Introduction

François Rastier, born in France in 1945, has been working on developing a unified theory of interpretive semantics, from the word to the text level, and extended to the literary corpus.

Interpretive semantics is a "second-generation" synthesis of European structural semantics, developed in the wake of Bréal and Saussure, then Hjelmslev, Greimas, Coseriu and Pottier. The basic units it employs are (among others) the seme and the isotopy, reconfigured into a theory of semantic forms. François Rastier's theory fits into the general context of a semiotics of cultures.