Avere presa, dare presa

This essay takes place within a wider project that aims at constructing a general theory of interaction considered as meaning construction process. If, as semioticians, we had to account only for interactions among subjects, narrative grammar, and especially the syntax of manipulation, might be regarded as providing sufficient tools. But such a modellization does not properly allow to account for the meaningful dimension of the relations that link us to the objects as material elements we deal with in daily practices, particularly when they serve as tools or machines we use in order to transform or produce other objects. Another syntax, regarding operation, seems to be required at this level. The central part of the article is devoted to its construction. However, rather than two radically separated schemes, manipulation and operation appear as relying, at a deeper level, on a common basis: whatever the form of interaction, be it intersubjective, interobjective, or between a subject and an object, it always presupposes that within any pair of elements involved, not only each one should somehow have a hold upon the other, but at the same time that it should afford the other with some kind of grasp (prise) upon itself. The construction of that notion, “grasp”, hypothetically a key element for a unified theory of meaning production through lived praxis, is the principal object of the present essay.