Diachronic and Synchronic

Diachronic and Synchronic are two logics of order, meaning, and expression which oppose and/or complement one another.

Diachronic the sequential logic of a road	Synchronic the all-at-once logic of a pool

Process	Structure
"What Comes After What"	"What Goes With What"
Cause and Effect Order	Associative Order (non-sequential)
Meaning from Plot, Sequence	Meaning from Proximity, Contrast, Similarity, Hierarchy
Anticipation and Satisfaction	Connections and Patterns
Like a road you're traveling down	Like a pool of people and objects you climb into
Individuals on a family tree are diachronically organized	Individuals on a company's organizational chart are synchronically organized

Often Combined In Practice

unicycle juggler
Just as the juggling unicyclist combines linear and circular motions, many narratives combine the diachronic logic of plot with synchronic patterns of symbols, themes, and motifs.

Ferdinand de Saussure first makes the distinction between the synchronic and diachronic in his Course in General Linguistics (1916). Though de Saussure is talking about approaches to studying language use, his distinction can be generalized to the study of lots of phenomena.

Diachronic and Synchronic

Diachronic

the sequential logic of a road

Synchronic

the all-at-once logic of a pool

Often Combined In Practice