جسور المعرفة
Volume 12, Numéro 2, Pages 01-19
2026-06-10

Semiotics And Textual Science A Socio-critical Analysis

Authors : Metahri Ahmed . Krouchi Nassira .

Abstract

Abstract: At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure introduced the concept of semiology as a new scientific discipline concerned with the study of signs within social life. As outlined in his posthumously published lectures, semiology seeks to analyze how meaning is produced and communicated through sign systems. Its primary objective was to provide linguists and researchers with analytical tools capable of interpreting complex human and socio-cultural phenomena that had long remained outside traditional frameworks of knowledge. Almost contemporaneously, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce developed a parallel theoretical framework under the term “semiotics.” Although geographically distant from Saussure, Peirce similarly emphasized the need for a systematic approach to understanding signs and meaning. However, unlike Saussure’s structural perspective, Peirce’s model introduced a more dynamic and triadic conception of the sign. Despite their terminological differences, both approaches contributed significantly to the development of modern sign theory. Despite their differing epistemological foundations, semiology and semiotics have collectively fostered a new form of critical awareness with far-reaching implications. Their theoretical and methodological contributions have influenced a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, and literary studies. As a result, semiotics has emerged as a central intellectual framework that has profoundly transformed contemporary critical practice by offering new tools for analyzing, interpreting, and classifying textual and cultural phenomena. Semiotic concepts provided researchers with several starting points, crystallizing many ideas across multiple fields and opening new horizons for addressing human phenomena language, thought, writing, and emotion from new angles to allow greater opportunities for research and innovation. It can be said that Semiology contributed significantly to renewing critical awareness by reconsidering the approach to issues of word and meaning. In this field, it presented important proposals that shifted critical reading from a state of descriptive reading, formal impression, and transient incidental emotion without interaction and rhetorical speech that stops at the direct description of sentential and textual facts to institutional, cognitive, and aesthetic analysis. Texts, in their diversity and variety, are expressive materials that must be viewed as a semantic procedure rather than a mere collection of formal signs and codes. Semiology, along with Semiotics, was explicit in the field of cognitive linguistic studies because it simply studies linguistic phenomena according to semantic systems, regardless of their language or form of manifestation. Following this linguistic revolution marked by the emergence of Semiology and what was called the era of Structuralism, the post-structuralist period arrived. Many linguistic schools adopted Saussurean ideas, and the linguistic phenomenon was treated as a human social phenomenon aimed at communication and transmission of meaning. Consequently, so-called descriptive, functional, formalist, contextual, and deconstructive studies emerged, and methods and propositions multiplied. ملخص: شهد مطلع القرن العشرين تحوّلًا إبستمولوجيًا بارزًا في الدرس اللساني مع إعلان العالم السويسري فرديناند دي سوسير (Ferdinand de Saussure) عن تأسيس علم جديد أطلق عليه السيميولوجيا، وحدّد موضوعه في دراسة حياة العلامات داخل المجتمع. وقد مثّل هذا الإعلان نقلة نوعية في فهم الظواهر اللغوية، إذ أدرجها ضمن شبكة العلاقات الاجتماعية والثقافية، وفتح المجال أمام مقاربة تتجاوز التصنيفات المعرفية التقليدية. وفي السياق نفسه تقريبًا، بلور الفيلسوف الأمريكي (Charles Sanders Peirce) تصورًا موازياً تحت مسمى السيميوطيقا، سعى من خلاله إلى بناء نظرية عامة للعلامة تؤسس لفهم أوسع للعمليات الدلالية. وعلى الرغم من اختلاف المنطلقات الفلسفية بين المشروعين، فإنهما التقيا في جوهر الاهتمام بالعلامة بوصفها أداة لإنتاج المعنى داخل أنساق ثقافية واجتماعية معقدة. وقد أسهمت السيميائيات، بمختلف توجهاتها، في إحداث وعي معرفي جديد امتدت تأثيراته إلى حقول متعددة، كالسوسيولوجيا والأنثروبولوجيا والتحليل النفسي والتاريخ والنقد الأدبي. كما نقلت القراءة النقدية من مستوى الانطباع والوصف السطحي إلى مستوى التحليل المنهجي الذي ينظر إلى النص بوصفه بنية دلالية متكاملة، لا مجرد تجميع شكلي من العلامات. ومع صعود البنيوية، ترسخت الرؤية التي تتعامل مع اللغة باعتبارها نسقًا من العلاقات الداخلية، قبل أن تتوسع آفاق البحث مع ما بعد البنيوية، فتتعدد المناهج وتتقاطع المقاربات بين الوظيفي والسياقي والتفكيكي، في إطار سعي دائم إلى تعميق فهم النصوص والظواهر الإنسانية ضمن أفق دلالي مفتوح.

Keywords

Semiology; Structuralism; Sign; Text; Analysis; Criticism; Linguistics; Sentence; Reading; Social