The past-event memory and the event memory: a semiotic study of autobiographical genres¹

ABSTRACT

Based on the notions of field of presence and event, developed by Tensive Grammar, this study proposes two discursive types of memory as an analytical category: the past-event memory and the event memory. These discursive memory organizations determine different ways the enunciatee adheres the discourses. Being more intelligible, the former captures the enunciatee through strategies that highlight the legibility of the text, whereas the latter promotes an essentially sensitive experience. Taking such instability into account, the aim of this paper is to analyze, on the theoretical framework of discursive semiotics, the interaction between enunciator and enunciatee in different autobiographical genres. The genres studied are the literary autobiographies in prose, autobiographical poems and academic autobiographies. Each of them promotes a particular combination between the past-event memory and the event memory. It is precisely the tension between these two types of memory, these two ways of knowing the world and producing it, which seems to be the foundation of the autobiographical discourses.

Memory; Autobiographical genres; Semiotics; Tensive grammar; Enunciation; Event