* based on The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, Second Edition (2012)

General Keywords List

This page contains keywords from the book: key concepts, unfamiliar terms, and sometimes key phrases directly cited from the book (page numbers are given for directly quoted phrases).  Students should select a term from here for incorporation into the Moodle glossary assignments.

Chapter 1, Why Theory?

• theory (as abstraction)
• opinion
• theory (as toolbox)
• natural (as in “natural fact”)
• “Thinking begins in provocation” (p. 8)
• deconstruct

Chapter 2, Authori/ity

• author
• canonicity
• the Puritans
• author-function
• “the death of the author” (p. 18)
• discourse

Chapter 3, Reading

• reading
• reader
• “the material relations of power that influence the production of meaning” (p. 23)
• context
• “All meaning is contextual because languages are social rather than natural phenomena” (p. 24)
• signifier
• signified
• arbitrary
• referent
• Saussure, Ferdinand de
• metaphor
• metonymy

Chapter 4, Subjectivity

• subjective
• objective
• “subjectivity”
• “subject”
• institution
• “who you are is dependent on recognition of your identity by others” (p. 43)
• Althusser, Louis
• interpellation
• “no meaning or reading can take place outside of a cultural or historical context” (p. 48)