The mythical accent in Semiotics

Abstract

We examine, in this paper, the influence of Ernst Cassirer’s studies on the mythical conscience on Claude Zilberberg’s tensive semiotics. Zilberberg found in the German philosopher’s analyses a way to approach meaning, not so much through its phenomenological materiality, but mainly through the affective intensity inscribed on it. This special accent, which renders a certain mythical content pertinent, was compared by Zilberberg to the high tonicity which characterizes the exceptional event, his main object of interest in semiotics. It is from there that the increment notions arise (more and less), whose combination allows us to establish subjective quantifications – thus, affective quantifications – which are always present in our judgments regarding the sens built through verbal and non-verbal languages. Finally, we verify that relations of intensity and extent, the core of the tensive model, were particularly benefited by the investigation of the peculiarity of the mythical thought and its accent.