International Journal for the Semiotics of Law I I / 6 [1989]

BOOK REVIEWS

F R E N C H A N D A U S T R A L I A N SOCIO-SEMIOTICS:
WORLDS APART A N D YET SO CLOSE

Review of Eric Landowski, La Socidt~ r~fl~chie (Paris: Editions du Seuil,

1989), Pp. 285, ISBN 2-02-010540-3, Price: 140FF, pap.; and of two draft
articles by Gunther Kress: "Towards a Social Theory of Genre", 1988 (co-
authored by Terry Threadgold) and "The Social Production of Language:
History and Structures of Domination", undated (University of
Technology, Sydney).

Wilcox "Why can't you people take things at their face value?"
Robyn "Signs are never innocent. Semiotics teaches us that."
Wilcox "Semi-what?"
Robyn "Semiotics. The study of signs."
Wilcox "It teaches us to have dirty minds, if you ask me."
David Lodge: Nice Work (London: Secker & Warburg, 1988, p. 155).

Whither French (Paris school) semiotics? Is it still resolutely en-

trenched in its famous "square", unwilling to leave the rarefied realm of
structural semantics? Or has it broken out into the unchartered and
troubled reaches of social interactions, finally going the way of linguistics to
become socio-semiotics? The answer to these questions is yes and ... no.
Yes, because Eric Landowski's latest book La Socidt~ r~fl~chie
presents itself as a collection of "Essays in socio-semiotics". Yes also be-
cause it does contain a number of resolute and eye-opening forays into
such topical fields of social activity as law, advertising and the political
stage with its engrossing interplay of politicians, public opinion and public.
And yes, because its stated ambition is not just to present a taxonomy of
genres but to construct "a general theory of meaning" [p.75], "a general
grammar of action and inter-action" [p.177], with a view to accounting for
"the dynamics of the social production of meaning" [p.277].
No, because this dynamics is said " b y definition, to ignore or
transcend distinctions between genres" [p.277]. No, because the semantic
and syntactic levels of early structural semiotics are not only retained but
also privileged, and syntactic criteria are explicitly preferred as being
"more independent of determinations associated with the relativity of
ideological or socio-cultural choices, or at least capable of integrating them
as subordinate variables" [p. 277]. And no, because you only have to flip
through the pages of the book to see the semiotic square zoetropically as
alive as ever.
Admittedly, the task of accounting for the dynamics of the social
production of meaning, is a formidable one. But Eric Landowski is not the
314 RAYMOND COULON

first social scientist or even the first semiotician to have tackled it. As a
matter of fact, M.A.K. Halliday and his disciples in systemic functional
linguistics, notably Gunther Kress, have grappled with it for over fifteen
years. And so has Basil Bernstein from a more socio-educational point of
view. It m a y be said that they and all the others who have attempted to
work out the grammar of social interaction, never claimed to be out and
out semioticians, that in fact they only referred to semiotics when all else
failed and the p h e n o m e n a u n d e r scrutiny o b d u r a t e l y e l u d e d
categorization under any other description. But, whatever reservation one
might have regarding their attempts at squaring the circle, three things are
clear.
One is that fresh efforts are now being made under the banner of
socio-semiotics. The publication of Eric Landowski's La S o c i ~ r~fl~chie
coincides with the circulation of two draft articles by Gunther Kress. One,
u n d a t e d , is entitled "The Social Production of Language: History, and
Social Structures of Domination" (henceforth to be referred to as SPL), and
the other one, dated 1988, and co-authored b y Terry Threadgold, is
entitled "Towards a Social Theory of Genre" (henceforth to be referred to
as TSTG), the latter being clearly identified with socio-semiotics. This is
why it seemed interesting to review them together.
The second striking point is that Australian and Paris schools of socio-
semiotics run their parallel courses, if not worlds apart, at least in total
ignorance of each other: the reader will not find a single hint of mutual
awareness either by way of quotation or in bibliographical references.
Yet, and this is the third obvious point, there are quite a few simi-
larities, at least superficially, between their latest productions. They are
both in the form of articles, Eric Landowski's book being a collection of
revised essays previously published as articles in a number of different
journals (which format, incidentally, does not help grasp the overall
architecture of the theory). They both combine theoretical developments
and practical applications. They both insist that their main concern is to
work out a socio-semiotic theory of social interaction. Which is why this
review will concentrate on the theoretical rather than the practical.

1. The common problem about theory

Both Eric Landowski and his distant fellow-socio-semiotician, Gunther
Kress, find themselves in very much the same quandary as modern
physicists. The latter, according to Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking,
find it extremely difficult to work out an all encompassing theory of the
universe, from the partial theories available to describe and predict limited
classes of phenomena. Likewise socio-linguists and socio-semioticians find
it very difficult to work out a unifying theory or model of language as social
inter-action, from partial theories about meaning, structure and social
practices. So, while physicists like Stephen Hawking seek to reconcile such
incompatible theories as those of general relativity and q u a n t u m
m e c h a n i c s , by developing a new (controversial) " q u a n t u m theory of
 BOOK REVIEWS 315

gravity", socio-semioticians like Eric Landowski and Gunther Kress seek to

develop equally controversial theoretical frameworks accounting for the
way in which the socio-cultural relates to semantics and syntax.
Such an ambitious undertaking can but be controversial in that it
requires answers to two intractable and therefore long eschewed questions:
an ideological one, concerned with how constraining the socio-cultural is
on choices in the areas of semantics and syntax; and a more technical one,
concerned with the level (syntactic or semantic) at which the socio-cultural
operates. Quite apart from very real and sometimes problematic termino-
logical differences, it is in the way the two authors tackle those questions
that the first substantial dissimilarities come to light.

2. The ideological problem about social determinism

One thing is quite clear for Eric Landowski : Peirce and Morris' triad
(semantics, syntax, pragmatics) simply will not do as a unifying theory. All
this triad amounts to is but "a juxtaposition or superposition of quasi-auto-
nomous problematics"[p.192]. What a genuinely socio-semiotic theory
requires - - and who would disagree with that? - - is that the socio-cultural
context be an integral part of the theory and not a mere adjunct or super-
ordinate.
As for Gunther Kress, he does not address Peirce and Morris' triad as
such, but he quite clearly shares Eric Landowski's view that the socio-cul-
tural cannot be regarded as a mere adjunct. However, in line with the
tradition of HaUydayan systemic functional grammar ("Language is as it is
because of its function in the social structure", in Explorations in the
Function of Language, 1973, 65 ), he is rather inclined to rank social struc-
ture as a first order, if not supererdinate element. This is evident from the
way he, unlike Eric Landowski, gives genres pride of place in his socio-
semiotic framework, regarding as he does "the socio-semiotic stuff of
situation-types and of text-types (genres) as of the same order", and
further claiming that "genre is one crucial category in the transmission of
culture, ideology, the structurings of power, the formation of individual
subjects, and the construction and transmission of hegemonic structures"
[TSTG].
Contrary to what the above quotation might suggest, Gunther Kress is
in fact no more inclined than Eric Landowski to espouse the strong
deterministic-mechanistic view. Genres, he insists, '*are both conservative
and potentially subversive semiotic categories" [TSTG] in that they serve to
maintain but also to change the socially ratified discourses in the
community. To that extent he would agree with Eric Landowski in rejecting
that strong deterministic view according to which the context (social
position, institutional practices, etc.) would both condition the speaker's
discursive behaviour and provide the means of understanding it as a mere
reflection of the structure of inter-subjective relationships. But he would
not necessarily endorse Eric Landowski's reasons for rejecting such a view.
Indeed, while Eric Landowski is content to dismiss the idea simply because
316 RAYMOND COULON

its proponents offer no indication as to just how, and to what extent,

language behaviour is determined/influenced b y social parameters,
Gunther Kress is prepared to tackle this question.

2.1. The paradox of self-destructing social determinism

Gunther Kress largely shares Basil Bernstein's view that the sets of
discursive choices available to speakers in a community, their coding
orientations, are a function of the positions they can occupy in the social
fabric. He does stress the fact that "All social subjects occupy particular
p l a c e s - of class, gender, age, occupation, race, and so on, and that
through this positioning, social subjects are at the same time positioned as
linguistic subjects, through access or lack of access to sets of texts, genres
and discourses" [TSTG]. As these structures are characterized by "unequal
distribution of power", which is encoded in genres, and as subjects
experience both generic structures and genres through and in texts thus
marked b y inequalities of power, it follows for Gunther Kress that
"language as social action, that is, language as text always instructs its
users to take on certain positions in particular interactions, trains us to be
certain kinds of subjects in certain kinds of texts" [SPL].
Such a definition of genre would smack of strong determinism were it
not for the fact that this kind of determinism contains its own antidote,
what Gunther Kress calls its "subversive semiotic" potential. For one thing
no one individual is ever Positioned with respect to one and only one
generic structure/genre. Each individual experiences a number of generic
structures in his/her socialization, and, likewise, encounters many genres,
so that his/her soda] positioning is a function of an ever changing "web of
overlapping and cross-cutting structural factors", and that h i s / h e r
linguistic positioning will be multigeneric, i.e. it will incorporate traces of
m a n y genres. So much so that "It is unlikely, p e r h a p s theoretically
impossible, that any two language users will share the same positionings
and hence the same coding orientation" [SPL].
H o w such a (commonsensical) statement can be reconciled with a
description of the "linguistic subject as agentive in socially predictable and
given ways" [TSTG] is something which Gunther Kress does not elucidate.
H o w e v e r , it is, he argues, precisely because social and linguistic
interactions involve, by definition, participants with different social and
coding orientations, who interact in structures of power-difference, that
friction will occur, thereby inducing change.
Conflict is likely to focus on a particular set of the system of socio-
cultural values with its associated lexicalization or classification. If, as
Gunther Kress' examples show, what is at issue relates to a socio-political
event called "invasion", it can be re-classified as a natural one. If, on the
other hand, the issue is about the connotation values attached to a
particular word, re-lexicalization will be resorted to.
In and by themselves, those (essentially semantic) changes would be
rather insignificant, were it not for the fact that they are socially produced
 BOOK REVIEWS 317

and also "capable of producing structural shifts in the transitivity system of

the language" [SPL]. These changes and shifts which occur in texts reflect
back on genres, and so it goes on, generic stability always being at risk in
text encounters. Which dialectics is neatly encapsulated in Gunther
Kress' definition of genres as "both products (types) and processes (tokens
only ever realized as the forms or consequence of social action we call
texts)" [TSTG].
Whether these changes occur in predictable ways, whether and to
what extent types pre-determine choices of tokens, there again Gunther
Kress offers no clear answer. And how could he, given his recognition of
the virtually infinite combinations of socio-linguistic positionings which
participants have as they engage in textual encounters? Besides, even
though participants may start off, privileging certain configurations
according to their coding orientations, there is no a priori way of deciding if
and how the encounter will cause re-orientations cum semantic changes. It
may not be so surprising then that Gunther Kress should conclude one of
his articles by saying that, in his (theoretical) account, "neither the social
nor the linguistic is privileged". But he does so almost begrudgingly as, a
few lines on, he still insists that "in actual interactions the social ~weighs'
more heavily than the linguistic" [SPL].
Does this reflect the author's ultimate theoretical uncertainty as to
how potent a driving force the social is in human exchanges? Or does it
simply reflect his implicit admission that, however much he believes that
"the power differences in social structures give a particular weighting and
direction to interaction" [SPL], his socio-semiotic theory can account for
the possibilty of change only in a most general, unspecific, indeterminate
way (the extent, modality and exact direction of change being
decipherable only ex post facto, as he so persuasively demonstrates in his
analysis of actual textual examples)? If the latter were the case, then there
would be very little difference after all between him and Eric Landowski
whose conception of socio-semiotics is one that ignores or transcends
distinctions between genres, and allocates "secondary ranking" to social
variables.
Maybe this common diffidence stems from the second, and equally
common reason that they have for rejecting the strong deterministic view
of language. Both indeed seem to agree that the semiotic subject is no
mere emanation or reflection of some given social subject. Both seem to
concur that the wider context or referential world does not exist as some
given outer reality, any more than it is directly interwoven into the web of
real relationships between subjects. Gunther Kress sees both situation-
types and text-types or genres as "semiotic constructs" [TSTG]. More
pointedly, Eric Landowski stresses that each relevant feature of the context
actually "depends upon the cognitive act of a semioticaIly competent
subject, i.e. one who is capable of defining (recognizing or reconstructing) it
as such" |p.233]. An idea which is also taken up by Gunther Kress when he
says that "the social/linguistic agent actively participates in this
318 RAYMOND COULON

(re)production of himself/herself" [SPL].

2.2. The (unrecognized) paradox of cognitive constructs

Cognitivism is unquestionably central to Eric Landowski's semiotic

theory. It postulates that all meaning, and social meaning in particular, is
a cognitive construct. The cognitive act is therefore primary. It underpins
every other act, social or linguistic. Subjects cannot interact without first
recognizing themselves as potential partners, i.e. without forming, all be it
implicitly and at a very abstract level, "actantial simulacra" of themselves
and of their common contextual universe as meaning potentials. Only
then can they deploy discursive strategies so as to manipulate the
exchange of simulacra.
But how does this cognitive competence come about? Is it not itself
acquired and constructed through the socialization of subjects? And is it
not the case that both socialization of subjects and construction of
cognitive competence are effected through the medium of language
(discursive formations)? If so, it must be recognized, as Bernstein and
Kress do, that the social is what gives subjects their different cognitive
orientations, and that it is the very multiplicity of discursive framings
associated with social positionings which accounts for both the possibility
and the modalities of cognitive constructs. Otherwise we are in a chicken
and egg situation.
Siting the socio-cultural at the deep actantial level, as Eric Landowski
simply does, is to beg the question. Some theoretical elaboration on the
figures of Sender and anti-Sender, the most likely repositories of social
determinations, would have been welcome from a theory claiming to
account for the social production of meaning. Something more than the
kind of token and literally last minute (the following quote is from the very
last sentence of the book) recognition of social determinations identified
with "the socially constructed conditions of meanings in our discourses and
actions" [p.278].
To add that this reality is but another form of the textual is no doubt to
echo Gunther Kress' claim that "the semiotic stuff of situation-types and of
text-types is of the same order" [TSTG], but without having addressed the
ideological difficulties encountered and eventually left unresolved by
Gunther Kress. Which leaves the theoretical vacuum between un-
determinism and determinism gaping as wide as ever. Neither author
appears to have the answer to the riddle of texts, highlighted by post-
modernism and aptly quoted by Gunther Kress as "texts are polysemic and
are read as though they are not" [TSTG].

3. The foregrounding of syntax

The reason why Eric Landowski quite successfully manages to bypass
this issue is that~ unlike Gunther Kress, he does not really set out to
expound "a socio-semantic functional theory of material textual product-
 BOOK REVIEWS 319

ion" [TSTG]. His ambition is both more general and of a very different
kind. It is rather aimed, as he puts it, at "the construction of a general
theory of meaning" [p.75] and it has to do with "a general g r a m m a r of
action and interaction" [p.177].
Although he would subscribe to Gunther Kress' view that " t h e
dynamic of text production has to reside in difference" [SPL], his idea of
difference is neither intrinsically social nor strictly semantic. This is not to
say that he repudiates the heritage of structural semantics. His starting
point still remains firmly grounded on the structural semantic postulate
that meaning originates from semantic differences on the paradigmatic
axis. These he retains and formalizes, at a deep level of abstraction, by
means of the semiotic square. But he promptly moves on to another level,
which he (confusingly) calls surface level and which he defines as being
intermediate between the deep logico-semantic level of the semiotic
square, and the level of discursive grammar (the latter being the one
focussed upon by Gunther Kress).
It is at this so-called "surface level" - - which is still at a fairly deep level
of a b s t r a c t i o n - - that the paradigmatic relations are converted into
"predictable syntactic processes" by means resorting to narrative grammar
[p.232]. This is the level on which Eric Landowski focusses most of his
theoretical and illustrative developments. The reason is that he needs to
accommodate a shift in his postulation of how meaning comes about.
Meaning is not just a semantic construct, it is also (and perhaps above all?)
a syntactic construct predicated upon the formalization and manipulation
of simulacra by semiotic subjects. It is contructed and seen as such in one
and the same act (hence the "rdfldchie" in the title of the book) by the
semiotically competent subjects. The advantage of such a posture is
twofold.
First of all it obviates the need to pronounce on h o w constraining social
structures are since they can only be so if they are recognized as relevant
by participants in the interaction. If not side-stepped, the social issue is
transmuted into a (more innocuous?) psycho-semiotic one. Real life
agents transform themselves and one another into semiotic actants
endowed with "specific" modal (syntactic) competences, and thematic
(semantic) roles. Likewise the context of interaction (with its institutional,
psychological features) is transformed into a semiotic situation thanks to
"the semio-narrative concept of modalization" [p.199].
Whether this is a syncretic concept, one which is an integral part of
both the pre-supposed generative semiotic competence of actants and of
the operational (hypothetizing-deductive) competence of the semiotician,
Eric Landowski does not make it quite clear. Nor does he lift a similar
ambiguity about the related concept of narrative grammar whose crucial
role it is "to provide the principles of relevance" whereby the social context
becomes a semiotic context. On the one hand, the semio-narrative
concept of modalization is said to make it possible "to account for both the
way objects come to exist for acting subjects, and for the latter's own
320 RAYMOND COULON

competence as communicating subjects" [p.199]. On the other hand, there

is this puzzling restriction in a statement elaborating on the notion of
semiotic relevance: this notion "which - - at least on an analytical level - -
is used to assign a closure to the context of enunciation" [p.228]. Does this
reservation suggest that closure is more a matter for the analyst to re-
construct than for the actants to construct? One would hope not. But,
whichever is the case, it does not detract from the first advantage
mentioned above: the semio-narrative concept of modalization is and
remains a fairly abstract syntactic construct - - "actantial syntax" [p.229] - -
whose driving force is cognitive and transcends the social.
The second advantage of foregrounding the cognitive-syntactic
dimension is that it allows the author to develop models of interaction
based on the most general (and therefore also safely indeterminate)
definition of action. Action as a purely syntactical f u n c t i o n - a changing
of states - - serving to relate any pair of variables, whether two subjects or
one subject and some subject-matter. The resulting axiologies are tagged
with modal values of "can do", "know how to do", "must do", "ought to do",
and they, in turn, generate " n a r r a t i v e p r o g r a m m e s " or " n a r r a t i v e
schemata". To illustrate his point, Eric Landowski offers an interesting re-
translation of J.L. Austin's famous How to do things with words in semio-
narrative terms: "How to make do with make believe".

Practical applications

The way actantial models operate is most convincingly demonstrated

by means of numerous and varied concrete examples harnessing the
semiotic square to modelize the fundamental configurations of potential
interactions. The most illuminating are to be found in the chapters entitled
"Public Opinion and its Spokesmen", and "Strategic Explorations". Eric
Landowski clearly shows how powerful the semiotic models are at
encapsulating the kinds of choices (strategic, manipulative, etc.) actants
have available at this still fairly abstract level of narrative syntax.
In "Strategic Explorations" he displays a semiotic square which neatly
associates the four main types of operational strategies with what might be
called their social-ideological connotations. He then distinguishes
between strategy and tactics, the latter being the actualization of the
former at the discursive level. And he further exemplifies how this
narrative to discursive transformation operates in various fields ranging
from chess-playing to soup-making, showing the cross-cutting effects of
the subjects' perceptions of their relationship with one another or with the
matter at hand.

4.1 A semiotic and narrative approach to law

Lawyers and socio-linguists will perhaps regret that the chapter

devoted to law (the English translation of which was previously published in
this journal, Vol. I, No 1, 1988, pp. 79-105) should not have been supple-
 BOOK REVIEWS 321

mented with similar indications as to how "deep" and "surface" semio-

narrative models inform enunciation at the discursive level. Instead, Eric
Landowski seems to be exclusively concerned with providing a "unified
principle of intelligibility" [p. 74], i.e. an abstract theoretical/hypothetical
construct for what is "a complex universe of signification, constituted of
apparently heterogeneous elements and levels" [p. 78] such as discourses,
institutions and concrete social practices. His strategic choice is one that
favours "the construction of a syntactic rather than a semantic model"
[p. 79]. The (very convincing) reason is that legal norms fundamentally
differ from moral and religious rules as well as from professional codes of
practice, in that they organize inter-subjective relations rather than
individual behaviour [p. 104]. Now relational rules are the domain of
syntax. Furthermore, law happens to share with semiotics a number of key
narrative concepts : "will, subject, mandate, object, contract, delegation,
capacity, act, sanction" [p. 82]. Hence Eric Landowski's choice of narrative
syntax to account for the production of legal signification.
Narrative syntax organizes inter-subjective relations on both
horizontal (syntagmatic) and vertical (paradigmatic) axes. On the
horizontal axis, legal narrative syntax regulates the syntactic relations
between actants subjects of legal doing (whose actorial figures are
legislators and judges) and actants subjects of legal states of being (whose
actorial figure is the general public). On the vertical axis, it regulates the
hierarchically ordered syntactic relations between the various legal
subjects of doing and their senders ( those actants who create legal values,
allocate competence to legal subjects of doing, and sanction their
performance).
The fact is that law allocates values to largely pre-existing socio-econ-
omic relationships between subjects, and between subjects and objects: it
"creates some, displaces others, or simply recognizes some that already
existed prior to its intervention" [p. 87]. Such values may be objective (pro-
perty) or modal (prescription, permission), but the main point is that the
operations of conjunction and disjunction whereby subjects get vested or
divested of such values, are all transitive, i.e. intrinsically syntactic. Thus
socio-economic actors cease to be autonomous subjects of doing to be-
come heteronomous subjects of legal states of being: they may remain
masters over their socio-economic interactions but "they are not them-
selves entitled to pronounce (which is another form of doing) on the legal
signification of what they do" [p. 92]. It is for the "actant sender" or
"syntactic sender" (whose actorial figures are either legislator or judge or
both), to do so.
At the highest and most abstract level on the vertical axis, Eric
Landowski postulates the existence of an "epistemological sender". He
defines it as "a collective actant constituted by the totality of actors who are
in the position of contributing (essentially within the framework of
jurisprudence and doctrine) to the elaboration of grammatical or
metalegal norms" [p. 96]. Metalegal norms are those that privilege such
322 RAYMOND COULON

forms of syntactic organization as transitive non-reflexive relations. Legal

norms or positive law as such are a matter for what Eric Landowski calls the
axiological sender, whose competence it is to assign "in deontic terms a
determined legal value to manifestations that occur within syntactic
schemes previously recognized at the epistemological level" [p. 97]. Axio-
logical senders fall into two categories: there are m a n d a t o r (or
manipulator) senders endowed with a competence to create/enunciate a
priori legal values and thereby to programme the doing of all subjects; and
there are judicial senders adjudicating a posteriori on the legal values of
realized programmes.
According to Eric Landowski, two principles allow this stratified
structure to be dynamic and not static. One operates on the horizontal axis
and provides for the permutation of actorial roles: "all actors have a virtual
capacity to occupy any of the actantial positions and can even occupy more
than one, on condition that the distinction between actants, and therefore
the syntactic relations existing at a deeper level be always expressed, in
one way or another, on the surface level" [p. 103]. Law as legislative act
does indeed refer to impersonally defined categories of actants and these
archetypal roles may therefore be assumed by any social actor whose state
of legal being fits the role. What the proviso (that there should be as many
actors on the surface as there are actants at a deeper level) means is that
the same actor cannot, for example, occupy the actantial roles of judge
and party. The other principle, which operates on the vertical axis, is that
of recursivity. Law draws upon a multiplicity of hierarchically ranked
actorial figures replicating at each level the actantial relations of unilateral
dependence between subjects and their respective senders. Eric Landow-
ski claims that it is in the combination of those two principles and in the
particularly rich interplay of actantial relations it allows on both horizontal
and vertical axes that the legal system is dynamic and distinguishes itself
from other social systems of inter-subjective relations.
There is no doubt that this semiotic construct highlights some
distinctive features of legal narrative. More than any other system of inter-
subjective relations, law does indeed display a wealth of elaborately
defined and carefully ranked categories of actants. But the difference is
one of degree rather than of nature. Both religious and political systems do
allow for various degrees of mediation, also hierarchically ordered,
between the ultimate multi-functional sender and its subjects. Admittedly
law does not have one actor (God or Pope) playing the actantial part of the
multi-functional Sender. However, it is overstating the case for difference
to claim, as Eric Landowski does, that "the system of law.., seems wholly
organized precisely to do without any such ultimate sender" [p. 106]. The
fact is that French law not only has one but it also makes constant
reference to it: acts are passed and jurisdictional decisions are taken in the
name of "the French People". Eric Landowski acknowledges this, only to
dismiss it as " p r o b l e m a t i c a l " and even " i r r e l e v a n t " [pp. 105-106].
Problematical it may be (particularly as regards its relationship with the
 BOOK REVIEWS 323

Epistemological Sender), but irrelevantit is not. The "French People" are

at least as relevant to legislatorsand judges as "public opinion" and
"nation" are to politicians[see pp. 32ff.]and for the very same reasons: "to
overdetermine, albeit in ways that are not always explicit or direct, the
semiotic competence of all the agents involved" [p. 37]. Without it, what
would be the ultimate Will causing and authorizing legal agents (particu-
larly those at the top of their hierarchies)to perform certain acts and give
them a binding force? Without it, would the Constitutional Council have
ruled the way itdid over the constitutionalityof the 1962 referendum?
As theoretical constructs go, Eric Landowski's semio-narrative
grammar m a y well account for the potential dynamism of the system as a
whole. The principle of recursivitywould, like Gunther Kress' notion of
"subversive" multi-positioning,createjustsuch opportunities for "friction",
and thereby change, to occur. The trouble is that the principle works on a
vertical axis and that hierarchy is not known to mix wall with subversion.
Which m a y indeed account for the system being, more often than not,
rather staticin its actual working. The factis that,if"hierarchicallyordered
relations of unilateraldependence" mean anything, they mean status quo,
unless the top wants to change (which itrarelydoes),or itis itselfphysically
changed (which also rarely happens). But in either case, the "French
People" tends to get involved, be it as a transcendental sender "manipu-
lating" its mouthpieces to change the law, or as a self-manipulated actor
irrupting on the scene to make the revolution.

4.2. The problem with ideology

In his last chapter entitled "Figures of Authority", Eric Landowski

seems to suggest that although ideologies may register at the deep level of
the axiological component, they are best handled at the intermediate level
of narrative syntax. Different ideologies would develop different "narrative
programmes". These are said to be amenable to deductive tracing. They
can also be formalized by networking the basic syntactic structures mainly
associated with the "can do" modality. The problem confronting the
analyst is twofold. First to define a limited number of formal criteria for the
combination of subjects and objects. Then to construct a typology of
theoretically predictable narrative programmes of interaction.
Eric Landowski manages to keep the number of criteria to five. He
also manages to construct his typology "independently of the variety of
possible referential contexts" [p.248], But he nevertheless ends up with a
sizeable typology running into 32 combinations 1p.274]. What is more, and
he recognizes it, in as much as the criteria may be ordered in different
ways, it is not one but several typologies that are theoretically possible
[p.255]. This multiplicity may well be unavoidable but it raises a few
questions. One, how many more discursive realizations are those already
numerous narrative programmes likely to generate? Two, how can this
typological multiplicity be reconciled with the concluding claim that socio-
semiotics is not so much about "isolating structures, constituting
324 RAYMOND COULON

t y p o l o g i e s " [p.277]? Three, what is there to be gained in substituting

typologies of semio-narrative structures for typologies of genres? Finally
and more generally, what is the fundamental difference between Eric
Landowski's semio-narrative configurations and Gunther Kress' genres?
Are they not both syntactico-semantic constructs designed to account for
the ways in which "the macro level of the social and the micro level of the
verbal/textual mutually articulate and construct each other" [TSTG],
thereby producing meaning? Are they not both attempts at grasping this
social variable which ubiquitously permeates each and every h u m a n
exchange, which subversively institutes change within stability, which
allows itself to be reconstructed ex post facto by the analyst in ways that he
cannot guarantee to be identical to those actually constructed by the
protagonists as they engage in the exchange, and which finally eludes any
truly predictive grasp by any theory precisely because it is an experiential
variable and a multifaceted one at that?

5. If at first you don't succeed...

The difference in approach between Eric Landowski and Gunther
Kress is real, at least initially. They do start from rather different epistemo-
logical and ideological premisses: structural v. functional; hierarchic v.
systemic; one foregrounding syntax, the other privileging semantics; one
choosing to bracket the social only to re-introduce it as a second order
variable after the conceptual and processing a p p a r a t u s has been
perfected, the other insisting on the retention of the social as a first order
principle of genre and text organisation; one postulating that cognition
gives shape and meaning to the social, the other regarding the social as the
shaper of cognitive processes. However their paths do cross as the elusive
quarry forces them to change their initial positions and strategies. And in
the process of scouring the same grounds they not surprisingly end up
evolving as many typologies, the ones perhaps more formal than the 335
others, but all designed to cover as much (of the same) ground as possible
in the forlorn hope that they might net the beast therein.
In David Lodge's novel quoted in the epigraph to this review, Robyn
derides Wilcox's "naive faith in the stability of the signified". That Eric
Landowski, Gunther Kress and the author of this review should have hoped
that a predictive theory could be found to account for the production of
instability in the signified may also have been somewhat na'We. But it
should not be derided. In fact it was well worth trying as if the goal was
attainable. H o w e v e r impossible the task, those fresh attempts have
yielded new and valuable insights contributing in no small measure to our
understanding of social interaction and to the advancement of micro-
socio-semiotics.
Raymond COULON
Universityof Kent