Home Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square

  • Jamin Pelkey EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: December 21, 2016
Semiotica
From the journal Semiotica Volume 2017 Issue 214

Abstract

According to Greimas, the semiotic square is far more than a heuristic for semantic and literary analysis. It represents the generative “deep structure” of human culture and cognition which “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects”. The veracity of this bold hypothesis has received little attention in the literature. In response, this paper traces the history and development of the square of opposition from Aristotle to Greimas and beyond, to propose that the relations modeled in these diagrams are rooted in gestalt memories of kinesthesia and proprioception from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast—including verticality, bilaterality, transversality, markedness and analogy. The paper draws on findings in the phenomenology of movement, recent developments in the analysis of logical opposition, recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics and prescient insights from Greimas himself. The argument is further tested via multimodal content analyses of a popular music video—highlighting relationships the semiotic square shares with mundane cultural ideologies and showing how these relationships might be traced to memory structures of bodily movement. The paper highlights the neglected relevance of embodied chiasmus and illustrates the enduring relevance of Greimasean thought.

Keywords: Semiotic Square; Logic; Double Binds; Analytic Philosophy; Existential Graphs; Phenomenology of Movement

References

Bateson, Gregory, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley & John Weakland. 1956. toward a Theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral Science 1(4). 251–264.10.1002/bs.3830010402Search in Google Scholar

Bateson, Gregory. 1972 [1969]. Double bind. In Gregory Bateson (ed.), Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology, 271–278. San Francisco: Chandler.Search in Google Scholar

Bernhard, Peter. 2008. Visualizations of the square of opposition. Logica Universalis 2(1). 31–41.10.1007/s11787-007-0023-xSearch in Google Scholar

Beziau, Jean-Yves & Gillman Payette (eds.). 2008. The square of opposition. Special issue, Logica Universalis 2.Search in Google Scholar

Bonfiglioli, Stefania. 2008. Aristotle’s non-logical works and the square of oppositions in semiotics. Logica Universalis 2(1). 107–126.10.1007/s11787-007-0021-zSearch in Google Scholar

Bouissac, Paul. 2007. Semiotics as the science of memory. Sign Systems Studies 35. 71–87.10.12697/SSS.2007.35.1-2.02Search in Google Scholar

Bråten, Stein. 2007. Altercentric infants and adults: On the origins and manifestations of participant perception of others’ acts and utterances. In Stein Bråten (ed.), On being moved: From mirror neurons to empathy, 111–136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/aicr.68.11braSearch in Google Scholar

Broden, Thomas F. 2000. Greimas between France and Peirce. American Journal of Semiotics 15–16(1). 27–89.10.5840/ajs200015/161/42Search in Google Scholar

CMT. 2014. Kacey Musgraves charms Grammys with “Follow Your Arrow” and two wins. CMT news. http://on.cmt.com/1M8d7Je.Search in Google Scholar

Corso, John J. 2014. What does Greimas’s semiotic square really do? Mosaic 47(1). 69–89.10.1353/mos.2014.0006Search in Google Scholar

Danesi, Marcel. 2009. Opposition theory and the interconnectedness of language, culture and cognition. Sign System Studies 37(1/2). 11–41.10.12697/SSS.2009.37.1-2.02Search in Google Scholar

Danziger, Eve. 2011. Distinguishing three-dimensional forms from their mirror-images: Whorfian results from users of intrinsic frames of linguistic reference. Language Sciences 33(6). 853–867.10.1016/j.langsci.2011.06.008Search in Google Scholar

Danziger, Eve & Eric Pederson. 1998. Through the looking glass: Literacy, writing systems and mirror-image discrimination. Written Language & Literacy 1(2). 153–169.10.1075/wll.1.2.02danSearch in Google Scholar

Greimas, Algirdas Julien. 1987 [1968]. Toward a semiotics of the natural world. In Paul J. Perron & Frank H. Collins (ed. & trans.), On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory, 17–47. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar

Greimas, Algirdas Julien. 1989 [1984]. Figurative semiotics and the semiotics of the plastic arts, Frank Collins & Paul Perron (trans.). New literary history 20(3). 627–649.10.2307/469358Search in Google Scholar

Greimas, Algirdas Julien & François Rastier. 1968. The interaction of semiotic constraints. Special issue, Yale French studies 41. 86–10.10.2307/2929667Search in Google Scholar

Hegstrom, Roger A. & Dilip K. Kondepudi. 1990. The handedness of the universe. Scientific American 1990(1). 108–115.10.1038/scientificamerican0190-108Search in Google Scholar

Hon, Giora & Bernard R. Goldstein. 2008. From summetria to symmetry: The making of a revolutionary scientific concept (Archimedes: New Studies in the History of Science and Technology 20). Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-8448-5Search in Google Scholar

Israel, Michael. 2011. The grammar of polarity: Pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511975288Search in Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. 1972. The prison-house of language: A critical account of structuralism and Russian formalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691214313Search in Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. 1987. Foreward. In Paul J. Perron & Frank H. Collins (ed. & trans.), On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory, vi–xxii. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Search in Google Scholar

Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226177847.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Klein, Henny. 1998. Adverbs of degree in Dutch and related languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.21Search in Google Scholar

Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Laing, R. D. 1967. The politics of experience. New York: Pantheon.Search in Google Scholar

Laing, R. D. 1969. The politics of the family. Toronto: CBC.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Levinson, Stephen C. & Penelope Brown. 1994. Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as empirical philosophy. Ethos 22(1). 3–41.10.1525/eth.1994.22.1.02a00010Search in Google Scholar

Luria, Aleksandr R. 1973. The working brain: An introduction to neuropsychology, Basil Haigh (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Martinek, Svetlana. 2007. RIGHT and LEFT or binary opposition as a cognitive mechanism. In Ulf Magnusson, Henryk Kardela & Adam Głaz (eds.), Further insights into semantics and lexicography, 191–205. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.Search in Google Scholar

Matisoff, James A. 2003. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar

McGilchrist, Iain. 2009. The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Müller, Cornelia. 2008. Metaphors dead and alive, sleeping and waking: A dynamic view. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226548265.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Musgraves, Kacey, Brandy Clark & Shane McAnally. 2013. Follow your arrow. Song track 3: Same trailer different park. Music video online: https://youtu.be/kQ8xqyoZXCc. Nashville: Mercury Records.Search in Google Scholar

Nöth, Winfried. 1994. Opposition at the root of semiosis. In Winfried Nöth (ed.), Origins of semiosis: Sign evolution in nature and culture, 37–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110877502Search in Google Scholar

Nöth, Winfried. 1998. Symmetry in signs and in semiotic systems. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 3(1). 47–62.Search in Google Scholar

Parsons, Terrence. 2008. Things that are right with the traditional square of opposition. Logica Universalis 2(1). 3–11.10.1007/s11787-007-0031-xSearch in Google Scholar

Paul, Anthony. 2014. From stasis to Ékstasis: Four types of chiasmus. In Boris Wiseman & Anthony Paul (eds.), Chiasmus and culture (Studies in Rhetoric and Culture 6), 19–44. Oxford: Berghahn Books.10.1515/9780857459619-003Search in Google Scholar

Peirce, Charles S. 1866–1913. The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss (eds.), Vols. 1–6, 1931–1935; Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Vols. 7–8, 1958. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cited as CP.Search in Google Scholar

Pelkey, Jamin. 2013a. Cognitive chiasmus: Embodied phenomenology in Dylan Thomas. Journal of Literary Semantics 42(1). 79–114.10.1515/jls-2013-0005Search in Google Scholar

Pelkey, Jamin. 2013b. Chiastic antisymmetry in language evolution. American Journal of Semiotics 29(1/4). 39–68.10.5840/ajs2013291-43Search in Google Scholar

Pelkey, Jamin. 2014. Iconic legisigns and the embodied X. In Jamin Pelkey & Leonard Sbrocchi (eds.), Semiotics 2013: Why semiotics?, 303–316. Ottawa: Legas.10.5840/cpsem201327Search in Google Scholar

Porac, Clare & Stanley Coren. 1981. Lateral preferences and human behavior. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-1-4613-8139-6Search in Google Scholar

Riehl, James P. 2011. Mirror-image asymmetry: An introduction to the origin and consequences of chirality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.10.1002/9780470588888Search in Google Scholar

Schleifer, Ronald. 2000. Analogical thinking: Post-enlightenment understanding in language, collaboration, and interpretation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.10.3998/mpub.16853Search in Google Scholar

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2011a. The imaginative consciousness of movement: Linear quality, kinaesthesia, language and life. In Tim Ingold (ed.), Redrawing anthropology: Materials, movements, lines, 115–128. Farnham: Ashgate.Search in Google Scholar

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2011b. The primacy of movement, 2nd edn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/aicr.82Search in Google Scholar

Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2012. Kinesthetic memory: Further critical reflections and constructive analyses. In Sabine C. Koch, Thomas Fuchs, Michela Summa & Cornelia Müller (eds.), Body memory, metaphor and movement (Advances in Consciousness Research 84), 43–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/aicr.84.05sheSearch in Google Scholar

Van Lier, Henri. 2003. Around homo in 80 theses: A fundamental anthropogeny. Micheline Lo (ed.), Pierre Lottefier (trans.), Anthropogénie un Darwinisme des sciences humaines homo est le primate anguleux. Brussels: Anthropogenie.com.Search in Google Scholar

Walsh Matthews, Stéphanie & Jamin Pelkey. 2015. Seeing mathematics. In Mariana Bockarova, Marcel Danesi, Dragana Martinovic & Rafael Núnez (eds.), Mind in mathematics: Essays on mathematical cognition and mathematical method (Interdisciplinary Studies on the Nature of Mathematics 03). Munich: Lincom Europa.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2016-12-21
Published in Print: 2017-1-1

©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Foreword
  4. Introduction
  5. Section 1: Life, career, context / Contexte, vie et carrière
  6. Chronology of A. J. Greimas
  7. Inédit 1 (1964): Réflexions sur les possibilités d’une description de l’histoire de la linguistique
  8. Inédit 2 (1984): Les universaux de la narrativité 
  9. Inédit 3 (1986): Le sens et la musique. Propos recueillis par Marcello Castellana (1986)
  10. Inédits 4 (1966–1990): De la sémiologie à la sémiotique. Choix de lettres d’A. J. Greimas
  11. Greimas et la linguistique, la poétique et la sémiotique au quotidien, d’après sa correspondance inédite avec Michel Arrivé
  12. La sémiotique de Greimas : un projet scientifique de long terme
  13. Politiques de la sémiotique: Flux et reflux de la critique idéologique chez A. J. Greimas
  14. A. J. Greimas: un Professeur à l’université turque
  15. Les recherches de Greimas sur la mythologie lithuanienne
  16. La « sémantique de corpus », le programme inachevé de Sémantique structurale
  17. The semiotics of sensation: A. J. Greimas and the experience of meaning
  18. Interview with François Rastier
  19. Section 2: Post-Greimassian semiotic analyses / Analyses sémiotiques post-greimassiennes
  20. Language and the game of chess
  21. Human action in narrative grammars
  22. Décrire la vision du monde: L’enjeu anthropologique de la Sémantique structurale
  23. Actualité de la rhétorique : métaphore et image
  24. De l’imperfection : un dialogue avec l’univers mystique
  25. Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square
  26. Le sens de l’échange
  27. The Semiotics of Nirvāṇa: Salvation in Buddhism
  28. La Succession
  29. Les études de société selon la perspective de la sémiotique greimassienne
  30. La factitivité, postérité d’un concept
  31. Selected works by A. J. Greimas
https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2016-0188
Keywords for this article
Semiotic Square; Logic; Double Binds; Analytic Philosophy; Existential Graphs; Phenomenology of Movement

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Foreword
  4. Introduction
  5. Section 1: Life, career, context / Contexte, vie et carrière
  6. Chronology of A. J. Greimas
  7. Inédit 1 (1964): Réflexions sur les possibilités d’une description de l’histoire de la linguistique
  8. Inédit 2 (1984): Les universaux de la narrativité 
  9. Inédit 3 (1986): Le sens et la musique. Propos recueillis par Marcello Castellana (1986)
  10. Inédits 4 (1966–1990): De la sémiologie à la sémiotique. Choix de lettres d’A. J. Greimas
  11. Greimas et la linguistique, la poétique et la sémiotique au quotidien, d’après sa correspondance inédite avec Michel Arrivé
  12. La sémiotique de Greimas : un projet scientifique de long terme
  13. Politiques de la sémiotique: Flux et reflux de la critique idéologique chez A. J. Greimas
  14. A. J. Greimas: un Professeur à l’université turque
  15. Les recherches de Greimas sur la mythologie lithuanienne
  16. La « sémantique de corpus », le programme inachevé de Sémantique structurale
  17. The semiotics of sensation: A. J. Greimas and the experience of meaning
  18. Interview with François Rastier
  19. Section 2: Post-Greimassian semiotic analyses / Analyses sémiotiques post-greimassiennes
  20. Language and the game of chess
  21. Human action in narrative grammars
  22. Décrire la vision du monde: L’enjeu anthropologique de la Sémantique structurale
  23. Actualité de la rhétorique : métaphore et image
  24. De l’imperfection : un dialogue avec l’univers mystique
  25. Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square
  26. Le sens de l’échange
  27. The Semiotics of Nirvāṇa: Salvation in Buddhism
  28. La Succession
  29. Les études de société selon la perspective de la sémiotique greimassienne
  30. La factitivité, postérité d’un concept
  31. Selected works by A. J. Greimas
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 14.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/sem-2016-0188/html
Scroll to top button