Structuralism is a theoretical and methodological approach to the study of all cultural products such as language, mythologies, literature, kinship relations, rituals, fashion, etc. The structuralists subjected these and similar social phenomena to a type of analysis that they called “structural analysis”. It originated and developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s. However, its foundations had already been laid long ago in the work done in linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Prince Nicholas Troubetzkoy, and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). The main theoreticians and practitioners of structuralism were Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. Aspects of structuralism were also influential in the work of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913)
The basic insights that underlie the emergence of the structuralist movement were first formulated in the field of linguistics. It was done by Saussure, a French-speaking Swiss linguist. His Course in General Linguistics, posthumously published in 1916, laid the foundation for the idea of structuralism. In this work:
- Firstly, he denied the view of a natural connection between words and things and argued that it reduced language to a mere “name-giving system.”
- Secondly, he argued that language is a system of signs in relation: no sign has meaning in isolation; rather, its signification depends on its difference from other signs.
- Finally, Saussure made a distinction between two dimensions of language: langue, the system, and rules of language, from parole or speech.
Sign: Signifier/Signified
Language is a system of signs. For Saussure, a sign is essentially a complex entity constituted of two elements: “signifier” and “signified.”
· The signifier is the sound image or its written equivalent.
· The concept evoked by it is the signified.
At first, it is tempting to think of the sign as the word. However, the sound image or word by itself is not a sign. It becomes a sign only when it evokes a concept. Again, it is tempting to think of the signified as the object referred to by the word. However, the signified for Saussure is not the object, but the concept, or meaning. For instance, the word (sound image) “tree” is called a sign only because it carries the concept “tree”.
To illustrate this process, Saussure imagines language as a piece of paper: thought is the front and sound is the back; one cannot cut the front without also cutting the back. Likewise, says Saussure, in language, “one can neither divide sound from thought nor think from the sound.” Thus the linguistic sign should be construed as a two-sided psychological entity. The role of language is to “serve as a link between thought and sound”. Saussure points out; that the sign once established “always eludes the individual or social will.”
The two important characteristics of the signifier-signified relation are: First, the association between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Second, the signifier is linear in its nature and thus represents a span that is measurable in a single dimension.
Arguments of the Structuralists
- The Structuralists argue that it is language and its structure that produce reality
- Language is responsible for thought and it determines man’s perceptions
- Meaning does not come from individuals but from the rules of language and the overall ‘system’ that controls individuals.
- Therefore, the individual is subordinated and dominated by “the structure.”
- It is the structure that produces meaning, not the individual.
- It is a specific language that is at the base of such domination over the individual.
Structuralism and History Writing
The logic of Saussure’s structuralism suggests that words are signs defined by their difference from other words and signs. Language is, therefore, constructed as a series of signs produced by the culturally determined signifier (word)–signified (concept) connection. The modernist historian, in practice, establishes a relatively stable connection between word and world (when the historian uses the word ‘nationalism’ he/ she has enough data to confidently evidence its existence to be secure in the belief that it means what he/she thinks it means). The modernist historian chooses to believe that this union allows for the writing of truthful narrative interpretations based on his/her depth of both contemporary cultural knowledge and historical context. However, from a structuralist perspective, language is about the structure of the arbitrary connections between signifiers and does not look beyond the language system at the historically determined signified – the empirical. Structuralists do not search for changes in language or word meanings as being constituted by an external change over time; instead, they seek out meaning in structural relationships. Because the meaning of the sign results from the arbitrary link between the signifier and the signified. Then the language is a poor conductor of historical truth (or any other kind of truth). The historian’s language is, therefore, unavoidably presentist and ideological.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
In his Introduction to a Science of Mythology, he arrived at some influential insights into the nature of myth. Drawing on Saussure’s ideas, he suggested that myth was a specific form and use of language. According to Lévi-Strauss, in addition to langue and parole, it uses a third referent that combines the properties of the first two. On the one hand, a myth refers to events having taken place long ago; but what gives the myth an enduring value is that the specific pattern described is timeless: it explains the present and past as well as the future. He considered that in modern societies myth has been largely replaced by politics: for example, the French Revolution is viewed as both a sequence of events in the past and as a timeless pattern detectable in contemporary French social structure. Hence the myth had a double structure, historical and ahistorical. He relegated history to the status of a myth.
Rolland Barthes
A renowned French linguist and thinker carried the arguments further. According to him, the claim of historians to write about the reality of the past is fake. The history written by them is not about the past but ‘an inscription on the past pretending to be a likeness of it, a parade of signifiers acts as a collection of facts’. According to Barthes, historians’ description of the past basically refers to several concepts about the past and not the reality of the past. Thus Barthes considers objectivity as ‘the product of what might be called the referential illusion’. This illusion lies in the historians’ belief that there is a past world to be discovered through meticulous research.
Structuralism initiated the Linguistic and Postmodern Turn in critical thinking. It considers language, instead of reality, as constitutive of social meaning and human consciousness.
