Structuralism

Structuralism

Contents

What is structuralism...............................................................................................2

Structuralism in linguistics......................................................................................2

Fundamental ideas...................................................................................................3

Structuralism in literary theory and literary criticism..............................................3

Structuralism today..................................................................................................4

References................................................................................................................5

What is structuralism?

Structuralism is a theoretical school and critical movement of the 20th century, which appeared in the study of language, literature, art, anthropology and sociology. It researches relations between basic principal elements in the mentioned, as well as some other academic disciplines.

Structuralism in linguistics

In the academic world, structuralism first appeared in the 19th century and appeared again in the 20th century. At that time it was one of the most well-known approaches in academic disciplines and it was interested in the analysis of language, culture and society.

The term structuralism appeared for the first time in the works of a French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss which encouraged the work of Michael Foucault, Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan. These intellectualists were the most important representatives of structuralism.

Ferdinand de Saussure founded linguistics, semioti...

Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid

Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid

Structuralism evolved around the group of above mentioned French intellectuals who were influenced by a Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure was the conceiver of the second appearance of structuralism in the 20th century. He also developed a field of linguistics called Structural linguistics. He died before he could reveal his ideas to the world. Fortunately, his colleagues were able to reconstruct a lot of his lectures based on his students' notes. They published ˝The Course in General Linguistics˝ - an important work for understanding structuralism

Fundamental ideas

The main idea of structuralism is the concept that binary oppositions (e.g. boy/girl, day/night) expose the unconscious logic and ˝grammar˝ of a system.

Saussure was interested in the fundamental system of language. His linguistic theory provided foundations for the development of structuralism. That theory was called

semiology.

Saussure claimed that language is a complete and independent system of signs. In other...