The linguistic theory questions and challenges us to identify the real author within a work that we see or hear before us. This work can be expressed throughout different mediums, it can be a film, a song or a book, practically anything that can be read, viewed and heard by an individual. However what the theory emphasises the most, is that the notion of authorship needs to be rethought. The author has always been defined and expressed as someone who takes responsibility for a produced piece of work. An artist for instance claims that he or she has painted and therefore, created a new piece of art. A writer is said to be responsible for what he has written and the text that he has produced from his own ideas. The same principal applies to films, poetry, music, photography and literally anything that is built by an individual’s mind that another person can interpret, judge and decipher.

The theory, however, argues that any piece that is created, is in fact, a multi faceted manifestation of different languages, ideas, beliefs, experiences and etc. The moment that the creator of a work, a writer perhaps, puts their pen to the paper, he or she falls into the trap of thinking and genuinely believing that their ideas are their own. Ultimately when the book is finalised — they are unknowingly allowed to claim authorship of their creation. However, the further the theory is explored, it explains that the author neither creates a work nor forms it, but rather the work has already been done and the author is merely a medium. We are led to think that the work “is tyrannically centred on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions” (Barthes, 1977), but we are unaware of how he has borrowed everything from previously existing texts that they have come to be aware of. Hence, the author’s background and his very own past learnings always forestall them from originality, and these factors present themselves in the work before the author is even aware of their intrusiveness.

If we think of most fictional stories, for instance the narration of a film, a regular pattern can be seen throughout almost all of them. They all consist of an introduction, birth of a problem, a period of training that leads to the protagonist being faced with an obstacle, and then overcoming it, the conflict is resolved and the story comes to a resolution. In fact, Dan Harmon, the co-creator of Rick and Morty has created a Story Circle as a guide. These regular patterns exist in all mediums. Therefore, the theory proposes that every word used by an author is already in existence. Hence there are no original thoughts. It’s just a combination of old ideas adjusted for the current time and society. An example of this can be seen by the “increase” (Nick Redfern, 2012) in the numbers of remakes post 2001. Therefore, the words used by an author have meanings driven from earlier cultures, generations and human expressions.