General language

General language

Use this category for general terms related to languages.

Contributors in General language

General language

Morris divided semiotics into three branches: syntactics (or syntax), semantics, and pragmatics. Syntactics refers to the study of the structural relations between signs. The interpretation of signs ...

syntagm

Language; General language

A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole (sometimes called a 'chain'). In language, a sentence, for instance, is a syntagm of words. Syntagmatic ...

syntagmatic analysis

Language; General language

Syntagmatic analysis is a structuralist technique which seeks to establish the 'surface structure' of a text and the relationships between its parts. The study of syntagmatic relations reveals the ...

media determinism

Language; General language

What is sometimes called the 'Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics' was founded in the 1960s by Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), who worked in Tartu University, Estonia. Lotman worked within the tradition of ...

text

Language; General language

Most broadly, this term is used to refer to anything which can be 'read' for meaning; to some theorists, 'the world' is 'social text'. Although the term appears to privilege written texts (it seems ...

textual codes

Language; General language

Whilst many semiotic codes are treated by some semioticians as 'textual' codes (reading 'the world' through the metaphor of a 'text'), this can be seen as forming one major group of codes, alongside ...

textual determinism

Language; General language

This is a stance that the form and content of a text determines how it is decoded. Critics of this stance argue that decoders may bring to the text codes of their own which may not match those used ...