Ethnographic and semiotic studies have one thing in common: they both share an interest in researching the origin of meaning and how meaning works in human behaviour or in human narration. The aim of this research is to show this connection through the semiotic and ethnographic analysis of metamorphosis. Namely, a collection of 60 haitian folktales, characterised by a metamorphosis in the narrative program, is analysed using Greimas’s veridictory square; then, the results are compared to the ethnographic studies about metamorphosis and to the practice of storytelling in Haitian culture.