Semio-pragmatics, an approach to the study of film and audiovisual media first proposed by Roger Odin in the early 1980s, shifted the focus from textual analysis to the interaction of text and context and to the institutional modes of framing and reading which shape the viewer’s engagement with the film. A response to an impasse in post-1968 film semiotics and psychoanalytical approaches to film spectatorship, semio-pragmatics contributed significantly to the further development of film studies alongside Cultural Studies, neo-formalism, historical reception studies and the phenomenology of film.
Spaces of Communication offers a concise introduction to semio-pragmatics and condenses the intellectual trajectory of one of the foundational figures of film studies into a relatively short and accessible volume. It is a book which testifies to the author’s deep and rich intellectual engagement with a vast array of objects ranging from the classics of

Roger Odin is emeritus professor of Communication at Paris 3 University; Head of the Film and Audiovisual Institute (1983-2003); Theorist of the semio-pragmatic approach (De la fiction, 2000; Les Espaces de Communication, 2011). Works about documentaries, amateur films (“Amateur Technologies of Memory, Dispositifs and Communication Spaces”, in Materializing Memories, 2018) and mobile phone (with L. Allard and L. Creton, Téléphone mobile et création, 2014; Mobiles, Enjeux artistiques et esthétiques, Théorème, 2018 ; “Das Zeitalter der Filmsprache ist angebrochen”, Montage AV, 2019).

A Democracy of Objects and Readings: Roger Odin’s Contribution to Film Theory (Vinzenz Hediger)
1.What We Make of Images and Sounds: Semio-Pragmatics as Approach and Method
2.Establishing a Discipline, Cultivating a Field: Roger Odin and Film Studies in France
3.Moving Semiotics Forward: Semio-Pragmatics and Film Theory since the 1960s
4.Beware of the Crypt: Semio-Pragmatics and the Question of Communication
5.After the Elegy of Cinema: Semio-Pragmatics and the State of Film Studies
Spaces of Communication: Elements of Semio-Pragmatics (Roger Odin)
Foreword and Acknowledgements
Introduction. The Semio-Pragmatic Model
On the Difficulty of Staying within Immanence
Vacillation
For an Articulation between the Two Paradigms: Semio-Pragmatics
The Semio-Pragmatic Model
Chapter 1. Context, Constraints and the Space of Communication
Universally Shared Constraints
Natural Constraints
The Narrative Constraint
The Case of Languages
Language and Perception
The Influence of a Language on How We Read Images
“Non-Natural” Constraints and the Notion of the “Space of Communication”
Chapter 2. The Discursive Space: Communicative Competence and Modes of Production of Meaning
Fictionalizing Mode (First Approach)
Spectacularizing and Energetic Modes
Documentarizing Mode, Moralizing Mode
Fictionalizing Mode (Second Approach); Fabulating Mode
Chapter 3. Aesthetic Mode, Artistic Mode: Relationship between Modes and Spaces
From the Aesthetic Mode to Aesthetic Spaces
From the Artistic Mode (in Reduced Form) to Inscription in the Space of Art
From the Artistic Mode (Full-Fledged Form) to the Spaces of Art
Relationship among Modes and among Spaces
Chapter 4. Contextual Analysis and the Space of Communication: The Space of Communication of Family Memory
The Space of Communication for Memory in the “Traditional” Family
The Constraints and the Construction of the Actants
Which Mode(s) to Construct? Private Mode, Intimate Mode
Communication Operators
The Space of Communication for Memory in the New Family Structure
“Freed-up” Communication
Testimony Mode: Another Mode of Production of Meaning
Other Memory Operators
Chapter 5. The Space of Communication and Migration: The Example of the Home Movie
The Home Movie: From Archives to Loci of Memory
The Home Movie on Television
From Home Movie to Micro-Histories
The Home Movie in the Space of Art
The Home Movie in the Medical Context
Chapter 6. Textual Analysis and Semio-Pragmatics
A Stage of the Tour de France on Television
Interpreting the Reproduction of a Painting
Collective Academic Research
The Space of Description and the Construction of the Object of Analysis
From the Space of Textual Analysis to the Space of Interpretation
The Space of Ideological Analysis
The Space of Epistemological Reflection
The Place of Cinema in the Academic Institutional Space
Conclusion
List of Tools
The Different Stages of Construction of the Semio-Pragmatic Model
Bibliography
Index