1.

actant: Particularly associated with Greimas, the actant is a function of a text which is a participant of actions. Propp and other formalists and structuralists see character roles as essential and universal.

arbitrary: Linguistic forms, according to Saussure, lack physical correspondence with the world of ‘things’.

code: A systematic set of rules which assigns meanings to signs. A code is a symbolic system. For Barthes, it is part of our competence in drawing on certain frames of reference.

conventional: Again, according to Saussure, language is not only arbitrary but ‘conventional’. Meaning is tacitly agreed upon by members of the linguistic community.

diachronic: Diachronic linguistics is a historical perspective on language activity. Whereas synchronic linguistics is the study of language as it functions at a particular time, diachronic linguistics traces the history and development of elements.

grammar: In terms of structuralist methodology, a grammar is a systematic classification of linguistic structure. It is theoretical and descriptive.

hermeneutic: The theory of the interpretation of texts.

homology: Correspondence between two or more structures.

index: According to Peirce an index is a natural sign. For example one might say that heavy nimbus clouds are an index of rain. This relation is opposed to the arbitrary relation which exists in language between words and ‘things’.

langue: Languages in particular. The langue is the underlying system which makes meaning possible.

mytheme: Analogous to the phoneme, the mytheme, according to Lévi-Strauss, is the smallest unit of signification in myths.

paradigmatic: Paradigmatic, or associative relations are those relations functioning on the vertical axis of language. Words (or signs) combine in sequences (syntagmatic relations), but each can be substituted for other items of the same paradigm.

parole: A linguistic element realised. An utterance or token of language.

phoneme: The minimal unit in the sound system of a language.

referent: The question of reference is that of the relation between words and the world. The referent is the ‘last’ element in the process of signification. The word cat signifies a concept and ultimately can refer to a specific ‘cat’.

sign: The linguistic sign unites the signifier and the signified in the triad of signification.

structure: A structure is a self-contained system in which individual elements are transformed into essential elements.

subject: The subject of a sentence can be grammatical (‘Jane broke the window’) or thematic (‘He hit me’). Here we refer only to these aspects of the term ‘subject’. In other chapters the term’s complexities are discussed.

symbol: Peirce distinguished between icon, index and symbol. The symbol is an arbitrary element of signification, such as traffic lights and, of course, language itself.

synchronic: A synchronic description of language, according to Saussure, is a description of the language as it functions at a particular time. Synchronic descriptions of elements do not take into account historical change, but rather concentrate on the meaning they have for speakers at a particular

moment.

syntagm: A syntagm is a string of constituents (often in linear order). A sentence, being a string of grammatical elements, is a syntagm. A text can also be thought of as a syntagm, as can different narrative or thematic strands within it.

transformation: In structuralist methodologies, a transformation results when one element is realised into a more essential element. For example, in Propp’s analysis of folk-tales, the individual characters are transformed into actants and spheres of action within the folk-tale ‘system’.

2.

aesthetic: Originating in the nineteenth century, it came to mean ‘to do with taste and perception’ and is closely linked with the visual arts. Aesthetics is now held to be the investigation into the nature of beauty.

anecdote: A short narrative of a minor or private incident.

a priori: Latin – ‘from what comes before’. Now tends to be used to suggest knowledge independent of experience.

a posteriori: Latin – ‘from what comes after’. The move to ascertain causes from

unknown effects.

base: Essentially the economic base which underwrites cultural and social institutions. chronology: A chronicle is a bare recording of events. A chronology is the sequencing of events.

circulation: A term used particularly in New Historicism describing the interrelationship between, for instance, literary and non-literary discourses.

context: Historical context is traditionally seen as a background of events. Context (con = ‘with’) suggests something that accompanies a text. Modern historicists have tried to break down the barrier between historical context and text.

contingent: Dependent upon something else; not certain to happen.

determinism: A word with a number of different meanings, but most often used in connexion with the pre-existence or pre-determination of events and things. Determinism is sometimes opposed to free will.

dialectical: dialectic is the art of formal reasoning. Dialectical is the Marxist interpretation of the interplay and relationship between opposing forces.

ethnography: The scientific description of races.

fact (of history): An historical fact not seen in terms of a larger narrative (see Carr 1961).

formalism: A critical theory and practice where form and structure are seen as the fundamental elements for aesthetic consideration. Content is subordinated to form.

hermeneutics: Essentially, the theory of interpretation. The hermeneutic circle can be seen in relation to historical discourse: we cannot understand the parts of history without an idea of the whole, and we cannot understand the whole without a knowledge of the parts. This can be applied to the reading

process.

heterogeneous: Composed of parts of different kinds.

history: ‘A systematic account of the origin and progress of the world’. (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary)

homogeneous: Of one and the same kind.

humanism: A system which puts human interests above all else. Sometimes used synonymously for atheism.

ideology: ‘Abstract speculation’ (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary). See the definitions by Raymond Williams on pages 127–8 and in Keywords (Williams

1976).

materialism: Often opposed to the aesthetic materialism relates to the economic base. Economic activity is primary activity. Philosophical materialism views all that exists as material or dependent upon matter for existence. Marx’s dialectical materialism is opposed to monologic idealisms such as formal religions. These systems have ‘one voice’ (a monologic God) and are idealist in that they are ostensibly only concerned with spiritual experience.

mimetic: That which attempts to describe external reality.

objective: Belonging to that which is presented to the conscious mind. Also that which is observably verifiable.

ontology: The science and study of the essence of things.

proletarian: [Marx] The wage-earning class, without capital.

realism: David Lodge defines realism in the following manner: ‘the representation of experience in a manner which approximates closely to descriptions of similar experience in non-literary texts of the same culture’ (1977: 325).

superstructure: The prefix super means ‘above’. This term is generally used with reference to cultural institutions and artefacts as well as all kinds of social phenomena, which are seen as ‘above’ the economic base but dependent upon it.

teleology: From the Greek telos, ‘end or purpose’, and logos, ‘discourse’. Doctrine of final causes or interpretation of ends and purposes.

thick description: A method of historical description employed by certain New Historicists whereby an anecdote is ‘read against’ the orthodox history to reveal the codes of a given culture

3.

condensation: (Freud) In dreams, a multiple or compound image.

le corps morcelé: (Lacan) Translates as ‘the fragmented body’, and refers to a common obsessional fear of losing coherence and self-identity, which is represented in the imagination as a disintegration or chopping-up of the body.

Desire: (Lacan) Produced by the gap between a fundamental need and the inability of language to articulate a demand to see the need is met. Desire is effected by the transition from the Imaginary into the Symbolic: it is the mark of the failure of language and of the loss of the undifferentiated pre Symbolic state of the infant.

displacement: (Freud) In dreams, it is a method of disguise, analogous to the operation of metaphor, where something comes to stand for another, entirely unrelated object, person or emotion.

dream work: (Freud) The transformation of repressed or taboo thoughts into the manifest elements that the dreamer remembers.

ego: (Freud) A controlling or pacifying function of the id, a mediator between what is acceptable and unacceptable.

id: (Freud) The instinctual drives of the body.

Imaginary: (Lacan) The pre-Symbolic state, dominated by a non-differentiation of the subject from the world. It is a dimension of unconscious and conscious images, experienced or fantasised, which cannot be told apart.

jouissance: (Lacan) Orgasmic or supreme joy. It has a transgressive aspect: it defies representation in the Symbolic and is, for that reason, associated with the feminine.

latent: (Freud) The repressed material to which there is no access, except in the modified form of the manifest; the latent material is the stimulus of the dream.

manifest: (Freud) The translated form of the latent traumas, a selective and coded appearance of repressed material that can be accessed by the subject.

Mirror Stage: (Lacan) The transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, the acquisition of subjectivity, language and awareness of differentiation.

Name of the Father (nom du père): (Lacan) The third term or figure of law that is a feature of the Symbolic. It is a repressive figure, but also a guarantor of meaning, and therefore of normality or sanity.

Oedipus complex: (Freud) The normalising description of process of a subject taking up a sexualised identity, by transferring affections from the mother on to non-family members of the opposite sex.

Other: (Lacan) The realm of femininity, the realm outside the Symbolic, the unrepresentable and therefore associated with the unconscious.

other (objet petit a): (Lacan) The object, the version of itself that is received back by the subject from others, the marker in the Symbolic realm of the relationship between subject and object. (The petit a, or ‘little a’ refers to the French word for other, autre – the English equivalent would be ‘little o’, but Lacan insists that the term should not be translated.)

parapraxes: (Freud) Evidence or symptoms of the unconscious – slips of the tongue, nervous tics, patterns of forgetting or repeating, obsessions, etc.

point de capiton: (Lacan) A point of temporary fixity of meaning.

phallus: The transcendental signifier, the marker of gendered difference, a symbol of power and authenticity.

repression: The disappearence of a memory into the unconscious.

secondary revision: (Freud) The re-translation of a dream by the dreamer once she or he is awake.

super-ego: (Freud) The representative of external forces, of paternalistic controls and norms, which imprints itself on the ego.

Symbolic: (Lacan) The realm of language and representation.

transference: This characterises the relationship between the analyst and analysand.

unconscious: Probably Freud’s single most important discovery, it is the result of the negative constitution of the conscious mind (through repression and denial). All that is negated takes up a parallel existence in the unconscious, which operates according to an entirely different logic and mode of representation to the conscious mind.