Syntagmatic stucture (structure of syntax) is "the mode of time-awareness which listeners are placed" such as 'narrative', 'epic', or 'lyrical'. Narrative structures feature a realistic temporal flow guided by tension and relaxation, privelege difference, and "as diagesis, songs speak to or address us by organizing a particular stretch of time into a conscious experience, and an experience of consciousness" (Cubitt 1984, p.216). Epic structures tend to the opposite, privileging repetition, creating a mythic state of recurrence, and "emptying out" the subject (ibid, p.216-17). Lyrical structures lie in between and feature symmetrical open/closed and binary forms. (Middleton 1990, p.251 and 217)
The syntagmatic analysis of a text (whether it is verbal or non-verbal) involves studying its structure and the relationships between its parts.
Structural closure is regarded by many theorists as reinforcing a preferred reading, or in Hodge and Kress's terms, reinforcing the status quo.
Christian Metz offered elaborate syntagmatic categories for narrative film (Metz 1974, Chapter 5) For Metz, these syntagms were analogous to sentences in verbal language, and he argued that there were eight key filmic syntagms which were based on ways of ordering narrative space and time.
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