Research / Research program
Agentive Semantics and Narrativity
Eventology and eventography: how agents organize the meaning of events and transform it through narration.
Starting point: Elementos de semiótica agentiva
Elementos de semiótica agentiva (2015) provides a direct antecedent to this research. The section “El agente narracional” (§2.4.4.2, pp. 388–395) connects narrative and inferential capacities with the acquisition of habits through socialization. It also examines event segmentation and the organization of events into sequences.
The current work takes up these questions and develops the distinction between eventology and eventography, together with resources for describing how event models are connected and revised.
Agentive semantics: ongoing research
This line develops a model for studying how agents organize and transform meaning in the course of their activity. Its work on events examines the relation between what occurs, the information accessible to an agent and the models through which that agent understands and anticipates a situation.
The account distinguishes what occurs in a universe of reference, the eventive domain, from an agent’s informational organization of those occurrences. The Spanish term evenimencial names this latter domain. An event model is the agent’s operative organization of information about an episode, also called a modelo evenimencial in the working book. This distinction helps specify what is attributed to the represented world and what to a reader’s or viewer’s understanding of it.
Agentive eventology
Agentive eventology brings together the theoretical resources for describing how agents organize meaning in event models. It asks what counts as an event or episode for an agent, how its boundaries are established and what relations allow it to be connected with others.
An episode is a relatively delimited stretch of agentive participation. Its boundaries depend on the scale of analysis, agendas and relevant changes. A conversation may form part of a dinner; an interruption may reorganize both activities. Episodes can be nested and can overlap.
The study of events belongs to a broader semantic project. The manuscript keeps open the distinction between a process of production and contents whose organization is not explained by describing that process, as in the case of a mathematical proof.
Agentive eventography
Eventography is the activity through which an agent segments, anticipates, connects, weighs and readjusts event models. It can operate without explicit narration: understanding that an activity is ending or that an interruption requires a change of plan already involves organizing the course of what is happening.
The analyst’s eventography makes decisions about scale, variables and relations explicit. It must distinguish what a participant could know from what is reconstructed afterwards. In audiovisual analysis, this requires separate attention to occurrences in the fictional universe, the characters’ understanding and that of the viewer.
Event-model inference and narrativization
Elementos de semiótica agentiva used narrationality to explain inferential continuity between episodes. The current working book retains the term as a historical antecedent. Its account now draws on available conceptual resources, their conditions of activation and the regulation of the inferences that recruit them. This provides a way to examine how an agent connects, anticipates or reconstructs episodes without having to produce a narrative.
Narrativization uses signs to select, reconstruct or communicate events; a narrative is one of its outcomes. Operations such as ellipsis or reordering modify access to occurrences and the inferences available. The question is how this elaboration reorganizes meaning for particular agents and recipients.
Presentations on the status of the narrator, film experience and Tenet provide antecedents to these questions. The formulation of eventology and eventography belongs to the ongoing work; the related readings situate it within the agentive program.
Talk: Narrativas en la mente
A presentation by Douglas Niño for BibloRed’s Escuela de lectores (2021), on reading, the brain and event comprehension. The Spanish-language recording is listed on BibloRed’s channel as “Escuela de lectores: Charla Lectura y Cerebro, con Douglas Niño”.
Eventology project: two case studies
Current version: 2026-09-21 · r02
Semántica Agentiva y Modelado is a book in progress. The project develops agentive eventology and eventography through the study of event models and their connections.
The available discussion draft brings together the Lady and the Tramp and Rashomon case studies, with their analytical framework and references. Its analyses and conventions remain provisional.
Background and related reading
Foundational work on Agentive Semiotics, habits, cognitive continuity and conceptual blending.
2015
Elementos de Semiótica Agentiva
Foundations of the relation between agents, agendas and meaning-making.
Full bibliographic record2024
Embodied agentive habits: between sedimentation and ongoing ground
Acquired habits and signification in the course of activity.
Full bibliographic record2023
Towards a Conception of the Continuous Structure of Cognition. A Peircist Approach
With Carlos Garzón-Rodríguez: a model of the continuous structure of cognition.
Full bibliographic recordRestricted access. For further information, contact the author.
2013
Signo peirceano e integración conceptual: una propuesta de síntesis
Relations between Peircean semiotics and conceptual blending.
Full bibliographic record
Related presentations
Presentations on the narrator and film experience, from 2011 to 2021.
“Destino” y “sentido” tienen las mismas letras: espirales identitarias y palíndromos ontológicos en Tenet, de Christopher Nolan
[Identity spirals and ontological palindromes in Christopher Nolan's TeneT]. México. XX Congreso de Teoría y Análisis Cinematográfico. 19-22 Octubre (Octubre 20)
Event detailsThe narrator’s status as an arrival cognitive point in sense-making effects: an agentive proposal
Semiosis in Communication: Differences and Similarities. Bucarest (Rumania) Junio 14-17, 2018 (Junio 15).
Event detailsEl problema del estatus del narrador: una propuesta desde la semiótica agentiva
VIII Congreso Latinoamericano de Semiótica (FELS). Bogotá (Colombia), Septiembre 27-30, 2017 (Septiembre 28).
Event detailsLa integración conceptual y la experiencia fílmica. El escape psicológico en el cine
(con Juan A. Conde). III Encuentro de Semiótica, “La Huída, El Viaje”, Bucaramanga, Colombia, 2011, Jun. 16–17.
Event details
Connection with Agentive Semiotics
The study of event organization and narrativization develops questions from the general framework of agents, agendas and meaning.
Read about Agentive Semiotics