Analyzing Structure
• Meaning arises from the differences
between signifiers
• Differences: syntagmatic (positioning) and
paradigmatic (substitution/associative)
• Syntagmatic is horizontal, while
paradigmatic is vertical
• Syntagm: Combination of this and this and
this
• Paradigm: selection of this or this or this
Syntagm and Paradigm
• Syntagm: possibilities of combination
• Paradigm: functional contrasts involving
differentiation
• Syntagm: intratextual and co-present
• Paradigm: intertextual to signifiers absent
from the text
Value of the Signs
• Determined by paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations
• Syantagm and paradigms provide a structural
context within which the signs make sense
• Paradigmatic operation: signifiers or signified
• A paradigm: a set of associated signifiers which
are all members of defining category but in
which each is significantly different.
• Grammatical paradigms: verbs, nouns,
adjectives,
Paradigmatic Relations
• The use of one signifier shapes the
preferred meaning
• Contrastive
• Associative
• Mental association of form (homophones)
• and meaning (synonyms)
• Include visual mode
Syantagm
• Orderly combination of interacting
signifiers which form a meaningful whole
within a text.
• A sentence is a syntagm of words
• Syntagmatic relations:
Conceptual relation
• Expository (topic, introduction, body, paragraph,
conclusion) Masculine
• Masculine: tight, orderly, logical arguments leading to the
main point, defensive, excludes the woman’s way of
knowing
• Say what you are going to say, then say it, then say what
you have already said
• Semiotician: try to find elementary constituent segment
within a text: its syntagm.
• Narrative is based on sequential relation
• Film and TV: causal relationship
• Semioticians: search for grammar leaks, seams, and
scaffolding and for what has been denied, hidden, or
excluded.
• About before and after
Spatial relation
•
-
Syntagmatic and includes:
above/below
In front/behind
Close/distant
Left/right
north/south/west/east
Inside/outside (center/periphery)
Top/bottom
Center/margin
Orientational metaphors are linked to culture.
Sequential significance
• Left hand/right hand visual image: sense
of before and after.
• Left hand/right hand are related to “Given”
and “new”
• Given: already given, a familiar, wellestablished and agreed upon point of
departure, assumed and self-evident.
• New: not yet known, more surprising,
problematic, and contestable.
Compositional axis
• Up: goodness, virtue, happiness, consciousness, health,
life, the future, high status, having control or power, and
rationality.
• Down: badness, depravity, sickness, death, low status,
being subject to control or power, and with emotion.
• Men tend to be located higher than woman in ads
symbolically reflecting the routine subordination of
women to men in society.
• Vertical axis: upper = the ideal, abstract and generalized
possibilities: lower = the real, factual detail, down-toearth
• Upper: what might be, lower: what is (more informative
and practical.
Center VS Margin
•
•
•
•
Center: nucleus information
Margin: ancillary, dependent element
Center=figure, margin = ground
Dominant shape = figure and located
centrally
Sequential relation
• Narrative: left/right spatial structure
• Has beginning and ending
• Narrative syntagm: equilibrium-disruptionequilibrium (beginning, middle, end)
• Causation and goal-turn story
• Give structure, predictability and
coherence.
• To naturalize the content of narrative itself
Structural Reduction
• Stories: the villain, the donor, helper, sought for
person, dispatcher, hero, the false hero.
• A myth: can be reduced to a small number of
simple types.
• Message from our ancestors about humankind
our relationship to nature.
• Myth is a language
• Mythemes: breaking myths into the shortest
possible sentences (morpheme)
• Mythemes: functions
Greimas (Paris School)
• Grammar or narrative: 3 Narrative
syntagms
• Performanciels (task and struggle)
• Contractuel: the establishment or breaking
contract
• Disjonctionel: departure and arrival
Actions and character types: actant