Of particular use in semiotic study, a syntagm is a chain which leads, through syntagmatic analysis, to an understanding of how a sequence of events forms a narrative.
Alternatively, syntagmatic analysis can describe the spatial relationship of a visual text such as posters, photographs or a particular setting of a filmed scene.
Roland Barthes was able to use metaphor in the form of various garments in order to display how the syntagm/paradigm relationship worked together to at once create and change meaning.
Expanding on this form of explanation by Barthes, both David Lodge and Susan Spiggle have further developed the metaphor, using specific wearable items.
Thwaite, Davis, and Mules identify a syntagm as "the result of using a conventional rule to combine a series of elements from various paradigms".