Figurae

Article summary

Figurae (singular, figura) are the non-signifying constituents of signifiers (signs). For example, letters of the alphabet are the figurae that comprise a written word (signifier). In the semiotic language of Louis Hjelmslev, the coiner of this term, figurae serve only to distinguish elements (e.g. words) of the expression plane from each other, independently from the content plane. That is, the letter B, in the written word expression "bat", distinguishes "bat" from the word "sat", but neither B nor S bears meaning on its own. On the other hand, the constituents "foot" and "ball" both bear their own individual meanings, such that in the word "football", they cannot be considered figurae, although their individual letters can. Hjelmslev states that in a given language a "legion of signs" can be constructed with a "handful of figurae" through ever new arrangements of them. Linguists often use the terms phonemes and morphemes to refer, respectively, to the figurae and the signifiers of human languages. The division of the stream of speech into meaningful morphemes plus their further subdivision into meaningless elements is known as the double articulation. This duality of patterning of language is one of the few facts of language which most schools of linguistics can agree on.…

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