Space and experience in immigrant restaurants

Abstract

The present paper aims to discuss some relations between space and subjects from a few possibilities provided by the new immigrant restaurants in São Paulo. The first point to be developed concerns how the space of the restaurant is an object of constructed value and not a naturally ascribed meaning, like a spontaneous character. The second, how the space of the immigrant restau- rant can hold different experiences for distinct subjects through their basic thematic roles. Both points are developed from Greimasian semiotics and the socio-semiotics developed by Eric Landowski. Thus, we will see how alterity, in its creation of its own spaces, contributes to the elaboration of new mean- ings and new senses revived by immigrants and experienced by Brazilians.