Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, npakhsarian@gmail.com
The article analyzes the sensational work of the modern French writer Laurent Binet, which has already received two prestigious literary awards in the year of publication and has been translated into several dozen languages. Being at the same time a novel about intellectuals, a “scientific novel”, the book The Seventh Function of Language becomes a multi-genre work combining the elite and the mass. Fitting into the line of a postmodern conspiracy detective in the spirit of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, the novel by Laurent Binet turns out to be an original version of the genre, in which the semiotic theory is integrated into a work of fiction, and at the same time a mock-satirical description of semiotic scientists. The contradictory assessments of criticism given by the Seventh Function of Language demonstrate the ambiguity of the novel, the possibility of different interpretations of the plot, the postmodern relativity of the narrative.
philological novel; detective; thriller; satire; rhetoric; semiotics
Download textFor citing: Pakhsarian N.T. (2023). Semiotics and semioticists in Laurent Binet’s novel The Seventh Function of Language. Human being: Image and essence. Humanitarian aspects. Moscow: INION RAN. Vol. 3(55): “Simpleton” and “scribe” in and around literary fiction, pp. 151-167. DOI: 10.31249/chel/2023.03.08