Semiotics of passion

At first glance, passion, linked to ethics and conditions of the mind, would seem to belong to the realms of classical philosophy, psychology or sociology rather than semiotics. What rules could there be that passion obeys, what models to describe passionate behaviour or its simulacra? Semiotics has from the very beginning recognized and incorporated into its theory the contribution made by affective (thymic) states to the production of meaning. Thus it has been accepted that positive or negative assessment of values depends also on a subject's euphoric or dysphoric frame of mind. This is borne out by statements such as 'I know that you are right but I don't believe you'; it is also evident in the appreciation of an object - a car, a novel - whose acceptance or rejection is usually based on a combination of practical/rational and emotional/aesthetic considerations.

When it comes to passion, however, that is, strong feeling or agitation of the mind, semiotic analysis on the narrative and discursive levels of an utterance is more complex. Being related to states of mind/ conditions of the soul (etats d'dme) rather than action/doing (faire), passion does not obey the pattern of the actantial and canonical schemas of the narrative quest. Yet passion does play an important part because it will affect the subject's doing in one of two ways: either impassioned feelings will dominate the action (dominance pathe'mique) or passion will be present yet on the surface be dominated by the cognitive or actional dimensions (dominance cognitive) of the narrative. Either way it is analysable on the structural and organizational level of the discourse.

1. Passion dominating action/doing (faire) is illustrated by the crime passionnel. A discursive utterance governed by passion is marked by:

- an unstable relationship between the narrative subject and object. Apart from its position of object the latter may also adopt those of sender or manipulator (e.g. 'Love' motivates the subject or makes it do something); or even of subject of doing (the object of a passion moves, disturbs, thereby acting on, even transforming, the subject that becomes 'moved'). Thus the subject itself may also take on the function of object (e.g. become a 'victim' of jealousy). Finally, the subject is often affected in its very core by the object of its passion and behaves in an abnormal way (a gentle person having fits of rage or even murdering). Thus we have a subject and an object with altered and changing modal capacities.

- the importance attached to absence: the unstable relationship is accompanied by a proliferation of images focusing on the desired object and dwelling on the absence which it reveals but which also reveals it. 'La sensibilite est une emotion de I'absence' (Bertrand, 1988). 'How like a winter hath my absence been / From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! / What freezings have 1 felt, what dark days seen! / What old December's bareness every where!' (Shakespeare, Sonnet 97).

Most love poetry could serve as an example, as indeed most literature concerned with passion.

— aspectual indications: deep emotion, strong passion are usually characterized by the suddenness of their discovery. One moment the subject does not understand what is happening, the next awareness strikes and all is clear. The very suddenness of the revelation thus becomes a hallmark of the emotion as well as of its strength.

2. Passion dominated by practical or cognitive action is illustrated by subjects giving in to reason/advice in preference to passion. The dutiful daughter complying with her parents' wishes not to marry her unsuitable lover would be a case in point. A discursive utterance in which passion is governed by the cognitive dimension is marked by:

- a stabilization of the object, which becomes, as it were, 'objective'. The object is held at a distance, considered objectively and analysed. Thus after a major accident or a personal tragedy provoking strong emotions, people tend to go over what happened again and again, examining every detail as though the exact re-structuring of the event were all-important.

 — an epistemic subject concerned with accurate knowledge and the establishment of truth. It is given over totally to a descriptive and analytical competence. In La Prisonniere, for instance, Proust's narrator scrutinizes and takes apart one insignificant remark made by the heroine Albertine, endlessly searching it and hypothesizing about its precise meaning. The underlying motive for this cognitive investigation is, of course, of a passionate nature, in this case: jealousy.

- a concern for veridiction is at stake. It matters to establish the truth once and for all, thereby trying to dominate emotional uncertainty. It is important to discover a truth that the subject can believe. But this truth, says Stendhal, 'n'est en verite qu'un soupir'. Finally, it should be noted that passion does not only find expression in verbal discourse. Passion can also be manifest in, for example, spatial, visual or musical utterances.

See also aspectualization, passion, pathematic role and thymic.

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