figuration

IPA: fɪgjɝˈeɪʃʌn

The act of giving figure or determinate form.
Form, outline or boundaries.
Ornamentation or decoration, especially by the addition of figures.
Mixture of concords and discords.
(art) Representation through visual forms.
(sociology) A structure through which people are joined, or the process of constructing such structures.

Examples of "figuration" in Sentences

Still, if figuration is the key function of narrative, the other functions are not wholly absent.
Where the figuration is less narrative and more cogitative, that streaming montage of icons is, of course, of less import.
And indeed, Heller's figuration is such a functional idiom that it has been taken-up, used widely by people who may have never read the book, may not even know the origin of the term.
Ultimately the subject may be so absented, suggested at the most liminal thematic level if at all, that the extended figuration is not read as metaphor at all; instead it is read as story.
Not all figuration is metaphoric though; in metonymy, the process of interpretation is not based on resemblances but on other forms of association -- the association of a crown with a king, for example, such that we use the artefact as a metonymic stand-in for the person.