- Groupe µ
Groupe µ is the
collective pseudonym under which a group of Belgian 20th-century semioticians wrote a series of books, presenting an exposition of modernsemiotics .This interdisciplinary group works out of the Center of Poetic Studies at the
University of Liège , inBelgium , and was formed in 1967. Members have includedFrancis Édeline ,Jean-Marie Klinkenberg ,Jacques Dubois ,Francis Pire ,Hadelin Trinon andPhilippe Minguet , with several other associate members. Beyond their personal research inbiochemistry , culturalsociology ,aesthetics , or semiotics, the authors have published collectively various books as well as more than sixty papers in such journals as Communications, Poétique, Versus, Visio, Degrés, Cahiers internationaux de symbolisme, Communication et langage, Era, Revue d'esthétique, Le Français moderne, Texte, Technê, Protée, RS/SI, Nouveaux actes sémiotiques, Les Documents de travail d'Urbino, etc. or in collected papers.Some of their early work in the 1960s dealt with linguistically-oriented topics such as
polysemous language , and the nature ofsynecdoche andmetaphor . The concepts elaborated in the group’s first major publication ("A General Rhetoric" 1970) contributed to the revival ofrhetorics at the time, by providing an explanatory model of rhetoricalfigure s, which drew on contemporary concepts of linguistic structure. The group separated itself even further from formalstructuralism with the publication of "A Rhetoric of Poetry" (1977), which showed that, although the presence of certain linguistic structures – and foremost amongst them poly-isotopy, made possible by rhetorical figures – was a necessary condition for the production of poetic effects, this condition was not enough, and that anthropological and social criteria would be needed to complete these structures.In the 1970s and 80s they worked on developing a theoretical approach towards
visual rhetoric andvisual semiotics that involved classifying images according to their differences from plastic and iconic norms.The "Traité du signe visuel" (1992) ((which
Göran Sonesson said was to visual communication whatSaussure ’s "Cours de linguistique générale" was to linguistics) sought to elaborate a general grammar of the image, independently of the type of corpus being considered. This semiotic of the visual contributed, in its turn, to semiotics in general: indeed, a question encountered by the group at this stage was that of the relationship between sensorial experience and signification, a question which certainly reveals something of this degree of generality since it comes up against the question of the origin of meaning itself.Bibliography
*"A General Retoric" (1970)
*"Rhétorique de la poésie : lecture linéaire, lecture tabulaire" (1977)
*"Collages" (1978)
*"Plan d'une rhétorique de l'image" (1980)
*"Traité du signe visuel: Pour une rhétorique de l'image" (1992)
* "Figuras, conocimiento, cultura. Ensayos retóricos" (2003)
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