Semiology Glossary
Fetish, Fetishizing
The most common understanding of the word Fetish is related to people's sexual desires and peculiarities. This meaning we owe to nonother but Sigmund Freud. While studying human sexuality, Freud found out that there are people that can only be aroused by specific...
Sign System
Sign system is a key concept in semiotics. It is used to refer to any system of signs and relations between signs. For example, the term language is frequently used as a synonym of a sign system. But, as the term language carries certain connotations of human...
Abduction
A term used by Charles Peirce to denote the process of inquiry in which a hypothesis is formed or generated; The result of such a process - the conclusion reached or the assumed guess, respectively, is called retroduction and hypothesis. The word "abduction" has more...
Abject
A term used by Julia Kristeva to mean something that confuses violates or undermines some established order or stable position. It has this effect because it is in the middle of what we normally consider to be absolute oppositions (eg life/death, human/machine). Many...
Abridgment
Reducing or shortening a word or phrase, such as shortening of "Metropolitan" to "Metro". Abridgment affects signifiers, not words (ie nonverbal or linguistic signifiers). The slightest nod from a person's repertoire of nonverbal communication gestures can replace the...
Abstraction
The process by which certain features of a phenomenon or reality are chosen for consideration and others are downplayed; the product obtained by such a process is ens rationis, a state of mind; his being is available only in thought. If we focus on human beings only...
Actant
A term proposed by A.J. Greimas and accepted by narratologists to indicate the most essential categories of the development of the plot. From the beginning, Greimas suggested having three such categories, each in binary opposition: Subject/object; Sender/recipient;...
Actantial Analysis
Actantial Analysis is the analysis of the narrative in terms of actants, abstract functions, located at the level of the deep structure. For narratologists such as Roland Barthes and A.J. Greimas narrative discourse has both a superficial and a deep structure. What...
Acteme
A term proposed by Kenneth L. Pike to denote the most basic units of communicative behavior, whether verbal or nonverbal. What is the phoneme for linguistic research as a system of aural signs is the same acteme for the study of communications as a behavioral system....
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Intersemiotic
Intersemiotic is what happens between two different sign systems. By comparison, intrasemiotics occur within the same sign system.
Signum ad placitum
Signum ad placitum is Latin for conventional signs. Related: Signum
Syntagmatic vs. Paradigmatic
For more information on the opposition syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic, please check associative, and axis. Related: Syntagm
Interpretation
The process of understanding and interpreting a message. Related: Interpretant Interpreter
Unconscious
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is easily one of the most influential people of the XX century. Although lots of his ideas have been denied in the years after his death, as being pseudo-scientific, Freud has surely shaped the way, we people think of ourselves. One of his...
Free Course in Semiology
A completely and truly free course on Semiology (Semiotics). Learn about the meaning of signs, how and why did the field emerged. What is the relationship between the street signs and the signs that we use every day - words.
