Remediation and reenunciation: operations and regimes of meaning

Abstract

In this paper, we strive to develop the notion of remediation, especially from the theoretical and methodological point of view of Greimassian and post-Greimassian semiotics. More specifically, the semiotics of enunciation approaches the notion of (re)mediation from three different perspectives: from the angle of the “native” mediation, which corresponds to the experience an instance has of the world; from the angle of the meaningful configurations brought together in the enunciative praxis; finally, from the angle of (re)mediational elements involved in the dynamics responsible for the evolution of meaningful objects. Our paper addresses three issues. First, our attention is focused on the operations of remediation : the recontextualization (act upon the environment), the remediatization (change to another media), the reformatting (change to another format), the remedialization (transform the medium) and the retextualization (change the micro- and macrotextual relations). Secondly, we explore the regimes of remediation : hybridization, bricolage, “metissage” or cross-fertilisation and spectacularization. We focus on the digital field (filmed opera, Google Arts & Culture Project, Visual Aesthetics by Manovich, Living Mona Lisa). Finally, the attention emphasizes the modalities of the reception of the meaningful objects: the notions of immediacy and hypermediacy, which have been developed by Bolter & Grusin, are studied in the light of the notions of immersion, participation (“participative culture” – Jenkins) and the creation of a reflexive distance.