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deconstruction

[ dee-kuhn-struhk-shuhn ]
/ ˌdi kənˈstrʌk ʃən /
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noun
a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and especially applied to the study of literature, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.
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Origin of deconstruction

OTHER WORDS FROM deconstruction

de·con·struc·tion·ist, adjective, nounde·con·struc·tive, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use deconstruction in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for deconstruction

deconstruction
/ (ˌdiːkənˈstrʌkʃən) /

noun
a technique of literary analysis that regards meaning as resulting from the differences between words rather than their reference to the things they stand for. Different meanings are discovered by taking apart the structure of the language used and exposing the assumption that words have a fixed reference point beyond themselves

Derived forms of deconstruction

deconstructionist, noun, adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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