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structuralism.pdf
- 1. Structuralism Ferdinand de Saussure & Claude levi-strauss
- 2. What is structuralism • A school of literary theory which is inspired by semiotics and the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure; emerged in France in during 1950s • Structuralist believes in the existence of a fixed real world; universal truths • A system in which each element in a group can only be understood by its relation to other elements as part of a larger structure • Sociologists make structure the main concern of their work, because they believe in the possibility of establishing general statements about society; about how the world as we experience it is formed by some underlying structure. • Relating Skelton to the whole
- 4. Two dominant approaches in structuralism • High structuralism and Low structuralism • High structuralism- high in its aspirations and makes grand claims about how cultural texts infer meaning • Low structuralism- is more practical and aims to be more immediately useful
- 6. • Revolutionised the study of language; earlier mostly diachronic linguistics (the study of the evolution of a language over time); Saussure- Synchronic linguistics (the study of how a languages operates at a fixed point in time) • Credited with founding Semiotics (he called it Semiology) • Class notes compiled into the book Courses in General Linguistics (1916)
- 7. Before Saussure • The conceptual part of linguistic value is determined solely by relations and differences with other signs in the language • Language was generally seen as a way to name things • The way these words fit in the context of each language as a whole helps to define what we think of when we see this picture
- 8. How is language made • We need to figure out what the components in language are • PAROLE: an individual verbal utterance or written word, phrase or sentence (we can learn little from the individual words) • LANGUE: The linguistic system as a whole (words become meaningful with its relationship to langue of which it is a part) • The language is inherently structural, determined by the relationships and differences in the analysis of culture; we can understand the meaning of individual cultural text Parole comes to mean its observable relationship to other text in the broader Langue of culture
- 9. Saussure’s definition of language • All language is made of signs • Semiology: the study of signs; to understand systematic regularities from which meaning is derived • By putting together signs, it is possible to create complex messages • Each has two parts: signifier and signified
- 10. Sign part 1: signifier • The psychological imprint of the sound, the impression it makes on our senses • Example:thinking in your head • AKA “sound image” • How we think about a thing!
- 11. Part 2: signified • The concept or essence of something • What the signifier is referring to (the sound “dog”refers to the concept of a dog) • What we think!
- 12. • !
- 13. The nature of signs • Arbitrary- meaning there is no natural connection between signifier and signified- the letters t-r-e-e don’t exactly paint a picture of majestic Banyan tree • Culturally constructed • Because signs are arbitrary they must be agreed on by a group of people to be effective (ex:all English speakers) • therefore, some languages have words for concepts that don’t exist in other languages
- 14. • Rather than express our experience in an objective manner instead shapes how we know the world • The meaning we derive from cultural text heavily reliant on the influence of the dominant structures of thought of the society in which it is produced • Structuralism failed to answer the question why such structures exist in the society
- 15. Criticisms • langue: complete system? • Distinction: Syntagm & Paradigm • Finite-state grammar
- 16. Two traditions of structuralism • American Structuralism- concentrated on developing abstract theorems to explain social phenomena as integration and relies heavily on quantitative computer based techniquesS • French Structuralism- attempted to identify common conceptual schemes; concerned with human thought and language It is all about words (How fundamentally some recent ideas and words about ideas and words have affected the way we understand ourselves) The way we see and understand the world affects the way we act, understanding social behaviour must involve understanding the laws of language and the intellect Claude Levi-Strauss
- 17. Claude Levi strauss (1908-2009) • French social anthropologist and leading exponent of structuralism • Analysis of cultural systems (Kinship and mythical systems in terms of structural relations among their elements) in his major work Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) • According to him, there are patterns common to all human thought, and that these can be found in the myths and classification structures of any tribe or culture
- 18. • For Levi-Strauss, thought processes are what make us human; we must “think” in some sense before we can have any social life, therefore, the conceptual theme underlying social life is fundamental • He tried to extract conceptual universals and develop a method for analysing myth in these terms
- 19. • This was also a theoretical perspective with important political implications; it sets very strict limits to the malleability of human beings and of human societies, it also denies the possibility of a “new man”, made by a perfect society • According to him, future man will share the same “deep” mental structures as his predecessors, and therefore his society will be similar as well • Edmund Leach points out that, to a structuralist, history offers images of past societies which were “structural transformations” of those we know now-no better no worse
- 20. • For instance, his analysis of how all societies cook food, “define” food as belonging to different categories and have categories which are similar (“raw-cooked” triangle) • Levi-Strauss looks for some underlying principle of organising our thought which when it meets the real world, produces certain ways of categorising food • We introduce order into experience by dividing the continuum of space and time into discontinuous segments-different things, different events • We see things in terms of binary opposites; good vs evil, man vs woman, night vs day
- 21. In a nutshell.. • Strauss is best know for his culture and mind theory; in this theory he showed that culture is a system containing underlying structures that are common in all societies regardless of any difference. Through his search he found that patterns of structure such as behaviour are in fact universal to all societies. Levi- Strauss was very interested in the structural pattern which gives the myth its meaning; through his research and examination into myths he identified a theory of binary oppositions.
- 22. In a nutshell.. • Strauss identified that the way we understand certain words depends, not by the meaning of that particular word, but by our understanding to the difference between them
- 23. Criticism • Many social scientists’ reaction to Levi-Strauss’ work has been one of skepticism • We tend to categorise everything • The study of the common elements and underlying structure in the myths of different societies
- 24. Activity • Explain Saussurian definition of language • Discuss the contributions of Claude Levi Strauss to the study of social structure. • Saussure saw language as a system of signs constructed by convention. Please explain. • Define signified and signifier • Explain the theory of binary opposites.
- 25. References • George Ritzer, Jeffrey N Stepnisky - Sociological Theory-Sage Publications, Inc (2017) • Wes W. Sharrock, John A. Hughes, Peter J. Martin - Understanding Modern Sociology-Sage Publications (2003) • Wallace and Wolf (2006) Contemporary Sociological Theory: Expanding the Classical Tradition, Sixth Edtn, University of London:Pearson.