Surber characterizes Structuralism (with a capital "S") as composed of three strands [155f]:

• formalist
• structuralist
• semiotic

1. The methodology of the natural sciences is not well suited for studying cultural production. Alternative methodologies could and should be developed which would lead to explanatory and interpretive results. [156]
2. The study of meaning should be approached scientifically through these alternative methods.
3. Human language is the basis for structuralist science.
4. The "meaning" (in the broad sense) of the sign is not fixed, but is an "arbitrary" construction determined within a system of relations, i.e. contextually. This can be seem as an antiessentialist stance -- meanings do not have essences.
5. Systems within which meanings are determined are historical constructions which operate according to their own laws (sui generis). Thus, they are not understandable in traditional empiricist terms. [157]
6. Emphasis is shifted from the individual subject to the social and systemic factors upon which meaning depends. "Structuralism focuses on the ways in which the meaning of a text or product is constituted in relation to its own constituent parts and to the range of possible meanings inherent in the system in which it functions." [157]

Saussure set out to establish semiotics -- the study of human sign systems -- as a science with a firm theoretical foundation and method. He emphasized the holistic or systematic study of language. [158]

He began by distinguishing two components of any language:

• langue - "the entire set of formal structures and rules that must be shared by speaker and listener in order for communication to occur at all."
• parole -- sounds produced by a speaker that are understood as meaningful.

1. While speech can vary in an unlimited way, langue is a relatively stable structure that exists independent of the speaker.
2. Langue can be studied in isolation from speech.
3. Langue is constituted solely by "signs and their systematic interconnections"; parole is more heterogeneous.
4. Langue is directly translatable into visual images; parole cannot. [159]

• synchronically -- by attending to the structural characteristics of an entire system at a given moment in time.
• diachronically -- by attending to the changes occurring over time. This presupposes an already existing synchronic structure.

• signifier -- an "image" that signifies or "points to" a concept.
• signified -- a mental concept picked out by a signifier.

Since mental concepts are unavailable to direct observation, we must study the signifiers to understand the conceptual structure of the mind.

Saussure studied the system of signifiers by identifying the basic units of signification, i.e. the morphemes.

Substitution of rules for units of a language are called paradigmatic. They specify permissible exchanges, e.g. in a sentence ("The cat is on the mat" and "The dog is on the mat.")

Rules governing the order of the units of language (e.g. in a sentence) are syntagmatic (syntactical).

The matrix of all possible substitutions and arrangements of linguistic units is, in principle, the entire field of possible meaningful expressions in the language in question.

Saussure believed that the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures of a langue were finite and, in principle, specifiable. [But he doesn't seem to have specified the rules governing the formations or structures (possible sentences within a language.)] [163f]

"Jakobson...observed that every differential system, however complex, can ultimately be analyzed into a set of binary oppositions, that is, oppositions involving only two elements." His "binarism" is characterized as a series of binary oppositions used to determine the "location" of the signifier. [165] [This suggests a list of comparisons constituting inclusions and primarily exclusions or contraries. This is a long way from establishing an analogy between language and binary systems such as computers. Or take the example of the dog in the painting. How is this a binary operation? And what does the characterization as binary prove or explain?]

[The example of the jeans suggests the concepts are linked in an exclusionary fashion and, perhaps, that designer jeans are defined or function in opposition to generic jeans. But this suggests a very restricted class of concepts, viz. opposed and linked pairs. How pervasive is this phenomenon?] [166]

metaphor (signifier-signified substitution) -- paradigmatic substitution that suggests another more literal substitution.

metonymy (signifier-signifier substitution) -- syntagmatic substitution suggesting a whole on the basis of a related part. The signifier changes but the signified is the same. [166f]

Jakobson also developed a richer set of concepts for the analysis of communication. These included

• context
• message (content)
• contact (medium connection addresser and addressee.)
• code (features of signification, e.g. language, symbols, or story line, etc.)

This came as a reaction against subjectivism, in particular biographism and psychologism (subjective interpretation). [168]

Narratology - study of narrative structures. [169]

Propp's Narrative Method [169]

1. Define and identify a set of texts to study, i.e. a genre.
2. "Determine the basic units of analysis to be employed." (These are the so-called "morphemes of the genre" - a characteristic set of functions.)
3. Assume this set of functions is limited in number.
4. "Diagram each text...so that the syntagmatic structure of every text will be clear in terms of the list of functions." [170]
5. Compare the sequential order of the functions in a text with those of other texts.

Modern scientific rationality is not qualitatively different from "primitive thought". [170f] Deep structures (invariants) underlie thinking in all cultures. [So there are universals. But many forms in which universal rationality expresses itself. But then what is the nature of this underlying rationality? Is it analogous to "linguistic competence" -- an innate capacity which expresses itself differently, i.e. takes different forms?]

Four Basic Principles Based on Structural Linguistics [171]

1. Cultural analysis should investigate the unconscious infrastructure of cultural objects, not the conscious phenomena.
2. Meaning is uncovered in the relations among terms or elements, not in the elements themselves.
3. Meaning is determined within a system which is not reducible to other simpler systems.
4. The goal is to discover the general laws governing cultural productions and systems.

• Both langue and parole are important. Myth involves sequential narratives which are based on atemporal structures.
• Myths are built from basic units known as mythemes which take the form of sentences.
• A mytheme is a set of sentences "each of which expresses a particular relation".
• The "real units of myth" are not single relations but "bundles of relations or classes of mythemes".

Surber characterizes Barthes' structuralism as a turn toward cultural critique. [174]

Limitations of Structuralist Thought:

1. It was not adequately applied to more diverse cultural productions beyond myths and folktales. Barthes wanted to link structural systems to ideology.
2. The polysemic nature of signs was not sufficiently appreciated.

Methodology:

A sign can also function as a signifier. The "higher order" or second order level of signification Barthes calls connotation. Here meaning arises in the context of historical and cultural systems of discourse or codes.

Mythology is the "second-order semiological system". [176]

"Barthes's schema for understanding mythologies was designed to show what the operative ideas and values of a given culture are and how they are produced and maintained, as well as to suggest ways in which they might be unmasked, criticized, and perhaps transformed." [176]

Julia Kristeva combined p[psychoanalysis with semiology in what she referred to as semanalysis. "Semanalysis functions at the elusive and problematic point where the repressed desires of the Freudian unconscious find their way into expression in the significational structures of language, the point where the desiring organism of the human body develops into a discrete, self-conscious ego. It is this critical point that escaped both earlier semiology, focusing as it did on socially constructed and already objectively functioning codes, and psychoanalysis, directed primarily toward the prelinguistic dynamics of the unconscious. In Kristeva's words, semanalysis "conceives of meaning not as a sign-system but as a signifying process." [179]

Kristeva introduced the following concepts of her own:

semiotic -- "the basic drives recognized by psychoanalysis as they discharge themselves into language prior to any actual linguistic signification." (rhythm and tone)

symbolic -- "the aspect of signification bound up with already established and functioning codes and rules of linguistic usage." (syntax)

Music is an example of a purely semiotic language.

The Relation Between Semiotic and Symbolic Signification:

1. "[A]ll instances of linguistic activity will be the products of interactions and adjustments between the unconscious desires of the subject and the formal structures constituting the various codes that it employs."
2. A thetic phase emerges in the development of the organism which is both a breaking away from narcissistic desire and an entry into the symbolic order. This allows for the emergence of the subject and presupposes the semiotic dimension as a necessary condition for the symbolic.
3. The "thetic rupture" opens the possibility of semantic operations on the symbolic order.

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© T. R. Quigley, 1998