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GLOSSARY
equivalences, parallels, or symmetrical inversions. The patterns
on different levels of a structure (e.g. within a myth) or in different
structures (e.g. in different myths) are seen as logical
transformations of each other. Rules of transformation enable
the analyst to reduce a complex structure to some more basic
constituent units. See also commutation test, isomorphism.
transmission model of communication Everyday references to communication
are based on a ‘transmission’ model in which a
‘sender’ ‘transmits’ a message to a ‘receiver’ – a formula which
reduces meaning to content (delivered like a parcel) and which
tends to support the intentional fallacy. Such models make no
allowance for the importance of either codes or social contexts.
trope Tropes are rhetorical ‘figures of speech’ such as metaphor,
metonymy, synecdoche and irony.
types and tokens See tokens and types.
unarticulated codes Codes without articulation consist of a series
of signs bearing no direct relation to each other. These signs
are not divisible into recurrent compositional elements (e.g. the
folkloristic ‘language of flowers’). See also articulation of
codes.
unlimited semiosis Umberto Eco coined the term ‘unlimited semiosis’
to refer to the way in which, for Peirce (via the
‘interpretant’), for Barthes (via connotation), for Derrida (via
‘freeplay’) and for Lacan (via ‘the sliding signified’), the signified
is endlessly commutable – functioning in its turn as a
signifier for a further signified. See also interpretant, transcendent(al)
signified.
value Saussure distinguished the value of a sign from its signification
or referential meaning. A sign does not have an absolute
value in itself – its value is dependent on its relations with
other signs within the signifying system as a whole. Words in
different languages can have equivalent referential meanings
but different values since they belong to different networks of
associations. See also signification.
Note: A more extensive glossary is available in the online version of
this text, currently at: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/