Semiology Glossary

A predicative for an infinite number of individual entities. For example, people. Since the times of Plato the term was an arena for numerous conflicts. See: General Nominalism Realism

Unmotivated

Synonym of relative; meaning such that misses internal connection or natural fundament. According to Ferdinand de Saussure and a number of other semioticians, influenced by him, the sign exists on the basis of an arbitrary connection between, for example, sound and...

Usage/use

Refers to the manner in which language (specifically) is used. Ludwig Wittgenstein in his late works shares the statement "In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use". Only (or mainly) by learning how words and expressions are used, can we know what they actually...

Utterer

Uterrer is a term, used by Charles Sanders Peirce and other semioticians. The term is used to signify the manufcaturer of signs (for example, diagram, text, discourse. That way, the uterrer shouldn't be considered just as the one who is speaking but in a much broader...

Value

It is most common meaning value stands for something and its price. Yet in Saussurian linguistics value (valeur) stands for something a lot different, and, frankly, hard to understand. As Saussure has put a lot of effort, into trying to make a comparison between...

Verbal

Derived from latin "verbum" which means "word", verbal refers to or consist of words. For example, verbal communication, which is the act of communicating with words. Verbal communication is the opposite of non-verbal communication, which we often refer as body...

Verbicide

Verbicide stands for the act of "murdering a word". Sometimes we are using words carelessly and lightly, that they might loose their true meaning. For example, the word "awful" is actually dead. Nowadays, we can't use it to describe something suggests awe, as it...

Verbum mentis

Verbum mentis is, of course, a Latin expression. It stands for a mental or internal word. In the middle ages, people believed that prior to and regardless of their public (social) meaning, words exist in our minds. Thus - mental (internal) words. The mental words are...

Verifiability

From the Latin veritas - truth, verifiability is a term that stands for the ability of a message to be verified (proven to be true). Verifiability was a keyword for the positivists. They've tried to use verifiability as a criteria to distinguish significant from...

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Iconicity

Iconicity refers to an object that has the status or qualities of an iconic sign; performing the function or playing the role of an iconic sign (a sign that represents its object by a resemblance to that object).

Id

Id is the Latin word for it. The word is used in psychoanalytic theory to denote a broad, impersonal realm of the soul beneath the ego (I) and the superego (Superego). Id is the locus of our impulses and the source of libido. Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud had a profound...

Ideological Superstructure

Ideological Superstructure is a term inspired by Karl Marx to denote the discursive practices (theology, philosophy, literature, etc.) that arose and were maintained through the economic base. Different disciplines and discursive practices grow and stabilize from an...

Ideology

In Marxist discourse, "ideology" is a term usually meaning "wrong consciousness," or more generally, a system of ideas in the service of a group. In this sense, we could speak (as Marx does) of a revolutionary ideology, that is, of a system of ideas in the service of...

Idiolect