What exactly does the “Semiological Approach” have to offer? The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough understanding of the Semiological Approach (Cuxac 1999, 2000; Garcia & Sallandre 2020), an innovative theoretical framework for describing sign languages (SL), and to situate this approach within the recent SL linguistic field (e.g., Volterra et al. 2022; Hodge & Ferrara 2022). First, we will describe the epistemological foundations of this approach, emphasizing in particular the original work of deconstruction of the so-called "dogma of Saussurean arbitrariness" carried out by Cuxac in the 1990s. Moreover, the Semiological approach has been developed from a detailed analysis of discursive corpora in French Sign Language (LSF), in various genres, from a functional and enunciative perspective. We will therefore specify the meaning and the essential contribution of the concept of "enunciation" and will highlight its direct link with the linguistic functions of the gaze in LSF. An essential function of the gaze is to indicate the semiotic intent of the signer: intent to "say while showing" (gaze cut off from that of the addressee) or only to "say" (gaze towards the addressee). We will show that a fine understanding of the function of the gaze, as well as other non-manual components, requires the consideration of a wider discourse context. In addition, on the basis of qualitative data (namely a cross-SL corpus), we will show the typological scope of the Semiological Approach and we will argue that this model, called "semiological" because it requires a prior semiological analysis of modality for any spoken or signed language, allows a linguistic analysis of SL. Next, we will show in a LSF corpus with four discourse genres (narrative, argumentative, explanatory and spontaneous), how, according to the gaze patterns, discourse moves back and forth between the main types of structures and interweaves them to develop highly complex but particularly economical constructions. We will then detail the transfer structures in relation to the other type of SL structures, the standard structures, which mainly mobilize lexical and pointing units. The transfer structures, which result from a structuring of imagistic iconicity, are of three main types: size and shape transfers, situational transfers (often considered as close to classifiers constructions/depicting signs) and personal transfers (which have been compared to "role shifts"/"constructed actions" and "constructed dialogues"). Then we will emphasize on a key point: transfer structures can not only be combined simultaneously with each other (e.g. double transfer, semi-transfer, etc.) but also with other types of units. This results in highly compositional structures that incorporate lexical units, as well as deictic units and gestures (e.g. in reported speech). Finally, qualitative and quantitative data on four discourse genres in LSF will demonstrate the distribution of these types of structures depending on genres (Sallandre et al 2019). References Cuxac, C. (1999). The expression of spatial relations and the spatialization of semantic relations in french sign language. in Language Diversity and Cognitive Representations, eds C. Fuchs and S. Robert, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), 123–142. doi: 10.1075/hcp.3.11cux Cuxac, C. (2000). La Langue des Signes Française (LSF). Les voies de l’iconicité. Paris: Ophrys. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03450871v1 Garcia, B. and Sallandre, M.-A. (2020). Contribution of the Semiological Approach to Deixis–Anaphora in Sign Language:The Key Role of Eye-Gaze. Front. Psychol. 11:583763. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.583763 Hodge, G. & L. Ferrara. (2022). Iconicity as multimodal, polysemiotic, and plurifunctional. Frontiers in Psychology, 13:808896. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.808896 Sallandre, M.-A., Balvet, A., Besnard, G. Garcia, B. (2019). Étude exploratoire de la fréquence des catégories linguistiques dans quatre genres discursifs en LSF. Lidil 60. https://doi.org/10.4000/lidil.7136 Volterra et al. (2022). Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective Implications for a general language theory. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/gs.9