International Seminar of Semiotics in Paris

Toward a Semiotics of Ideology: Enunciative Perspectives, Materialities, and Forms of Life

Building on previous seminar cycles devoted to machinic enunciation and creativity in generative artificial intelligence (2023-2025), and subsequently to the automation of language practices and processes of typification (Toward a New Semiotics of the Stereotype, 2025-2026), this seminar shifts its attention to the question of ideology and its semiotic manifestations. Whereas typification operates through the reduction and simplification of cultural complexity, ideology involves the crystallization of a broader worldview tied to a specific enunciative and evaluative position. Traditionally understood as a politically situated and often polarized system of values, from Destutt de Tracy to Marx and Engels, ideology is also characterized by a problematic reflexivity: it is always perceived as belonging to others and tends to become invisible when it underlies our own speech and interpretive frameworks.

The seminar aims to re-examine the modes of existence, transmission, and transformation of ideologies in light of contemporary semiotic theories and the ongoing transformations of our technocultural environment.

Research Themes and Directions for Discussion

Regimes of Veridiction, Enunciative Praxis, and Reflexivity

The tension between critique and blindness: how can suspicion toward the discourse of others be reconciled with the ideological unconscious of the speaker?

The impersonal dimension of enunciation (D. Bertrand): in what ways do ideologies sedimented in linguistic practice precede both conscious awareness and discursive articulation?

The epistemology of theory: what place should ideology occupy within scientific theories and semiotic models themselves? What privileges or blind spots characterize the researcher’s position in processes of ideological unveiling?

Semiotic Normativities, Aesthesis, and Contemporary Devices

• Latent and aesthetic efficacy: the study of non-institutional forms of normativity that operate through sensory immersion (presence, tone, rhythm) beneath the level of explicit argumentation.
• Algorithmic infrastructures and generative AI: investigating how ideologies become embedded within technical systems (digital platforms, language models, and cultural industries) insofar as these systems synthesize, reactivate, and crystallize the social discourses from which they emerge.

Theoretical Encounters and Interdisciplinary Hybridity

The seminar will foster a critical dialogue between continental semiotics and several related fields:

• Linguistic anthropology (M. Silverstein, S. Gal, J. Irvine) and Peircean semiotics (W. Keane, M. Leone): exploring the notions of linguistic ideology and semiotic ideology, with particular attention to indexicality and metapragmatics, as a counterpoint to structuralist accounts of false consciousness.
• Semiotics of forms of life and discursive registers (J. Fontanille, A. Agha): examining the relationships between discursive configurations, interactional regimes, and actor typologies within the social fabric.
• Critical Discourse Analysis (T. van Dijk) and polemical-contractual semiotics: analyzing the naturalization of power relations and the discursive strategies through which polarization is produced and sustained.

Open questions

Contributions and discussions will draw on a wide range of corpora and empirical settings:

• Established theories and epistemologies: the genesis, assumptions, and value systems underpinning scientific projects.
• Language communities and social collectives: discursive registers, forms of belonging, and dynamics of controversy.
• Digital environments and media infrastructures: algorithmic discourses, activist platforms, economic narratives, and texts generated by artificial intelligence systems.

- - - 

Practical information

• Sessions will take place at Maison Suger – 16-18 rue Suger, 75006 Paris
• Days and times: every Wednesday from 1:45 pm to 5:00 pm

Scientific Committee

Juan Alonso Aldama, Pierluigi Basso (coordinator), Denis Bertrand, Anne Beyaert-Geslin, Jean-François Bordron, Marion Colas-Blaise, Nicolas Couégnas, Ivan Darrault-Harris, Rossana De Angelis, Valeria De Luca, Maria Giulia Dondero, Veronica Estay-Stange, Jacques Fontanille, Didier Tsala-Effa