The Principal Glossary

This glossary contains the major terms of the course.

Browse the glossary using this index

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S

Signified/Signifier

The signifié (signified) refers to an idea or a concept, and the signifiant (signifier) refers to a form or an acoustic image.

Structuralism

Structuralism is a mode of inquiry that consists in interpreting the phenomena it looks at as made up of relations among the various entities rather than as those entities per se.

Surface Structure

The surface structure (SS) is the syntactic structure of the sentence which a person speaks or hears: it is theobservable form of the sentence.

Synchronic Approach

A synchronic approach to language studies investigates the state of language at a particular phase of its development without allusion to its history. Saussure referred to this state as an état de langue.