S T R U C T U R A L I S M

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P O S T - S T R U C T U R A L I S T

The linguistic unit is a double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms. Instead of uniting a thing with a name, the linguistic signs a concept with a sound-image.
The word "concept" is replaced by the word "signified," while the word "sound-image" is replaced by the word "signifier." The signified and the signifier together make up the sign.

Two basic principles:
1) The arbitrary nature of the sign--The sign is arbitrary because "the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary." The idea of "sister" is not linked to the sound of the word "sister." The link between the idea and the sound--or the signified and the signifier--is a matter of societal convention.

2) The linear nature of the signifier--The signifier is of a linear nature because "auditory signifiers have at their command only the dimension of time." It "represents a span, and the span is measurable in a single dimension"--that of time.

Philosophy movement - Europe
Late 1800’s - 1960’s
Focuses on society as a system
Differential relations are the key to understanding culture & society.

Semiotics is probably best-known as an approach to textual analysis, and in this form it is characterized by a concern with structural analysis. Structuralist semiotic analysis involves identifying the constituent units in a semiotic system (such as a text or socio-cultural practice) and the structural relationships between them (oppositions, correlations and logical relations).

Paradigmatic relationships can operate on the level of the signifier, the signified or both (Saussure 1983, 121-124; Saussure 1974, 123-126; Silverman 1983, 10; Harris 1987, 124). A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers or signifieds which are all members of some defining category, but in which each is significantly different. In natural language there are grammatical paradigms such as verbs or nouns. 'Paradigmatic relations are those which belong to the same set by virtue of a function they share... A sign enters into paradigmatic relations with all the signs which can also occur in the same context but not at the same time' (Langholz Leymore 1975, 8). In a given context, one member of the paradigm set is structurally replaceable with another.

“I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact,” - QUOTE

(28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology".Levi-Strauss’s method, known as structuralism, reduced mythology and rituals to their basic components to find an underlying pattern. His theories on primitive societies held that the characteristics of the native mind are equal to those in Western civilization and that all communities function using folklore based on opposites.

Levi-Strauss drew comparisons between American Indian myths and the story of Cinderella; demonstrated how some Amazonian tribes divided their villages into rival halves that synthesize through marriage; and tracked diverse folk tales through Latin America to show how they were related in form.

This French television documentary recounts in english subtitles shows the extraordinary career of the father of structural anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss, whose theories not only impacted that field, but linguistics, mythology, and pop culture studies. Author of Tristes Tropiques and The Savage Mind, Levi-Strauss is a profound intellectual, a confirmed ecologist, a fierce defender of the diversity of peoples and cultures, and all with the temperament of an artist or poet. Consisting of selected interviews from the 1960s through the present, Claude Levi-Strauss Par Lui-Meme presents the anthropologist's story in his own words.

Vladimir Propp analysed a whole series of Russian folk tales in the 1920s and decided that the same events kept being repeated in each of the stories, creating a consistent framework. His seminal book, Morphology of the Folk Tale, was first published in 1928 and has had a huge influence on literary theorists and practitioners ever since.

Propp extended the Russian Formalist study of language to his analysis of folk tales. He broke down the tales into the smallest possible units, which he called narratemes, or narrative functions, necessary for the narrative to exist. Each narrateme is an event that drives the narrative forward, possibly taking it in a different direction. Not all of these functions appear in every story, but they always appear in this order.

“'The study of the fairy tale may be compared in many respects to that of organic formation in nature. Both the naturalist and the folklorist deal with species and varieties which are essentially the same.'
Vladimir Propp Morphology of the Folktale” - QUOTE

Homepage Graphic Design-Modernism Cubism + Futurism = MODERNISM

Influence of cubism, or maybe specifically Synthetic Cubism, seems to come from a structural design of the picture plane. The grid. There is also the use of reducing pictorial space and figures to hard-edged geometric forms.
Juan Gris seemed to use the apparatus as a way to find a medium between art based on perception and art based on the relationships between geometric planes

“Fernand Leger’s paintings reduced his subject matter to compositions of made up of colorful shapes. He also fragments his subjects and uses letterforms to form stylistic representations of his visual experience.''

By the mid 20th century there were a number of structural theories of human existence. In the study of language, the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) suggested that meaning was to be found within the structure of a whole language rather than in the analysis of individual words. For Marxists, the truth of human existence could be understood by an analysis of economic structures. Psychoanalysts attempted to describe the structure of the psyche in terms of an unconscious.

In the 1960's, the structuralist movement, based in France, attempted to synthesise the ideas of Marx, Freud and Saussure. They disagreed with the existentialists' claim that each man is what he makes himself. For the structuralist the individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures over which he/she has no control, but which could be uncovered by using their methods of investigation.

“.Roland Gérard Barthes (12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, anthropology and post-structuralism.

Myth: Roland Barthes in Mythologies explores this further by looking at the mechanisms through which meanings are produced and circulated. He is interested in ‘How’ things mean.Mythologies (1957) contains 54 short articles on a variety of subjects and trends that took place in France in the 1950s. He looks at film, newspapers, magazines, events, photographs, toys and popular pastimes such as tourism and wrestling. He is interested in how apparently apolitical activities are expressive of certain ideological positions.''