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done in most studies dedicated to a textual genre. However, we can also question the
overall organization of a
textscape
, its internal consistency, its meaning for a given
audience or indeed its production (its generation), handling and evolution. We can
clearly see that the approach for dealing with the “textual” object remains the same,
no matter what its size or material complexity.
The second approach looks at the text as a
stratified entity
(as a “puff pastry”, to
use the image which A.J. Greimas holds so dear). According to this approach, the
text is made up of a set of specific levels which serve to process the information
(
lato sensu
) communicated by the text: choice of an object, handling of a chosen
object by the speaker, written, oral or indeed audiovisual expression of the vision
offered by the author of the object in question, etc.
In other words, this second approach gives preferential treatment to the
comprehension and analysis of the textual object's internal organization, i.e. (in the
tradition of structural linguistics going back to F. de Saussure) on the
content
of a
text and its verbal (or in our case, audiovisual)
expression
. Thus, an (audiovisual)
text can be described according to a set of different strata including, in particular
(also see [STO 99]):
- the
topical
level: a level which serves for describing the selection and
thematization of an object dealt with in a text or corpus of texts;
- the
enunciative and discursive
level: a level which serves for describing the
way in which the speaker (the “author”) of the text “paints” and “frames” the object
being discussed, and how it is handled in relation to its audience, the objectives
being pursued, etc.;
- the
narrative
level: a plane which serves for describing the way in which the
object selected and which forms the theme of the speaker's (author's) discourse, is
introduced and developed “throughout the text”, in which order, according to what
syntagmatic logic;
- the level of the
verbal and audiovisual expression
: a level which serves for
describing the means of expression chosen to communicate the object being
thematized and expressed in discourse;
- the level of the
scenographic organization
of the theme of the discourse: a
level which serves for describing the inscription in space (e.g. on a two-dimensional
surface) and time (e.g. over a given duration or at a precise moment) of the object
being thematized, turned into discourse and expressed using one or several media;
- the
materialization
level: a level which serves for producing a material
instance of the text - in the form, e.g. of a handwritten or printed text, a digital text,
etc.
