Linear and tabular in a semiotic reading of the dramatic communication

Abstract

The present paper pleads for a semiotic modelling of a ‘spectacular text’, that is a text (with all the discursive matter such as speech acts, rhetoric of dialogues, pragmatic constraints, etc.) for the stage (convergence vs. divergence of various semiotic systems: gesture, mimicry, music, etc.). Therefore, a semiotic model of theatre comprehension should be based not only on a linear reading: the level of narrative events modelled by means of the logic of action and change and the level of speech acts (typology, sequencing and significance of speech acts and macro-speech acts), but also on a tabular reading (which has to investigate all semiotic codes, the merging of visual and auditive iconicity with text symbolism, the specific combinatorics of different sign systems). The non-verbal theatrical codes were analysed by means of the triadic Peircian model of the sign (the fundamental trichotomy icon/index/symbol) and of a gradual concept of iconicity and indexicality (image vs. diagram vs. metaphor or gesture vs. costumes vs. mask, music, etc.). Focusing on some macrostructural aspects of the linear model ( narrative and discursive reading, able to establish in an abductive manner the specificity of text type and text token) and of the paradigmatic model, we implicitly argue for the necessity of a global semiotic modelling of theatre.