Spaces of communication : elements of semio-pragmatics

Semio-pragmatics, an approach to the study of film and audiovisual media first proposed by Roger Odin in the early 1980s, shifted the focus from textual analysis to the interaction of text and context and to the institutional modes of framing and reading which shape the viewer's engagement with the film. A response to an impasse in post-1968 film semiotics and psychoanalytical approaches to film spectatorship, semio-pragmatics contributed significantly to the further development of film studies alongside Cultural Studies, neo-formalism, historical reception studies and the phenomenology of film. 'Spaces of Communication' offers a concise introduction to semio-pragmatics and condenses the intellectual trajectory of one of the foundational figures of film studies into a relatively short and accessible volume. It is a book which testifies to the author's deep and rich intellectual engagement with a vast array of objects ranging from the classics of the cinephile canon to television news programs, home movies and mobile phone films Cover 1 Table of Contents 6 A Democracy of Readings and Objects: Roger Odin’s Contribution to the Theory of Film 10 Vinzenz Hediger 10 What We Make of Images and Sounds: Semio-Pragmatics as Approach and Method 13 Establishing a Discipline, Cultivating a Field: Roger Odin and Film Studies in France 18 Moving Semiotics Forward: Semio-Pragmatics and Film Theory since the 1960s 22 Beware of the Crypt: Semio-Pragmatics and the Question of Communication 30 After the Elegy of Cinema: Semio-Pragmatics and the State of Film Studies 32 Spaces of Communication: Elements of Semio-Pragmatics 36 Roger Odin 36 Foreword and Acknowledgements 38 Introduction: The Semio-Pragmatic Model 42 On the Difficulty of Getting Away from Immanence 42 On the Difficulty of Staying Within Immanence 44 Vacillation 46 For an Articulation between the Two Paradigms: Semio-Pragmatics 47 The Semio-Pragmatic Model 49 1. Context, Constraints and the Space of Communication 56 Universally Shared Constraints 56 Natural Constraints 57 The Narrative Constraint 59 The Case of Languages 63 Language and Perception 64 The Influence of a Language on How We Read Images 65 “Non-Natural” Constraints and the Notion of the “Space of Communication” 67 2. The Discursive Space: Communicative Competence and Modes of Production of Meaning 72 Fictionalizing Mode (First Approach) 76 Spectacularizing and Energetic Modes 78 Documentarizing Mode, Moralizing Mode 82 Fictionalizing Mode (Second Approach); Fabulating Mode 85 3. Aesthetic Mode, Artistic Mode: Relationship between Modes and Spaces 90 From the Aesthetic Mode to Aesthetic Spaces 91 From the Artistic Mode (in Reduced Form) to Inscription in the Space of Art 95 From the Artistic Mode (Full-Fledged Form) to the Spaces of Art 98 Relationship among Modes and among Spaces 102 4. Contextual Analysis and the Space of Communication: The Space of Communication of Family Memory 106 The Space of Communication for Memory in the “Traditional” Family 107 The Constraints and the Construction of the Actants 107 Which Mode(s) to Construct? Private Mode, Intimate Mode 108 Communication Operators 111 The Space of Communication for Memory in the New Family Structure 115 “Freed-Up” Communication 117 Testimony Mode: Another Mode of Production of Meaning 117 Other Memory Operators 118 5. The Space of Communication and Migration: The Example of the Home Movie 124 The Home Movie: From Archives to Loci of Memory 124 The Home Movie on Television 128 From Home Movie to Micro-Histories 131 The Home Movie in the Space of Art 134 The Home Movie in the Medical Context 137 6. Textual Analysis and Semio-Pragmatics 142 A Stage of the Tour de France on Television 143 Interpreting the Reproduction of a Painting 147 Collective Academic Research 149 The Space of Description and the Construction of the Object of Analysis 151 From the Space of Textual Analysis to the Space of Interpretation 153 The Space of Ideological Analysis 155 The Space of Epistemological Reflection 156 The Place of Cinema in the Academic Institutional Space 157 Conclusion 158 List of Tools 162 The Different Stages of Construction of the Semio-Pragmatic Model 164 Bibliography 166 Index 174 Semio-pragmatics, an approach to the study of film and audiovisual media first proposed by Roger Odin in the early 1980s, shifted the focus from textual analysis to the interaction of text and context and to the institutional modes of framing and reading which shape the viewer?s engagement with the film. A response to an impasse in post-1968 film semiotics and psychoanalytical approaches to film spectatorship, semio-pragmatics contributed significantly to the further development of film studies alongside Cultural Studies, neo-formalism, historical reception studies and the phenomenology of film.0'Spaces of Communication' offers a concise introduction to semio-pragmatics and condenses the intellectual trajectory of one of the foundational figures of film studies into a relatively short and accessible volume. It is a book which testifies to the author?s deep and rich intellectual engagement with a vast array of objects ranging from the classics of the cinephile canon to television news programs, home movies and mobile phonefilms