Signification as theoretical level for a structural difference between fiction and nonfiction
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Universidad de Zaragoza
info
ISSN: 2530-4437
Année de publication: 2019
Número: 3
Pages: 142-165
Type: Article
D'autres publications dans: ACTIO NOVA: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada
Résumé
The expression of literary fiction is potentially unlimited. It could be said, like Searle, that potentially any text whatever can occur in fiction. By contrast, the contents of non-fictional discourses always have some kind of limits. Starting from this basic premise, this article will defend that the primary semiotic correlate that explains this difference can be found at the level of what Umberto Eco calls «signification» (that is, the culturally codified link that, within the sign, binds the planes of expression and content together). Thus, a theoretical structural difference between fiction and non-fiction is that in each case meaning is created following different signification logics. Whereas in non-fictional texts the signification link is governed by predetermined norms that arise from a series of real social and cultural interactions, in texts of literary fiction, which have no obligatory commitment to real world, this signification link is managed as if it were a potential in a virtually unlimited way.
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