69249454-chandler-semiotics

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neutral, normal and natural. See also analogue oppositions,
binary oppositions, deconstruction, paradigm, transcendent(al)
signified.
meaning Osgood and Richards (1923) listed 23 meanings of the
term ‘meaning’. The key distinction in relation to models of
the sign is between: (a) sense – referred to by various theorists
simply as ‘meaning’, or as conceptual meaning (e.g.
linguistic meaning), content, designation, signatum, significatum,
signified, signification, interpretant, idea or thought;
and (b) reference to something beyond the sign-system (e.g.
extralinguistic) – what is ‘represented’, variously termed denotation,
denotatum, designatum, object, reference, referent,
or simply ‘thing’.
medium The term ‘medium’ is used in a variety of ways by different
theorists, and may include such broad categories as speech and
writing, or print and broadcasting or relate to specific technical
forms within the media of mass communication or the
media of interpersonal communication. Signs and codes are
always anchored in the material form of a medium – each of
which has its own constraints and affordances. A medium is
typically treated instrumentally as a transparent vehicle of
representation by readers of texts composed within it, but the
medium used may itself contribute to meaning. See also
channel, sign vehicle.
message This term variously refers either to a text or to the meaning
of a text – referents which literalists tend to conflate. See also
text.
metalingual function See functions of signs.
metaphor Metaphor expresses the unfamiliar (known in literary
jargon as the ‘tenor’) in terms of the familiar (the ‘vehicle’).
In semiotic terms, a metaphor involves one signified acting as
a signifier referring to a rather different signified. Since
metaphors apparently disregard literal or denotative resemblance
they can be seen as symbolic as well as iconic. See also
irony, metonymy, synecdoche, trope.
metonymy A metonym is a figure of speech that involves using one
signified to stand for another signified which is directly related