpretative semantics thus forms part of a semiotic theory of cultures.

Keywords interpretation; semantics; corpus; semiotics; linguistics