Summary
Modern semiotics originated from the structuralism that emerged in France in the middle of the 20th century, which gave rise to "structural semiotics" (sémiologie). After nearly 20 years of development, it was replaced by the "narrative semiotics" (sémiotique) created by Algirdas Julien Greimas, formed in the process of structuralism, and the latter has become the mainstream of French semiotics today. In fact, those two semiotics represent two stages of research on "symbols and their systems" and "relationships between symbols" respectively. This lecture briefly summarizes the main theories and achievements of structural semiotics, and then focuses on the main theories of narrative semiotics, especially its "semiotic matrix", and uses Wolf, a micro fiction by Mo Yan, as a case for semantic analysis.