paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Etymology
''Paradigm'' comes f ...
s embedded in the text rather than of the surface structure (
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
) of the text which is termed
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 t ...
. Paradigmatic analysis often uses commutation tests, i.e. analysis by substituting words of the same type or class to calibrate shifts in
connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive o ...
.
Definition of terms
In
Semiotic literary criticism
Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics. Semiotics, tied closely to the structuralism pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, was extremely influent ...
, a syntagm (or syntagma) is a building block of a text into which meaning is
encoded
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...
by the writer and decoded by the reader, recalling past experience and placing the message in its appropriate
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
context. Individual syntagms can be arranged together to form more complex syntagms: groups of sounds (and the letters to represent them) form words, groups of words form sentences, sentences form narratives, and so on. A list of syntagms of the same type is called a ''paradigm''. So, in English, the
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
is the paradigm from which the syntagms of words are formed. The set of words collected together in a
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
becomes the paradigm from which sentences etc. are formed. Hence, paradigmatic analysis is a method for exploring a syntagm by identifying its constituent paradigm, studying the individual paradigmatic elements, and then reconstructing the process by which the syntagm takes on meaning.
The importance of paradigmatic relationships and paradigmatic analysis includes contrasting and comparing each of the meanings present in each text in which similar circumstances will be chosen. This helps to define value in the text. The importance of relations of paradigmatic opposition is to help generate an order of dynamic complexity of experience in the past. People have believed in binary opposition since at least classical times: e.g. in Aristotle's physics of four elements earth, air, fire and water, the relations among these are all binary oppositions that are believed to make up the world.from http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem05.html
Jakobson and Ritchie
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,model on the functions of language has two levels of description:
*the various component elements forming language, and
*what humans do with the language when they use it.
In the first place, every language has a vocabulary and a syntax. Its elements are words with fixed
denotative
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English language, English word "warm" denotes the Property_(philosophy), property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of ...
meanings. Out of these one can construct, according to the rules of the syntax, composite symbols with resultant new meanings. Secondly, in a language, some words are equivalent to whole combinations of other words, so that most meanings can be expressed in several different ways. Studies of human perception show that to some extent, what people perceive depends on what they expect to perceive. L. David Ritchie proposes that communication creates relationships between what is perceived or known by one person and what is perceived or known by others; the form of the communication will be determined in part by whether there are pre-existing relationships between the communicator and the
audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...
. The receiver and originator of a message must work from some common understanding of what sorts of patterns are used to communicate and how these patterns are related to other events. Communication has to do with community both in the sense that it relies on having something in common in the first place and in the sense that it can influence what the communicants subsequently have in common.
Applied to music
In music, paradigmatic analysis was a method of musical analysis developed by
Nicolas Ruwet Nicolas Ruwet (December 31, 1932 – November 15, 2001) was a linguist, literary critic and musical analyst. He was involved with the development of generative grammar.
during the 1960s but later named by others. It is "based on the concept of ' equivalence'. Ruwet argued that the most striking characteristic of musical syntax was the central role of ''
repetition
Repetition may refer to:
* Repetition (rhetorical device), repeating a word within a short space of words
*Repetition (bodybuilding), a single cycle of lifting and lowering a weight in strength training
*Working title for the 1985 slasher film '' ...
'' – and, by extension, of varied repetition or ''
transformation
Transformation may refer to:
Science and mathematics
In biology and medicine
* Metamorphosis, the biological process of changing physical form after birth or hatching
* Malignant transformation, the process of cells becoming cancerous
* Trans ...
'' (Ruwet 1987)" (Middleton 1990/2002, p. 183).
Paradigmatic analysis assumes that
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,