Algirdas Julien Greimas facts for kids

Algirdas Julien Greimas (born Algirdas Julius Greimas; March 9, 1917 – February 27, 1992) was a famous Lithuanian scientist. He studied language and meaning. Most of his work was written in French, as he lived in France for a long time.

Greimas is best known for something called the Greimas Square. He is seen as one of the most important French semioticians, along with Roland Barthes. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how they create meaning.

He was trained in structural linguistics, which looks at how language is built. Greimas helped develop the theory of how things get their meaning. He also helped create the "Parisian school of semiotics."

Some of his big ideas include:

• Isotopy: How different parts of a text connect to create a consistent meaning.
• Actantial model: A way to understand the roles characters play in stories.
• Narrative program: How stories are structured.
• Semiotics of the natural world: How we understand meaning from things around us.

He also studied Lithuanian mythology and old religions. His work was very important in how people looked at semiotic literary criticism, which is about understanding meaning in books and stories.

Biography

Algirdas Greimas was born in Tula, Russia, in 1917. His parents were refugees during World War I. His father, Julius Greimas, was a teacher. His mother, Konstancija Greimienė, was a secretary.

When Algirdas was two years old, his family moved back to Lithuania. His birth names were "Algirdas Julius." But he later used the French version of his middle name, Julien, when he lived abroad.

He only spoke Lithuanian until he went to middle school. There, he started learning German and French. Learning French helped him read important philosophical books in high school.

After finishing high school in 1934, he studied law at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Then he became interested in linguistics. He graduated from the University of Grenoble in 1939. His paper was about old French dialects.

In July 1939, with war coming, the Lithuanian government asked him to join a military academy.

World War II and its impact

When the Soviet Union took over Lithuania, Greimas was at first sympathetic to the new government. In July 1940, he gave speeches encouraging Lithuanians to join the Soviet Union.

He was discharged from the military in October. He then started teaching French, German, Lithuanian, and humanities in schools. During this time, he became very interested in the ideas of Karl Marx.

In March 1941, Greimas joined an underground group called the Lithuanian Activist Front. This group wanted to restore Lithuania's independence when Nazi Germany invaded.

On June 14, 1941, the Soviets arrested his father and sent him to Siberia, where he died in 1942. His mother was also sent away. Greimas was ordered to list the property of Lithuanians who were arrested. These events made Greimas strongly anti-Communist. However, he always kept an interest in ideas from Marxism and liberalism.

When Nazi Germany took over Šiauliai on June 26, 1941, Greimas joined other local fighters. He was put in charge of a small group. He was given an order to gather 100 Jewish people to sweep the streets. He felt very uncomfortable with this and did not return the next day.

He later became an editor for a weekly newspaper called "Tėvynė." This newspaper supported the idea of removing Jews from Lithuania. The main editor of the paper was a strong supporter of these actions. In 1942, Greimas became active in another underground group, the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Union. This group was banned by the Nazis. During this time, he became close friends with people who shared his liberal ideas.

Life in France and later career

In 1944, Greimas moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. He focused on lexicography, which is about creating exact definitions for words. He wrote his PhD paper in 1949 on the vocabulary of fashion.

Greimas started his teaching career at a French Catholic school in Egypt. There, he met other researchers and discussed many ideas. He also met Roland Barthes, another important semiotician, and they remained friends for 15 years.

In 1959, he moved to universities in Turkey, then to Poitiers in France. In 1965, he became a professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He taught there for almost 25 years. He also helped start the International Association for Semiotic Studies.

Algirdas Greimas passed away in 1992 in Paris. He was buried in Petrašiūnai Cemetery in Kaunas, Lithuania, next to his mother. His mother had returned from Siberia in 1954. His father's grave is unknown, but there is a symbolic tombstone for him. Greimas was survived by his wife, Teresa Mary Keane.

Work

Early studies

Greimas's early work included a study of old Parisian fashion words.

Greimas's first published essay was about the book Don Quixote. It talked about how people can resist difficult situations, even if they are doomed. He suggested that defiance can help keep one's dignity.

His PhD paper, "Fashion in 1830," was about the words used to describe clothes in old fashion magazines. After this, he moved away from just studying words. He felt that simply classifying words had limits. However, he continued to believe in the importance of understanding vocabulary. He published three dictionaries during his career.

While in Egypt, discussions with his friends helped him explore new interests. He was influenced by many thinkers, including:

• Ferdinand de Saussure, who started structural linguistics.
• Louis Hjelmslev, a Danish linguist.
• Georges Dumézil, who studied different mythologies.
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist.
• Vladimir Propp, who researched fairy tales.

How meaning is created

Semiotic square

Greimas developed a special way to study how meaning is made in language and other forms of communication. He was not happy with how linguistics only studied small parts of language, like sounds and grammar. He felt it couldn't explain how meaning works in bigger texts or conversations.

Greimas believed that all possible meanings in a culture form a "semantic universe." Since this is too big to study, he focused on smaller "micro-universes" of meaning found in specific texts, speeches, or images. To understand meaning, he would translate one level of language (like a story) into another level (a way to analyze it).

A key part of Greimas's work was narratology, which is the study of how stories are told. He thought that meaning only becomes clear when it's part of a story or narrative. He also believed that story structures can be found in many different systems, not just spoken or written language.

He suggested there are two levels of understanding:

• A surface level (what we see or hear directly).
• A deep level (where the basic meaning and story structure are organized).

This meant that the meaning of something doesn't depend on how it appears. Instead, it comes from this deeper level. Greimas's semiotics developed in phases:

• First, he looked at the "semiotics of action." This studied how "subjects" (like characters) try to find "objects" (their goals) by following a typical story pattern.
• Then, he created a "narrative grammar." This looked at how characters connect with or separate from valuable things.
• Later, he explored "cognitive semiotics." This studied how characters need to be "competent" (have the skills) to act.
• Finally, he looked at "semiotics of passions." This explored how feelings and beliefs change how characters act and think.

Mythology studies

Algirdas Julien Greimas on a 2017 stamp of Lithuania

Later in his life, Greimas started researching and putting together information about Lithuanian mythology. He used methods from other famous researchers like Vladimir Propp and Georges Dumézil.

He published his findings in books like Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology (1979) and In Search of National Memory (1990). He also wrote about the religion of ancient Proto-Indo-European people.

Works translated in English

• [1966] Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. trans. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
• [1970] On Meaning. trans. Frank Collins and Paul Perron. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
• [1976] Maupassant: The Semiotics of Text. trans. Paul Perron. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1988.
• [1976] The Social Sciences. A Semiotic View. trans. Frank Collins and Paul Perron. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
• [1979] — with Joseph Courtés, Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
• [1985] Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology. trans. Milda Newman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
• [1991] — with Jacques Fontanille, The Semiotics of Passions: From States of Affairs to States of Feelings. trans. Paul Perron and Frank Collins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

See also

In Spanish: Algirdas Julius Greimas para niños