Synchronic approaches focus on how a given system is at a given moment and how each part fits into the system. Structuralism relies on a synchronic approach. Discourse Michel Foucault uses this term for an authoritative way of describing. Discourses are propagated by specific institutions and divide up the world in specific ways. For example, we can talk of medical, legal, and psychological discourses.
Literary criticism is also a discourse, as is the terminology associated with grading.
Essentialism usually comes up in debates about personal identity . Gothic I n literary and cultural studies, the gothic is a genre or mode whose dark imagery often includes medieval ruins, supernatural occurrences, and demonic protagonists. Gothic narratives often stress embodiment, with all its attendant possibilities for sensation, as well as the fear of mortification and decay. This is not to say that an author's intentions are irrelevant to the text, but that any statements about her or his intent must be subjected to the same scrutiny and are subject to the same interpretive process as the text itself. Irony Also see the Irony Taxonomy Male Gaze A film theory widely circulated during the mid to late 1980s.