One speaks about lexical field to indicate a theoretical whole of words belonging to the same category syntactic and bound by their field of direction.

For example, the lexical field of the word Arbre is the whole of the words being referred to it: Forest, clearing, connects, Feuille, pine, Chêne, saw, logger …

Virtually, the lexical field is limited only by the absence of correlation Sémantique, i.e. the absence of direction between two words and more precisely the absence of a “generic” term commun run with the various elements of the lexical field. Thus, the word surgery does not have a common semantic element with the element concrete , whereas automobile , truck , or drag have in common the hypéronyme means of transport.

Theoretical use

Graphic lexical field

The concept of lexical field can be wide with graphic arts, like the Peinture, the Photographie or the Cinéma. Indeed, in the composition, the artist chooses to integrate such or such element, and the elements can be dependant between them by a common element. The most obvious case is that where the names of the objects belong to a lexical field in a strict sense, but that also utilized of the elements of composition, of setting in scene.

For example, for photography, the choice a shutter speed slow can create trails showing the movement; in the provision of the objects and characters, a diagonal on the basis of the corner in top on the left and going towards the corner in bottom on the right evokes a descent (for the reading of the Roman writings, the eye is exerted to from left to right sweep the image and from top to bottom). The diagonal provision and the shutter speed slow can thus be regarded as belonging to the same lexical field, that of the movement, and can be associated with the subjects and objects in them-even (vehicle, character in sport clothing…) or with the sound accompanying work (band of a film, sound environment of a static work).

One of the academic cases is the film Snake Eyes of Brian de Palma: the title of the film (“eyes of the snake”), elements of decorations (drawing of an eye in the decorations, television cameras, of monitoring), manner of filming certain scenes (subjective Camera, Sequence shot), springs dramatic (breaking of Glasses, testimonys of the scene), the assembly of the film (presentations from the points of view on the same scene of various characters)… any contest to evoke the topic of the glance.

External bond

• lexical fields (Magister site)

• semantic Atlas (CNRS), geometrical representation of the semantic value of the words of the languages English and French.