Purport

“The rather odd word ‘purport’ translates the Danish word ‘mening’, which might also have been rendered as meaning, although this too would have been problematic because it would have obscured the originality of Hjelmslev’s theory. The French translation (the one Barthes, Deleuze, Greimas, and others relied on), which renders purport as ‘sens’, is perhaps a better choice, inasmuch that in English it implies both the words ‘meaning’ and ‘direction’ without implying direct intent as purport does”