Structuralism: Lecture for Research Paradigms (FOAR 701)

–Johnny Appleseed

“A linguistic system is a series of differences of

sound combined with a series of differences of

ideas.”

Ferdinand de Saussure

– Claude Lévi-Strauss

“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.”

FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 2

FOAR701: Research paradigms (2017)

Structuralism*

3

Greg DowneyDepartment of Anthropology

Faculty of Arts

Macquarie University

[email protected]

@gregdowney1

* includes material by Prof. Nicole Anderson.

mailto:[email protected]

Caution!

Use of ‘structure.’

Structural functionalism v structuralism and post-

structuralism.

Social v. mental.

FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR7014

Structuralism as a paradigm shift

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-

1930) famous for opposing

philological study of language.

Swiss linguist and semiotician with

early career in philology (Celtic,

Sanskrit, Old German, Indo-

European reconstruction).

He only taught his ‘Course in

General Linguistics’ three times

near the end of his life in

Switzerland.


Saussure – ‘Course in General Linguistics.’

Although he tried to write a book,

in the end, students organised his

lecture notes.

How to analyse language? Focus

not on parole (speech acts) but

on langue (code behind acts).

Language to be analysed as a

formal system of signs (the

‘referent’ was beyond linguistic

study, for Saussure).


Saussure – ‘Course in General Linguistics.’

‘Language is a system of

signs that expresses ideas.’

Although he held open the

possibility of diachronic research

(accomplished in philology), he

was arguing for a radical

synchrony in semiotics

(‘semiology’), the study of

‘linguistic structure’.


Key insight: ‘Sign’ has two sides.

Signifier Signified

‘House’

Link is arbitrary.*


(* …but, onomatopoeia and exclamations???)

Key insight:

Signifier Signified

‘House’

Link is arbitrary.*

The fallacy of the traditional position lies in

their view that the signified, be it an object in

the material world or a concept, pre-exists the

‘word’ (or signifier) and is simply labelled by it.(Nicole’s phrasing)


Tripartite sign model:

Signifier Signified

‘House’


Referent


SignsEagle by m. turan ercan from the Noun Project

bird

symbol index iconphysical

resemblance to

signified.

physical link to

signified.

e.g., smoke & fire

cultural and arbitrary

Charles Sanders Peirce


SignsSkull by Aleksandr Vector from the Noun Project

denotation connotationassociated ideas or

feelings

direct or specific

significance

Heart by Ali Coşkun from the Noun Project

If symbolic relations are arbitrary…?

• Meaning is not a fixed relationship between

signifier/signified/referent, but rather defined through

opposition to other signifiers/signifieds.

• Even within words, phonemes take their meaning though

opposition to other phonemes.

Variation across languages in phoneme: e.g., /r/ /l/ in

Japanese, or /th/ fricative /th/ in German, /b/ /p/ in Arabic,

aspirated and unaspirated /t/ in Thai, palatalised consonants

in Arabic, nasalised vowels in Portuguese, clicks in San…

• Saussure calls this the ‘differential relation’: sign

significance is determined by differences amongst signs.


Semiotic relations

English ‘sheep’ ‘mutton’

French ‘mouton’

Sheep by Nook Fulloption from the Noun Project


ParadigmsSyntagms

Their tiger stood by my friend.

That wolf sat over your tree.

The dog walked on the floor.

My cat bounced under Nicole’s mat.

Your cow jumped above Anthony’s fridge.

(vertical)(horizontal)

What’s so radical about this?

• Language is not ‘motivated’: no essential connection between sign

and signified.

(What about the connection between signified and referent?)

• Since paradigmatic relations determine meaning of symbols, no

inherent or ‘true’ meaning to be determined philologically.

• Pushing linguistics towards ‘science’ and away from ‘humanities’

like history.

• Human thought and thus behaviour is shaped by inherited

structure (argument with contemporary existentialists, for example,

in France).

• Could even be seen to be universalising and strongly determinist.

16FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

‘the structure of language is a social

product of our language faculty…it is

also a body of necessary conventions

adopted by society to enable members

of society to use their language faculty’

(Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1988,

3)


Claude Lévi-Strauss

French anthropologist.

Particular manifestations of

culture are incidental but

reveal deeper structure of

thought (like langue v.

parole).

Modeled on linguistics.


Claude Lévi-Strauss

Became a public intellectual.

100 when he died in 2009.

Human mind essentially uniform

(‘savage’ & ‘civilised’ the same).

Humans think in binaries

(mediating third term at times).



“The unconscious activity of the mind consists in imposing

forms upon content, and if these forms are fundamentally

the same for all minds – ancient and modern, primitive and

civilized – it is necessary and sufficient to grasp the

unconscious structure underlying each institutions and

custom.”

(Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, 1963: 21)

Structural anthropology

• Systems arise from logical, not functional, structures.

e.g. kinship arises not from common descent but from the alliances formed

when man and woman marry (‘family’ only defined in opposition to others).

Incest taboo is not from biological problems but forces exogamous alliances

(borrowing from Marcel Mauss).

• Argues that if you know some relations between family members, you can

predict others based on their structure (systematic? scientific?).

• In The Savage Mind (translation problem), Lévi-Strauss argues that mind is

more like a bricoleur (savage mind) than an engineer (scientific mind).

Put him in conflict with Jean Paul Sartre.

• Four volume Mythologiques examines the structure underlying a single myth

with variations throughout all the Americas.

All variants were manifestations of a single underlying mytheme.

Myth often produces false resolution of irresolvable dichotomy.


Dichotomy

Life/Death

Nature/Culture

Human/Animal

Sacred/Profane

Male/Female

Right/Left

TotemsSystem of symbols from one

realm brought to another.

‘We can understand, too, that

natural species are chosen not

because they are “good to eat”

but because they are “good to

think.”’

(The Savage Mind)

Analysis of

myth

• Myth not constrained by messy

reality of history — logic is

allowed to work freely.

‘instruments for the obliteration

of time’ (Lévi-Strauss).

• Contemporary society can bury

deep structure under layers of

confounding complexity.

• Break myth into elements

(mythemes) and reveal

relations among them,

especially across variants.

• Example: ‘princess,’ ‘witch/step-

mother/monster,’ ‘prince.’

Myth of Asdiwal, a

widow’s magic child

geographic, economic,

sociological and cosmological

oppositions

Tsimshian myth from the Pacific Northwest


On the one hand it would seem that in

the course of a myth anything is likely

to happen…. But on the other hand,

this apparent arbitrariness is belied by

the astounding similarity between

myths collected in widely different

regions.

Therefore the problem: If the content of

myth is contingent, how are we to

explain the fact that myths throughout

the world are so similar?

Mary Douglas: ‘Deciphering a Meal’

• Meals v. ‘Drinks.’

Snacks v. Meals v ‘Tea’ (paradigmatic).

• Syntagmatic relation amongst meals

(early, midday, late).

Within meals also structured (but not

drinks) both sequentially and in relations

or juxtapositions (multiple meats?

unsuccessful combinations? Sunday

different?).

• Contrasts: hot & cold, bland & spicy, liquid

& solid, starch & protein & veg…

• Relations are matched by food behaviour.

Mary Douglas: ‘Deciphering a Meal’

Drinks only

Food and

drinks.

Modifications: which meal?

entirely cold? home cooked?

Key components:

• Synchronic analysis.

• Deep structure (v.

surface manifestation)

exists only in the

collective (not

individual).

• Cognitive system (sign,

dichotomies…)

• Cognitive structural

determination (agency?).


Assumptions

• Ontology: strong semiotic

constructionism &

idealism; critique of

possibility of ‘realism’.

• Epistemology: the role of

semiotic systems in

structuring thought affects

even the investigator.

• Methodology: careful, in

depth analysis but may be

over large set of examples.


Variants of structuralism

• Structuralist linguistics – Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce

(US, semiotics including early Chomsky) — (influence is quite broad, including in

phonemics): Leonard Bloomfield (US), Louis Hjelmslev (Norway).

– (Prague, Moscow, Copenhagen): Roman Jakobson, Nikolay Trubetzkoy

(Prague), Vladimir Propp (Russian).

• Structuralist literary theory – Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Northrop

Frye.

• Structural anthropology/history/sociology – Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel

Mauss (pre-structuralist - CL-S’s predecessor), Michel Foucault (early), Mary

Douglas, Marshall Sahlins, Pierre Bourdieu (some of his texts), Edmund Leach,

Rodney Needham.

• Structuralist psychoanalysis – Jacques Lacan.

• Structural marxism – Louis Althusser (philosophy), Nicos Poulantzas

(sociology), Maurice Godelier (anthropology). 32FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Influence of structuralism

• Encourages analytical imagination: especially uniting diverse realms of

culture or behaviour.

• Drives deeper analysis: goal of uniting different anagogic realms often

pushes deeper examination of structure beyond conscious awareness or

explicit content.

• Clear role for analyst: like psychoanalysis, assumption that consciousness

alone does not contain all that is operative (and alternative to Freudianism,

does not focus on individual biography or psyche).

• Cognitivist approaches: including many who would not call themselves

‘structuralist.’

• Revitalised comparative approaches: not constrained by single context if

structure is deep and potentially shared (universal? e.g. gender, taboo, pollution,

sacred…).


Critiques of structuralism

• Reductionism is so radical that it eradicates most of content.

e.g. Catherine Belsey: ‘the structuralist danger of collapsing all

difference.’

• Social context and history also eradicated or ignored.

• Unclear that the ‘structure’ was actually present or product of

analytical techniques.

• Severely downplays individual ‘agency.’

• Some variants are universalising & require immense data.

• Also requires uniformity or self-sameness of structure

(variation?).

• Although claims to be more ‘scientific,’ structural analysis is

unfalsifiable and relies tremendously on skill of the analyst.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 34

Thanks for your

attention!

Bibliography online at iLearn

Photos public domain at Pixabay

or as indicated.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701 35

References

• Douglas, M., 1972. Deciphering a meal. Daedalus, pp.61-81.

• Downey, Greg. 2009. ‘Thinking through Claude Lévo-Strauss.’

Neuroanthropology https://neuroanthropology.net/2009/11/08/thinking-through-

claude-levi-strauss/

• Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1985 (1963). Structural analysis in linguistics and in

anthropology. In Robert Innis, ed. Semiotics-An Introductory Anthology. Indiana

University Press. Pp.110-128.

• White, Hayden. 1973. Introduction. In Metahistory (Baltimore). Pp. 1-42

• White, Hayden. 2014. The Practical Past. In The Practical Past (Evanston, Ill,).

Pp. 2-24.

• Whorf, Benjamin. 1956. The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to

Language. In Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings. Cambridge:

MIT. Pp. 134-159.

https://neuroanthropology.net/2009/11/08/thinking-through-claude-levi-strauss/

Structuralism: Lecture for Research Paradigms (FOAR 701)

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