What are the “elements” of a representation?

A representation is usually described as an organized set of cognitive elements. But what are these elements? We discuss here the nature the “elements” of representations, starting from a seminal paper by Codol. Section 1 summarizes Codol’s formalism to describe the content and structure of representations: representations are made of “cognemes”. Section 2 demonstrates that cognemes, although necessary for description, cannot be considered final constituents of representations. Section 3 proposes rules of good practice to describe social representations.