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Concept
Syntagmatic analysis
Summary
In semiotics, syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure (syntagmatic structure) as opposed to paradigms (paradigmatic analysis). This is often achieved using commutation tests.
"Syntagmatic" means that one element selects the other element either to precede it or to follow it. For example, the definitive article "the" selects a noun and not a verb.
Of particular use in semiotic study, a syntagm is a chain which leads, through syntagmatic analysis, to an understanding of how a sequence of events forms a narrative. Alternatively, syntagmatic analysis can describe the spatial relationship of a visual text such as posters, photographs or a particular setting of a filmed scene.
Roland Barthes was able to use metaphor in the form of various garments in order to display how the syntagm/paradigm relationship worked together to at once create and change meaning. Expanding on this form of explanation by Barthes, both David Lodge and Susan Spiggle have further developed the metaphor, using specific wearable items. Shirt, shorts and sandals for example, are freely interchangeable along the plane of tops, bottoms and footwear, the paradigmatic plane, assuming they follow the rules of wearable items, the syntagmatic plane. While you can change the sandals for high heels, it would be breaking the rules to wear them as a top.
Due to the abstract nature of the signifier/signified relationship, a free-standing signifier is unable to convey knowledge or understanding by itself. After all, the only reason any word means what it means at all is due to a consensus of understanding by the wider community. Expanding on Saussure's own example of the arbitrariness of the word "tree", or any word for that matter, it can be seen that the word "tree" by itself could mean just about any upright bit of wood with branches, whether it grows leaves or provides a place to hang cups or hats. Meaning is therefore provided by an extended syntagmatic chain, which will identify for the reader of the text just what sort of tree is meant.
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Related concepts (6)
Syntagmatic analysis
In semiotics, syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure (syntagmatic structure) as opposed to paradigms (paradigmatic analysis). This is often achieved using commutation tests. "Syntagmatic" means that one element selects the other element either to precede it or to follow it. For example, the definitive article "the" selects a noun and not a verb. Of particular use in semiotic study, a syntagm is a chain which leads, through syntagmatic analysis, to an understanding of how a sequence of events forms a narrative.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The modern-day scientific study of linguistics takes all aspects of language into account — i.e., the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural. Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as descriptive study of language, and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning, which entails the study of specific languages.
Course in General Linguistics
Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale) is a book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes on lectures given by historical-comparative linguist Ferdinand de Saussure at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. It was published in 1916, after Saussure's death, and is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that was established in the first half of the 20th century by the Prague linguistic circle.