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About GamesAuthor(s): Algirdas Julien GreimasSource: SubStance, Vol. 8, No. 4, Issue 25 (1979), pp. 31-35Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684212

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About Games

ALGIRDASJULIENGREIMAS

1. Game and Language

It is at least curious to remark that most 20th century thinkers who have

considered the problem of language- Husserl, Saussure, Wittgenstein,

Hjelmslev--at one time or another all chose the concept of "game," and

particularly chess, as a model for their thinking. This metaphorical use of

"game" as a figurative language allowing us to speak about language is not a

concerted effort, but neither is it the result of chance. It is probably traced inthe deep epistemeof the century. If we think about "game," we automaticallythink about language and, more generally, about our way of life in the

signifying world.

2. Constraint and Freedom

A game appears both as a system of constraints, reducible to rules, and as an

exercise in freedom, a distraction. Our first impression is that this freedom is

limited to the single act of entering the game. At that point the constrainingrules are voluntarily accepted. One is free to enter, but not to exit. The playercan neither quit the game- he would be a coward- nor cease to obey the rules- he would be a cheater. The code of fair play is in its way as rigorous as thecode of honor. However, there is a difference: while one penetrates freely intoa game, he is condemned beforehand to live inside "serious" systems, even

though he may desperately seek an effective liberating act.

3. Game as System

Because chess is a figurative model which aids in thinking about language, itis susceptible to a pluri-isotopic reading.

Clearly, it is first a model which permits us to understand the nature of a

"system of signs." Each piece is defined not by what it is, but by the behavior

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which distinguishes it from the others. The sign thus becomes a pure position,the intersection of moves. The de-substantialization of signs permits us to think

of the system as a form. On the other hand, since each piece is dependent on all

the others, each of its movements disturbs the system by creating a newstructural state based on a new temporary equilibrium. The concept of a formal

system leads then to think of history as a discontinuity made up of-states andtransformations.

It is immediately tempting to identify these empty positions of the pieceswith individuals functioning inside systems which are beyond their control and

which manipulate them. Their possible courses of action, understood as

authorized moves, are constantly limited and contradicted by the behavior of

their neighbors, whether they be benevolent or malevolent. The image of a

society made up of disembodied and depersonalized pieces was used recently tocelebrate, momentarily, a masochistic heroism and then to proclaim the

liberating fall of philosophical structuralism.

4. The Players' Game

The whole problem changes completely if, instead of considering the chess

board alone, one takes note of the presence of the players and tries to under-

stand what is happening "inside their heads," in the form of preliminary

assumptions or logical presuppositions conditioning their moves. Then it maybe understood that the spatial displacements of the pieces are only "litotes" for

complex game programs, including chains of already accomplished moves and

projections of moves to come. In other words, the important elements of the

game are no longer particular moves, but programmed discursive moves. It is

not a question, in the game, of applying a set of rules more or less correctly, but

rather of a showdown between two cognitive subjects provided with an implicit

knowledgeof the rules which

they exploitin order to elaborate, in the form of

complex potential programs, strategies apt to lead them to victory.

"Strategy," as it is used here, is not uniquely grounded in what might be

called syntagmatic intelligence, the faculty of constructing chains of effective

speech acts. It implies first of all a competence in interpreting the opponent's

performance so that the subject may relate the acts and intentions of his

adversary and assume a global representation of his knowledge, will, and

power to act. Strategy is also competence at manipulation. Programs constructed

by the subject are not all destined to lead straight to the goal. They often consist

in "making believe" that one desires a certain objective and in making theopponent act accordingly. The opponent is then forced to act within and to the

benefit of his enemy's more general program. The game of chess then becomes

only a pretext. It forms the referential level on which there develops a cognitive

activity of the second degree: a game of cunning and deceit.

It is not legitimate then to consider players seated for a game in the hic et

nunc as abstract "actants." They are "historical" subjects from two points of

view. They possess a specific semantic competence due in large part to past

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performances, but they possess as well a more general modal competencewhich determines, wherever it is applied, their programmatic, interpretive,and persuasive activity. Beyond the game system itself, it is possible to construct

a cognitive model beginning with a typology of competencies and theirinteraction.

5. Chess and computers

It is tempting- it has been tried- to replace one of the players by a

computer endowed with an artificial intelligence capable of recognizing a largenumber of stereotyped combinations of moves and of responding to them

appropriately.Such an automaton can hold its

own,so it

seems, onlywith

rather mediocre players. The machine operates uniquely on the "referential"

level of the game and cannot interpret game programs which are not based on

the quest for victory, those which are governed by the second degree modal

system, those which produce game configurations signifying something otherthan they seem to signify. This strategy of deceit and counter-deceit can

theoretically be systematized and registered in the computer in the form of a

new recognition grammar. But just as in the children's game of guessing which

hand holds the rock, hardly has a system of predictability been established than

it can be foiled by the human player. The game continues and adds to theillusion that there is some freedom.

6. Game and Communication

The linguist, in the habit of thinking through the frame of his own concepts,cannot avoid mentioning the familiar model of the structure of communication

when he finds himself, as is now the case, in the presence of two interacting

subjects.He cannot avoid

seeingin a

gamea form of communication for which

he may seek a determinate specificity.Intersubjective dialogue, insofar as it exceeds the phatic function normally

assigned to it, carries with it a judgmental [veridictoire]finality. To say

something is not to comment on "the state of things"; it is first of all an effort to

convince the interlocutor in one way or another. The same thing is true in a

game. Every game has a stake: each player busies himself with the elaboration

of a global discursive program for final victory. If, as dictionaries tell us, the

notion of game includes some pleasure, it is not due uniquely to the solitary

exaltation of one's effective moves. It results at the same time, and especially,from effective communication. Victory is complete only if it is acknowledged bythe opponent. In a game, it is not just a question of conquering [vaincre]but of

convincing [convaincre],of obliging the opponent to share one's triumph.Analogical reasoning, which uses the game model, permits us to emphasize

an often misunderstood aspect of communication. As much as, if not more

than, an exploitation of a "common code" or a "generosity"which, according to

certain philosophers governs intersubjective relations, communication is a

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clash of will and power. More than the utterance of truth and falsehood, it isdetermined by the principle of efficacy.

The efficacy of the player's programming depends, in final analysis, as

much on the manipulations of his opponent's knowledge as on the actual moveswhich he constructs. The manipulative configurations which he offers for his

opponent's interpretation are so conceived as to remain incomprehensible ormisunderstood. In the extreme, a player can be sure of winning only if he"personalizes" the game to the point where it becomes incommunicable. These

deceptive sequences, on the other hand, to the extent that they mean

something other than what they seem to mean, already constitute a sketch of asecond degree figurative language, if indeed natural languages [langues]areconsidered to be languages [langages] only insofar as they are not concerned

with sounds.Efficacy, bound to incommunicability and figuration [figurativite], hese are

several traits which chess and other games share with poetic language.

7. Game and Play [Jeuet aisance]'

Every normative system composed of injunctions, i.e., of prohibitions and

prescriptions, carries with it "empty" positions which are neither forbidden nor

prescribed. These positions may be exploited by the players. It is in this sensethat one speaks of "play" [jeul in a structure. One possible exception, amongothers, is the strict binary nature of political systems where all that is not

prescribed is forbidden, and vice versa. The absence of play [jeu]is equivalentto the absence of freedom.

Let us proceed to a little exercise in applied semantics. According to thedictionaries, play [jeu] implies looseness [aisance]and is defined, in one of its

usagesas the "free [aiselmovement of an

objectin a

space." Looseness [aisance]is defined as "the manner of being free of one who feels at ease [a l'aise]."

Despite the apparent circularity of these definitions, one notices, aside from the

parasynonymy of the terms: play Ujeu]= looseness [aisance] freedom, the pro-nounced discursive character of the last definition. Let us try to analyze it.

1. The basic statement defines the playing subject as being "atease." Let us

say that there the player exercises his activity in the permissive area ofunforbidden and unprescribed options. By calling F1 the set of actions whichthe subject is capable of realizing by obeying the injunctions, we can designate

as F2 the set of actions that he can accomplish with respect to "free"positions inthe system of contraints. The player's state of "being at ease" presupposespassing from F1 to F2.

2. It is by finding himself in the operative state F2that the player becomes a

"person who feels at ease." The activity which he exercises there provokes inhim a particular experience [effetdesens]which constitutes the emotional stateS1, called "the feeling of being at ease."

3. This experience is a state which (like the state of "believing," for

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example) is capable of feedback on its behavior by optimizing it and hence

producing this "wayof being free" which defines looseness [aisance] n the game

[jeu]. Through the mediation of the emotional state S1, F2 engenders a

supermultiplet F3.

4. It is not astonishing then that this optimized behavior produces a newexperience and a new emotional state S2: the same dictionaries define play[aisance] as "an expansion of joy."

It is by a very complex syntagmatic process: F1 -> F2--

S1 -- F3 -S2 that

man, first caught in systems of constraints, manages finally not only to "feel atease" but to take on this "wayof being free' which guarantees his "expansion."Language is perhaps not entirely, as some thinkers claim, a prison without

escape.

EcoledesHautesEtudes en ScienceSociales

NOTE

1. Translator'snote:The first paragraphs of this section present serious problems for translation.As mentioned in the introduction, "jeu" in French has the following semantic field: game, play,looseness. In order to specify looseness in the game structure without speaking of "lejeu dujeu,"Greimas is obliged to introduce the concept "aisance."Now this last term carrieswith it the notion of

"being at ease," a psychological attitude which he views appropriate to playing a game.

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