Marked Signifier is a term that indicates that a signifier or sign vehicle is marked - qualified or modified in some way. Linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson developed the theory of marking. For example, the verbal signifier "cat" in the singular is unmarked, and...
Semiology Glossary
Meaning
Meaning is a term whose multiplicity of meanings is too great to be summarized. However, there is a widespread consensus in semiotics that meaning is not an explanatory term, but one that requires explanation. To understand its meaning, we need to know what signs are...
Mediation
Mediation from Latin mediare, to be in the middle, medius - middle. Mediation is the process of connecting things that would otherwise be unrelated; or the result of such a process. This idea is important for semiotics, as signs perform the function of mediation. When...
Medieval
Belonging to the Middle Ages (the period in Western history from approximately 500 to 1500). Especially during the High (Late) Middle Ages, much attention was paid to logic. The works created as a result of this attention have a direct and still underestimated...
Mentalism
Mentalism comes from the Latin word for mind "mens". Mentalism is the doctrine that meaning is primarily something that the mind transmits through signs and symbols. Usually, the isolated mind is perceived as creating meaning. Unlike the mentalists, most semioticians...
Message
A message is what is transmitted or conveyed in a communicative exchange. The message is one of the six dimensions or components of communication. In each act of communication, one addresser transmits a message to one addressee. A code and channel (or contact) must...
Meta-
Meta- is a prefix meaning beyond or above.
Metalanguage
A metalanguage is a language used to speak about another language. The language spoken about is an object language, while the language that describes, explains, evaluates, etc. the object language is a metalanguage.
Metalingual, Metalinguistic
Metalinguistic is a term often used by Roman Jakobson to identify one of the six communicative functions, namely the function in which communication is directed to a code or a series of codes. As not all communicative exchanges depend on linguistic codes, it may be...
Metanarrative
We call a metanarrative an event or narrative designed to illuminate or even explain another event; an arch over all events or discourse, providing a transparent and extreme perspective. Marxism is sometimes characterized as a theory that offers a metanarrative....
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Co-text
A term sometimes used to denote the verbal or semiotic environment of certain semiotic processes or practices, as opposed to the extraverbal (extrasemiotic) environment of the context. The latter is sometimes called a situational environment. Here is a simple example...
Coupure Epistemologique
Epistemological rupture or change. Sudden, usually unmotivated transition from one problematique (complex of problems) to another. In literary theory and critique, jumping from a psychobiographical approach to a structuralist one would in fact be an epistemological...
Critic
According to Charles S. Peirce, criticism is a branch of logic. Critic (sometimes called critical logic) is a section considered along with many forms of argument. Later, Peirce saw logic as a three-part discipline: Speculative grammar - deals with the processes and...
Critical Commonsensism
Critical commonsensism is a doctrine defended by Charles S. Peirce, mostly in response to Cartesianism. While René Descartes proposed a method of inquiry that began with universal doubt ("Begin to see as absolutely false any belief in which there is a particle of...
Critique
Critique in the broadest sense means "evaluation". This term is often used in a narrower sense, reflecting its use by Karl Marx and subsequent authors who deal with emancipation in one form or another. The influence of Marx and Sigmund Freud on European semiotics is...
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.
