Class assignment (group work, done orally): Read the Example below and develop similar paradigms for some routine (e.g. "food/meals") Combine your paradigms into syntagms. Example Expanding on an example offered by David Lodge, Susan Spiggle explains in more detail how this might apply to a girl wearing a tee-shirt, jeans and sandals: 1. She selects signs from three paradigms (i.e. sets of possible signs - upper body garments, lower body garments, and footwear). Each paradigm contains a possible set of pieces from which she can choose only one. From the upper-body-garment paradigm (including blouses, tee-shirts, tunics, sweaters), she selects one. These items share a similar structure, function, and/or other attribute with others in the set: they are related to one another on the basis of similarity. She further selects items related by similarity from the lower-body-garment and footwear paradigms. A socially defined, shared classification system or code shapes her selections. 2. She combines the selected signs through rules (i.e., tee-shirts go with sandals, not high heels), sending a message through the ensemble - the syntagm. Selection requires her to perceive similarity and opposition among signs within the set (the paradigm), classifying them as items having the same function or structure, only one of which she needs. She can substitute, or select, a blouse for the tee-shirt - conveying a different message. The combination, tee-shirt–jeans–sandals, requires her to know the 'rules by which garments are acceptably combined... The combination... is, in short, a kind of sentence' (Lodge 1977, 74). The tee-shirt–jeans–sandals syntagm conveys a different meaning (sends a different message) at the beach than at a formal occasion. (Spiggle 1998, 159)