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Material Text = The union of Linguistic Text and Document: A Sign Sequence held in a medium of display. The Material Text has "meanings" additional to, and perhaps complementary to, the Linguistic Text.
Document = The Material medium of display (paper, ink, etc.).
Protocol = A written or otherwise verbalized response to and commentary on a Work.

Work = That which is manifested in and implied by the material and linguistic forms of texts thought to be variant forms of a single literary entity. The term Work incorporates concepts of Versions (Ideations) which are made concrete or Material by a Production Performance and then reconceptualized by Reception Performance.

Potential—abstract conceptual texts in the mind of an author.
Developing—abstract conceptual texts as evidenced by trial drafts in some material form.
Essayed—finished (at least temporarily) versions as evidenced by completed manuscripts or revised texts.

Linguistic Text = A Sign Sequence for an Essayed Version displayed in a Document.
Reception Text = The Performed Text conceptualized by the reader in the act of reading; the decoded Material Text.
Conceptual Text = Any text that is "held" in the mind or contemplated by a person. Conceptual texts are the only kind that can be experienced, though Material Texts are where they begin.
Semiotic Text = The signs used to represent any given Linguistic Text.

Speech Act = The whole event of creation, production, and reception of a communication at a specified time and place.
Write Act = The complex, never closed, serial event encompassing the creations, productions, and receptions at any and all places and times in which a written work is created, produced and received.
Utterance = A whole Speech Act or a coherent selection of "speaker," medium, hearer, time(s), and place(s) employed with regard to a Write Act within which "an understanding" of the Work is achieved.
Creative Performance = The authorial development of Essayed Versions
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resulting in Linguistic Texts as found in manuscripts and authorially revised texts.
Production Performance = The scribal and publication development of Material Texts resulting in typists' copies, proofs, and printed books.
Reception Performance = The development of a conceptualized Reception Text in the act of reading.

Time—The Work as it existed at some significant time.
Content—The Work as represented by one Linguistic Text as opposed to variants of it.
Function—The Work as designed for a particular purpose or appearance.
Material—The Work as embodied in one or another particular physical format.

Material Base = The world of sense data to which the Material Text (manuscript, book, etc.) belongs.
Social Context = The complex of institutions, conventions, and mores whose expectations and habits are reflected in the Material Text.
Performance Field = An ambiguously conceived abstraction that provides the illusion of stability or a "locus of meaning." It is where the Text is "played" according to the rules of the reader's particular game of textual interaction and limited by the performer's capabilities and resources. The "game" metaphor here accounts in a different way for the "play" or looseness in the "machine" model of interpretation, in which play is equivalent to tolerance, a concept about how much variation in interpretation is allowable before communication "breaks down."