Tagmemics
Richard Young, A. L. Becker and Kenneth L. Pike, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (New York: Harcourt,
1970)1
[Tagmeme, from Gk. tagma ”a rank, arrangement” f. tassein “arrange,” from PIE base *tag- “to set aright”; +
-eme, by association with phoneme, “a sound” — vs phonetic, “spoken”2]
. . . explores unknown knowns (e.g., new words) by moving from what we know to what we
don’t — or from less to more complex [phone (voice)/phonetic (as spoken)  phoneme
(sound)/phonemic (as a sound); tagmeme  contextually conditioned synonyms; etic 
emic]
A tagmeme is a composite of form and meaning, a “unit-in-context.”
It can be described in terms of four features or “cells”: its
1. slot (where it can appear [undulate; syntagmatic]),
2. class (what type of unit it is [particular; paradigmatic]),
3. role (how it functions [behavioural; pragmatic]), and
4. cohesion (how it relates to other units [field-like; contextual]).
According to the tagmemic discovery matrix, any unit of experience is viewable in three
ways — via its contrastive features, range of variation or distribution — and three forms
— as static (punctual; as an item), dynamic (linear; with nuclei + margins) or relational
(spatial; in a system or network) . . .
CONTRAST
what is different about it
VARIATION
how it might vary yet remain
what it is
DISTRIBUTION
how it fits with its context
Particle []
1. as an entity
4. as an instance
7. as an element in a context
[synchronic]
Wave [t]
2. as an event
5. as a dynamic process
8. as a state of a dynamic
process [diachronic]
Field []
3. as a system
6. as a system relative to
other systems
9. as a system within a
larger system [ecological]
static, in-itself
dynamic, as a process
relational, as a whole
Cf. the six maxims of tagmemics:
1. People conceive the world in terms of repeatable units.
Kenneth Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 3 vols
(1954–1960).
2 In Language (New York: Holt, 1933), Leonard Bloomfield coined the word “tagmemes” for “the smallest
meaningful units of grammatical form” (166). In “Taxemes and Immediate Constituents” (Language 19
[1943]: 65-82), Kenneth Pike redefined this word:
1
TAXEME: a complex, composite, or simple feature of meaningful or meaningless grammatical
arrangement, of the basic type of selection, order, modulation, or phonetic modification. E.g. the facts
of selection of the male personal noun duke.
TAGMEME: a composite view of basic composite taxemes of a linguistic form, at any one specific
layer of structure. E.g. the total arrangement features of the form duchess considered as a single
entity.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Units of experience are hierarchically structured systems.
A unit can be adequately understood only if three aspects of the unit are known: (a) its contrast
with other units, (b) its range of variation, and (c) its distribution in larger contexts.
A unit of experience can be viewed as a particle, wave or field.
Change between units can occur only over a bridge of shared features.
Linguistic choices are made in relation to a universe of discourse.
Thus, tagmemics is
1. world-ordering (taxonomic)
2. world-discovering (heuristic)
3. world-fashioning (managerial [pragmatic?])
4. world-founding (epistemic).
ETICITY: surface/reality-as-appearance, distance, outsideness/objectivity. Etic inquiry
typically yields particles whose wave and/or field relationships to other particles
(situatedness) are unthought or unclear.
EMICITY: depth (or complexity)/reality-as-experience, nearness,
insideness/subjectivity. Emic inquiry is etic inquiry informed by a more thoughtthrough or clearer account of particles within their wave and field relationships.
E.g. “aid” and “assist” are etically different (different when taken separately—or in
form) but emically the same (the same in context—or in content).
We are both inside and outside of the worlds we inhabit, i.e., we are emic and etic to
ourselves and to other selves — and, presumably, perceptible as particles, waves and
fields.
The process of invention — of an argument or idea — goes through four phases:
1.
2.
3.
4.
preparation
incubation
illumination
verification
heuristical clarification of a problem (a felt dissonance) [analysis]
creative exploration of the problem thus clarified [poesis]
awaiting a “leap” to imaginative insight [hypothesis]
testing it for correspondence, consistency and viability [logos]
preparation
incubation
illumination
verification
analysis via
heuristics
creative exploration
or poiesis
the leap to insight
or hypothesis
logos or testing its
logic