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:See also structural analysis and structural functionalism.Structuralism is an approach that grew to become one of the most widely used methods of analyzing language, culture, and society in the second half of the 20th century. 'Structuralism', however, does not refer to a clearly defined 'school' of authors, although the work of Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered a starting point. Structuralism is best seen as a general approach with many different variations. As with any cultural movement, the influences and developments are complex.
Broadly, structuralism seeks to explore the inter-relationships (the "structures") through which meaning is produced within a culture. According to structural theory, meaning within a culture is produced and reproduced through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early and prominent practitioner of structuralism, anthropologist and ethnographer Claude Levi-Strauss, analyzed cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship, and food preparation.
When used to examine literature, a structuralist critic will examine the underlying relation of elements (the 'structure') in, say, a story, rather than focusing on its content. A basic example are the similarities between West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Even though the two plays occur in different times and places, a structuralist would argue that they are the same story because they have a similar structure - in both cases, a girl and a boy fall in love (or, as we might say, are +LOVE) despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other, a conflict that is resolved by their death. Consider now the story of two friendly families (+LOVE) that make an arranged marriage between their children despite the fact that they hate each other (-LOVE), and that the children resolve this conflict by committing suicide to escape the marriage. A structuralist would argue this second story is an 'inversion' of the first, because the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. In sum, a structuralist would thus argue that the 'meaning' of a story lies in uncovering this structure rather than, say, discovering the intention of the author who wrote it.
Some feel that a structuralist analysis helps pierce through the confusing veil of life to reveal the hidden, underlying, logically complete structure. Others would argue that structuralism simply reads too much into 'texts' (in the widest sense) and allows clever professors to invent meanings that aren't actually there. There are a variety of positions in between these two extremes, and in fact many of the debates around structuralism focus on trying to clarify issues of just this sort.
1 Saussure's Course
Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) is generally seen as being the origin of structuralism. Although Saussure was, like his contemporaries, interested in historical linguistics, in the Course he developed a more general theory of semiology. This approach focused on examining how the elements of language related to each other in the present ('synchronically' rather than 'diachronically'). He thus focused not on the use of language (parole, or talk) but the underlying system of language (langue) of which any particular utterance was an expression. Finally, he argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a 'signifier' (roughly, the sound of a word) and a 'signified' (the concept or meaning of the word). This was quite different from previous approaches to language which focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world they designated. By focusing on the internal constitution of signs rather than focusing on their relationship to objects in the world, Saussure made the anatomy and structure of language something that could be analyzed and studied.
2 Structuralism in linguistics
Saussure's Course influenced many linguists in the period between WWI and WWII. In America, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Scandanavia. In France Antoine MeilletAntoine Meillet (born Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, 11 November 1866 21 Septembre 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th Century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne, where he was influenced by Michel Br%e9al, Ferdinand and Émile BenvenisteEmile Benveniste ( 1902 1976) was a French linguist best known for his work on Indo-European languages and his work expanding the the linguistic paradigm established by Ferdinand de Saussure. Initially a student of Antoine Meillet, he began teaching at th would continue Saussure's program. Most importantly, however, members of the Prague School of linguistics such as Roman JakobsonRoman Osipovich Jakobson ( 1896- 1982) was a Russian thinker who became one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century by pioneering the development of structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. Jakobson was born to a well-to-do family i and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential.
The clearest and most important example of Prague School structuralism lies in phonemicsPhonemics is the branch of linguistics which deals with the study of the phonemes of a language. See also: phonetics, initial-stress-derived noun Linguistics.. Rather than simply compile a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague School sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analyzed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the words 'pat' and 'bat' are different because the 'p' and 'b' sounds contrast. The difference between them is that you vocalize while saying a 'b' while you do not when saying a 'p'. Thus in English there is a contrast between voiced and non-voiced consonants. Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope - it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Chinese and Japanese speakers have differentiating between 'r' and 'l' is due to the fact that these two sounds are not contrastive in Chinese. While this approach is now standard in linguistics, it was revolutionary at the time. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for a structuralism in a number of different forms.
