Lecture et quête de sens

Abstract

This text explores various arguments, both linguistic and semiotic, that support the theory of understanding developed by various cognitivist psychologists, namely Bransford and Nitsch. This is not to say, that the reading process can always be adequately taken into account by a binary model which would translate itself into a macrostructure such as proposed by van Dijk. In the same way that the signified is constantly tuned by the signifier, the meaning of a text cannot be separated from the attitude it produces in the reader (the effect). In place of a reading based only on the signified, or the signifier, the author suggests taking into account the " effets de sens", and so reactualizes the conception of the symbol proposed by Ogden and Richards, the impression being indissociable from the expression of a meaning, whatever it may be.