Autumnal spring. Semiotic analysis in the context of the developments of the Parisian school. Both verbal and non-verbal exhortations are usually much more complex than we can ascertain in one quick overview. The semiotic ‘instrument’ as developed by the Parisian school is geared towards helping us readers to discover the hidden meaning of expressions and to pursue the levels of meaning of the object, which are not immediately obvious. In this article, which consists of two parts, we will gradually expound (...) and make operational the most important semiotic notions. In this context we will work in such a manner as to also elucidate the developments in semiotics of the Parisian school. In this first part of our article, we will expound the ‘classical’ semiotic approach, and its operational workings in analysis. As object of the analysis we have chosen the discourse ‘Not only the spring is disconsolate’ by pastor Monique de Bree. This discourse is analysed on the discursive level with its syntactic component and its semantic component . After this, the narrative syntax and semantics will be discussed, and finally the syntax and semantics of the level of depth. Characteristic for the initial period of this type of semiotics is that discursiveness was seen especially as a further addition to the deeper levels. The transition of the semiotic narrative level to the discursive level was seen as a concretisation of the elements of the surface and depth levels. In the recent development in Greimassian semiotics however, this classical notion of the generative trajectory is criticised. The discursive level has its own autonomy and semiotics has developed further within this context. These recent developments in semiotic meta-language and making it operational will be the focus of the second article. (shrink)