Actant

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Actant is the sort of the position or the way of concern with a situation (action, sequence of action, event or episode) in the story. The same person can have the different actant in regard to the different situation at the same time. Therefore, it should be distinguished from the consistent role of the whole story like Archetype of Character. The concept of Actant is important in Structuralism of Narratology to regard each situation as the minimum independent unit of story.

Since ancient times, Astrology considered and analyzed the position of the persons concerning a situation with the symbols of the celestial objects and constellations. Georges Polti counted up the needed positions for each of the famous 36 dramatic situation by Carlo Gozzi in the 18th Century. Étienne Souriau reduced them only 6 positions named "dramaturgic functions" with astrological symbols; 1. "The Leo", the thematic powered. 2. "The Sun", the valued. 3. "The Earth", the wished obtainer. 4. "The Mars", the oppositionist. 5. "The Libra", the judge of the situation. 6. "The Moon", Auxiliary.

Independently, researching Russian folklores, Vladimir Propp also provided "7 act spheres"; 1. Aggressor, 2. Donor, 3. Auxiliary, 4. Princess and the father, 5. Committer, 6. Hero, 7. Bogus hero. However, these are not the types of the person in the story, but the patterns of behavior, therefore the same person acts sometimes as a "sphere" and sometimes as another "sphere". (The term "sphere" means also here not domain but rather celestial object.)

Linguist Lucien Tesnière considered the function of verb as most important in Dependency grammar and invented the term "actant", various persons that accompany a verb; 1. "prime actant", the Nominative case, 2. "second actant", the Accusative case, 3. "third actant", the Dative case. Algirdas Julien Greimas redefined actants as the 3 pairs "Modulations"; 1. The Actant-Subject and the Actant-Object of Action. 2. The Actant-Sender and the Actant-Receiver of Information. 3. The Actant-Supporter and the Actant-Oppositionist of Volition.

Julia Kristeva tried to understand also the dynamic development of the situations in roman^{[disambiguation needed]} with Greimas' Actant-Model. She thought the Subject and the Object can change the positions mutually and the Supporter and the Oppositionist also change the positions accordingly. Furthermore, the pair of the Subject and the Object changes sometimes the position with the pair of the Supporter and the Oppositionist. However, strictly speaking, for there are plural overlapping situations in roman at the same time, she therefore called it not "change" but "transformation".

In sociology, AI and programming language theory, actants are the principal concern of the actor-network theory, the activity of which is described as "mediation" or "translation".

In sociology, the term "actant" is an approach neither to speak of "actors" (who act) nor of "systems" (which behave). It was coined by Bruno Latour.^[1]

References

• Georges Polti, Les XXXVI situations dramatiques, in French 1895.
• Étienne Souriau, Les deux cent mille situations dramatiques, in French 1950.
• Vladimir Propp, Morphologie du conte, in French 1928.
• Lucien Tesnière, Éléments de syntaxe structurale, in French 1959, 2nd ed. 1966.
• Algirdas Julien Greimas, Sémantique structurale, in French 1966.
• Julia Kristeva, Le texte du roman, in French 1967.

See also

Look up actant in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Actor model
• Science and technology studies
• Scientific Community Metaphor