The linguistic theory animating the author's analyses is made explicit and occasionally placed in contrast to prevailing theoretical holdovers from the last century. This theory is based on a thorough assimilation of the semeiotic of the founder of modern sign theory, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), located at the core of his entire pragmatist philosophy. Theory is conceived of, not as ad hoc, but as uniformly immanent in the examples adduced for analysis, which range over the entirety of language structure, English in particular, including style.