General language

General language

Use this category for general terms related to languages.

Contributors in General language

General language

Synchronic analysis studies a phenomenon (such as a code) as if it were frozen at one moment in time. Structuralist semiotics focuses on synchronic rather than diachronic analysis and is criticised ...

Essentialism

Language; General language

Essentialists argue that certain signifieds are distinct, autonomous entities which have an objective existence and essential properties and which are definable in terms of some kind of absolute, ...

Firstness, secondness and thirdness

Language; General language

Within his triadic model of the sign, Peirce referred to the sign as an instance of 'Firstness', its object as an instance of 'Secondness' and the interpretant as an instance of 'Thirdness'

Filmic codes

Language; General language

Cinematic and televisual codes include: genre; camerawork (shot size, focus, lens movement, camera movement, angle, lens choice, composition); editing (cuts and fades, cutting rate and rhythm); ...

First articulation

Language; General language

At the (higher) structural level of first articulation a semiotic system consists of the smallest meaningful units available (e.g. morphemes or words in a language).

Materialism

Language; General language

Materialism is an anti-idealist and anti-essentialist position which criticises essentialist abstraction and reification and the formalist reduction of substance to forms and relations. It is ...

Logocentrism

Language; General language

Derrida used this term to refer to the 'metaphysics of presence' in Western culture - in particular its phonocentrism, and its foundation on a mythical 'transcendent signified'. Logocentrism can also ...