STRUCTURALISM

Structuralism is one of the most influential modes of critical

and cultural analysis of the 20th century.

The word structure is derived from the Latin ‘Structura”

which means to build. It is the quality of being well organized
in terms of the arrangement and relations between the parts of
thought.

Structuralism believes that the word is organized as

structures.

Structures are forms made up of units that are arranged in a

specific order.
E.g. a poem is a structure constituted by units
such as sounds, phrases, pauses, words and
punctuations. Every unit is connected to every
other unit. The poem is thus result of this
connection. In order to understands the poem we
need to read all these component parts together.
The meaning of the text is not confined to or
generated by any one of these unites. It is result of
all working together. This is structure.
Structuralism‟s emphasis on language

or formal properties of texts.

Structuralism is the study of structures

of texts-film, novel, drama, poem, etc.

with specific attention to the rules or

grammar, of elements.
Structuralism looks at the relationships between

the various elements within the self contained,

well organized structure of a text in order to

understand the ways (the grammar or rules) by

which the texts produces meaning. It focuses on

the form of a text by looking at elements like

voice, character, setting and their combination.

A pithy summary of structuralist literary criticism is provided by
Jonathan Culler.

Structuralism is an attempt to describe the language of

literature in linguistic terms so as to capture the distinctiveness
of literary structures.

It is the development of a „narratology‟ that identifies the

constituents of a narrative and their various combinations.

It is an attempt to show how literary meaning depends upon

the codes produced by prior discourses of a culture.

It promotes analysis the reader‟s role in producing the

meaning.
Major Figures
 Ferdinand de Saussure
 Claude Lavi Strauss
 A. J. Greimas
 Jonathan Culler
 Roland Barthes
 Roman Jakobson
 Vladimir Propp
 Terence Hawkes
 The Linguistic Background:
Saussurean Linguistics
Structuralism has its origin in the science of

linguistics.

Saussure introduced Structuralism in

Linguistics, making a revolutionary break

in the study of language.

Ferdinand de Saussure‟s work A Course

in General Linguistics (1915) (English

Translation in 1959) proposed that

language was a system in which

components existed in relation to each

other.
From this point of evolution, the movement

under the label of Structuralism started in

the field of language and literary theory,

which is concerned with language in a most

general sense (not just the language of

utterance in speech and writing).

Saussure explains how concepts in
language “are purely differential, not
positively defined by their content but
negatively defined by their relationship
with other terms of the system”.
Saussure was proposing that the radical
thinking of the nature of language.
It is not enough to see how words

acquire meaning over time.

(Diachronic Study).

The Diachronic Study: the study of

language takes into account the change

and development through time.

We need to see how words mean within

a period and as part of general system of

language. This is Synchronic Study

where we look at words within the

current state of the language and not in

history.
The Synchronic Study: the study of

language takes into account those elements

that are contemporaneous (at the same time/of

that period) at given time.

Saussure makes three significant moves in

his analysis of language.

First he divides language into two main parts.
Langue- the set of rules by which we combine
words into sentences uses certain words in certain
ways, rules which are rarely altered and which all
users of a language follow. The system that each
of us uses to generate discourse that is intelligible
to others.
Parole- refers to our individual utterances or
everyday speech where we use words in particular
contexts.
Second Saussure proposes a relational theory of

language.

Words existed in relation to other words

&

The meaning of each word was dependent

upon the meaning of other words.

Meaning was the result of being able to

recognize the difference between words- cat

is cat because it is not bat, hat, and rat.

It is different in terms of the sound

produced and the way in which it is written.

Meaning thus emerges in the difference or

opposition between words.

We worked with the binary or paired

oppositions to make sense of words and

sounds in speech.
Cat, bat, hat and rat are all words in the

system of language. They are related to

each other because they belong to the

same system and because they make

sense only in being different from each

other.
In third move, Saussure suggests that

words and their meanings are not

natural but created through repeated

use and convention.

The word cat does not naturally refer to a four legged

furry animal of a particular kind with particular habits.

The pronunciation or writing of the word does not

invoke the animal. It associates the name or word cat to

the animal through long use. There is no relationship

between the word and the meaning. Meaning is

attributed through its use by a community of language

users.
Structuralism is founded on the basic conception

of the sign, the signifier and the signified.

Every linguistic sign has two parts: the signifier

and the signified.

The signifier (word) is the sound pattern of the

word and the signified is the concept which is

what the word means for the use of language.

The word (signifier) is connected to the

meaning or concept (the signified) in a

purely arbitrary relationship.

There is no actual relation between

the signifier and the signified.

 Saussure’s model is as follows:

Sign

Signifier Signified
(Sound/phonetic component or word) (Concept behind the word)

The elements of language acquire meaning not as

the result of some connection between words and
things, but only as parts of a system of relations.
Consider the sign-system of traffic lights:
red – amber – green
Signifier („red‟) signified (stop)

The sign signifies only within the system

„red = stop

green = go

amber = prepare for red or green‟

Each colour in the traffic system signifies not

by asserting a positive univocal meaning but

by marking a difference, a distinction within

a system of opposites and contrasts: traffic-

light „red‟ is precisely „not-green‟; „green‟ is

„not-red‟.
The relation between signifier and signified is
arbitrary.
There is no natural bond between red and stop, no
matter how natural it may feel.
For Saussure the sound was a material manifestation
of the abstract concept.
Words are signs that enable us to understand the
concept or the object.
Words are like a form of transport that takes you to
the object of concept. They help us construct the
concept in our mind.
Thus the three principles of language that Saussure put
forwards:
Arbitrariness: words have no real connection to their meanings or
the things they describe. The connections are established by
convention.
Relationality: words make sense to us, or have „value‟ for us in
their relationality: in their difference from other words. Words are
therefore related to each other in the form of difference and have no
absolute value of their own. As above every word is opposed to,
different from another word, and meaning emerges in this difference.
Systematicity: the structure of language, or the system, ensures
that we recognize difference.
Saussure also differentiated between the

syntagmatic & paradigmatic aspects of language.

The word Syntagmatic is from the Greek,

„Suntagma‟ which means to arrange together.

It analyses a set of forms in sequential

relationship and is often contrasted with the

paradigmatic dimension.
The word paradigmatic comes from the

Greek „paradigma‟ which means a

model shown side by side.

It is set of items that form mutually

exclusive choices in particular syntactic

roles.
Language is one among many sign-systems.

The science of such systems is called

„semiotics‟ or „semiology‟.

It is usual to regard structuralism and

semiotics as belonging to the same theoretical

universe.
The American philosopher C. S. Peirce made a
useful distinction between three types of sign:
the „iconic‟ (where the sign resembles its
referent, e.g. a picture of a ship or a road-sign for
falling rocks);
the „indexical‟ (where the sign is associated,
possibly causally, with its referent, e.g. smoke as a
sign of fire, or clouds as a sign of rain);
the „symbolic‟ (where the sign has an arbitrary
relation to its referent, e.g. language).
The first major developments in structuralist

studies were based upon advances in the study

of phonemes, the lowest-level elements in the

language system.

A phoneme is a meaningful sound, one that is

recognized or perceived by a language user.

Hundreds of different „sounds‟ may be

made by the speakers of particular languages,

but the number of phonemes will be limited.

Roland Barthes draws attention to this

principle in the title of his most celebrated

book, S/Z (1970).

The essential point of view language is that

underlying our use of language is a system, a

pattern of paired opposites, binary

oppositions.

At the level of the phoneme, these include

nasalized/non-nasalized, vocalic/ non-

vocalic, voiced/unvoiced.
In a sense, speakers appear to have
internalized a set of rules which manifests
itself in their evident competence in
operating language.
The fundamental insights on which
structuralism is based are those provided
by Ferdinand de Saussure & Claude
Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi-Strauss, the French
Cultural Anthropologists found the
linguistic model very useful for
examining the different systems of habits,
customs and rituals underlying different
cultures.
He comes to conclusion that cultural
systems worked like language systems.
He analyzed cultural phenomena including

mythology, kinship, religious rites, games etc

and argued that these structures in the

phenomena form deep grammar of society

which originates in the mind and operates in

us unconsciously.
Claude Levi-Strauss in his conceptualization

of the fundamental and universal structures on

pairs of binary oppositions such as hot/cold,

male/female, cooked/raw.

It is the mind that sees binary oppositions and

complex networks of such relationships.

The liveliest examples of such analyses can

be found in the earlier writings of Roland

Barthes, especially in the wide-ranging

Mythologies (1957) and Système de la mode

(1967). The theory of these studies is given in

Elements of Semiology.(1967)
STRUCTURALIST NARRATOLOGY
Narrative is an extraordinarily complex term
in literary and critical theory.
It is used interchangeably with story, form,
plot and even structure.
Paul Cobley defines “narrative is a
particular form of representation
implementing signs in a particular sequence
or order”.
For the purpose of literary and cultural
analysis we can define narrative as:
The act representation using signs in particular
sequences so that we construct specific notions of
reality, self and the world.
Our construction and interpretation of the world
through the use of words, sounds, figures,
gestures and relations.
Intrinsically linked to language (sounds, words,
gestures are all signs, or language)
The study of narrative was greatly facilitated by
structuralism. It is systematized the study of plot,
character, and symbol provided a formula for
narratives.
One of the earliest practitioners of structuralist
narratology was A. J. Greimas, whose work in
Semantique Structurale (Structural Semantics-1966)
built upon Saussure‟s idea of Binary Opposition to
develop what has been called structural semiotics
(semiotics is the study of sign).
literature is already linguistic
It is true that literature uses language as its
medium, but this does not mean that the
structure of literature is identical with the
structure of language.
Structuralists agree that literature has a
special relationship with language: it draws
attention to the very nature and specific
properties of language.
In this respect structuralist poetics are closely
related to Formalism.

Structuralist narrative theory develops from

certain elementary linguistic analogies.

Syntax (the rules of sentence construction) is the

basic model of narrative rules. Todorov and others
talk of „narrative syntax‟.

The most elementary syntactic division of the

sentence unit is between subject and predicate.
Propp‟s approach can be understood if

we compare the „subject‟ of a sentence

with the typical characters (hero,

villain, etc.) and the „predicate‟ with

the typical actions in such stories.

The whole corpus of tales is constructed

upon the same basic set of thirty-one

„functions‟.

A function is the basic unit of the narrative

„language‟ and refers to the significant

actions which form the narrative.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the structuralist
anthropologist, analyses the Oedipus
myth in a manner which is truly
structuralist in its use of the linguistic
model.
He calls the units of myth „mythemes‟
(compare phonemes and morphemes in
linguistics).
They are organized in binary oppositions

like the basic linguistic units.

Lévi-Strauss is not interested in the

narrative sequence, but in the structural

pattern which gives the myth its meaning.

He looks for the „phonemic‟ structure of myth.

He believes that this linguistic model will

uncover the basic structure of the human mind –

the structure which governs the way human

beings shape all their institutions, artifacts and

forms of knowledge.
A. J. Greimas paid close attention to the way in
which oppositions help us organize meaning.
He suggested that there are semantic units that
work in opposition.
He termed these „semes‟, and argued that
meaning emerges in the contrast between semes.
Some common semes would be:
Light/dark
Up/down
Male/female
This binary opposition is the primary structures

of all meaning-production.

It is possible that the paired opposites or semes

as positive and negative, where one element is the

negative component of the pair: dark as the

negative of light, female is the negative of male.

He proposes three pairs of binary oppositions

which include all six roles (actants) he

requires:

Subject/Object

Sender/Receiver

Helper/Opponent
The pairs describe three basic patterns which perhaps recur
in all narrative:
1. Desire, search, or aim (subject/object).: the subject has a
certain aim and desire directed at a particular goal or Object to
be achieved.
2. Communication (sender/receiver): the subject is sent out on
his or mission by a sender who facilitates the mission, and will
reward the subject upon her or his success. The receiver is the
one who rewards.
3. Auxiliary support or hindrance (helper/opponent): the
subject is helped in his or her quest and mission by the Helper
and obstructed by the Opponent.
In many cases the categories might merge. For
example the sender actant might very well be the
receiver. According to Greimas, a formula for the
narrative can, therefore be as follows;

contract (or prohibition) > violation >

punishment

lack of contract (disorder) > establishment of

contract (order)
Contract or Prohibition where the Subject is
sent out on a quest or mission.

The Subject might accept the contract or

disobey the contract. If the Subject accepts then
we have establishment of contract. If the subject
declines or disobey we have violation of contract.
If the Subject accepts we have rewards (from
sender-receiver), if the Subject violates we have
punishment.
Tzvetan Todorov like Greimas, builds on
the notion that there is definite grammar to all
texts. Todorov isolates three specific
components of texts.
Semantic: which would be the form.
Syntactic: which would be the arrangement
of structural units
Verbal: words and phrases through which the
story is told.
Todorov‟s interest lies mainly in the

syntactic arrangement of units within a

narrative.

He defines two key structural components of

all texts:

Propositions (plan/scheme) and Sequences.

Propositions are the basic actions in a
narrative. In a novel like R.K. Narayan‟s The
Guide, the basic propositions may be listed as
following.
Raju meets Rosie
Rosie and Raju fall in love
Raju encourages her in her art
Rosie becomes popular
Raju betrays her trust
Raju goes away
Raju transformed into a saint by accident
He decides to accept his sainthood and fulfils
his vow.
Theses propositions have to be arranged in
sequences to generate a story. There can be
many sequences in texts. Propositions can be
arranged in any of the three sequences;
1. Temporal: where there is a sequence in
time (this happened and then this happened)
2. Logical: where there is a cause-effect
sequences (this happened and therefore this
happened)
3. Spatial: where the plot has many sub-
divisions (this happened meanwhile this
other thing also happened)
Gérard Genette developed his complex and
powerful theory of discourse in the context of
a study of Proust‟s À la recherche du temps
perdu.
He refines the Russian Formalist distinction
between „story‟ and „plot‟ by dividing
narrative into three levels: story (histoire),
discourse (récit), and narration.
Genette‟s essay on „Frontiers of
Narrative‟ (1966) provided an overview
of the problems of narration which has
not been bettered.
 He considers the problem of narrative
theory by exploring three binary
oppositions.
The first, „diegesis and mimesis‟
(narrative and representation), occurs in
Aristotle‟s Poetics and presupposes a
distinction between simple narrative
(what the author says in his or her own
voice as author) and direct imitation
(when the author speaks in the person of
a character).
He concludes: „Literary representation, the
mimesis of the ancients, is not, therefore,
narrative plus “speeches”: it is narrative
and only narrative.‟

The second opposition, „narration and

description‟, presupposes a distinction
between an active and a contemplative
aspect of narration.
The first is to do with actions and events, the
second with objects or characters. „Narration‟
appears, at first, to be essential, since events and
actions are the essence of a story‟s temporal and
dramatic content, while „description‟ appears to
be ancillary (supplementary) and ornamental.
„The man went over to the table and picked up a
knife‟ is dynamic and profoundly narrativistic.
 Metaphor and Metonymy

Jakobson‟s study of „aphasia‟ (speech defect)

and its implications for poetics.

Jakobson worked with aphasics (people with an

inability to use language without difficulty)

He developed theory of language. He argued

that there are two major rhetorical figures:

Metaphor & Metonymy.

Both are figures of equivalence because they substitute

a new term that is believed to be an equivalent for

main/original term.

Metaphor Eg. Traffic crawls along.

(Crawls is a term used to describe the relatively slow

movement of creature, like worms, insects that stop

and go, stop & go inspecting various things on the

way. So we have substitute insects for cars and

vehicles)
Metaphor is an act of substitution through selection &
association.

Another form of language is the use of Metonym. Metonym

is a part is substitute whole. e.g.

The orders were issued by Rashtrapati Bhavan. (now

building i.e. R B does not issue orders. It is the President of
India, who lives in Bhavan issues orders)

One word is placed next to another as being contiguous

(adjacent, neighboring).

This is principle of combination. Selection & combination

are the two ways of language operation.
He starts by stating the fundamental distinction
between horizontal and vertical dimensions of
language, a distinction related to that between
langue and parole.
1 Each element is selected from a set of possible
elements and could be substituted for another in the set.
2 The elements are combined in a sequence, which
constitutes a parole.
This distinction applies at all levels – phoneme,
morpheme, word, and sentence.
 Structuralist Poetics
Jonathan Culler made the first attempt to
assimilate French structuralism to an Anglo-
American critical perspective in Structuralist
Poetics (1975).
He prefers Noam Chomsky‟s distinction between
„competence‟ and „performance‟ to Saussure‟s
between „langue‟ and „parole‟.
The notion of „competence‟ has the advantage of
being closely associated with the speaker of a
language;
Chomsky showed that the starting-point for
an understanding of language was the native
speaker‟s ability to produce and comprehend
well-formed sentences on the basis of an
unconsciously assimilated knowledge of the
language system.
Culler brings out the significance of this
perspective for literary theory: „the real object
of poetics is not the work itself but its
intelligibility.
 His main endeavor is to shift the focus from
the text to the reader.
 He believes that we can determine the rules
that govern the interpretation of texts, but
not those rules that govern the writing of
texts.
 If we begin by establishing a range of
interpretations which seem acceptable to
skilled readers, we can then establish what
norms and procedures led to the
interpretations.
 To put it simply, skilled readers, when faced
with a text, seem to know how to make sense
of it – to decide what is a possible
interpretation and what is not.
 There seem to be rules governing the sort of
sense one might make of the most apparently
bizarre literary text.
 Culler sees the structure not in the system
underlying the text but in the system
underlying the reader‟s act of interpretation.
 Different readers produce different
interpretations, but while this has led some
theorists to despair of developing a theory of
reading at all.
 Culler later argues, in The Pursuit of Signs
(1981), that it is this variety of
interpretation which theory has to explain.
 Culler holds that a theory of the structure
of texts or genres is not possible because
there is no underlying form of
„competence‟.
 In order to read texts as literature we must
possess a „literary competence‟, just as
„linguistic competence‟ to make sense of
the ordinary linguistic utterances.
 In his work On Deconstruction: Theory
and Criticism after Structuralism (1983),
and more particularly Framing the Sign
(1988) Culler moved away from such purist
structuralism and towards a more radical
questioning of the institutional and
ideological foundations of literary
competence.
 Structuralism attracted some literary critics
because it promised to introduce a certain
rigor and objectivity into the impressionistic
realm of literature.
 According to structuralists, writing has no
origin.
 Every individual utterance is preceded by
language: in this sense, every text is made up
of the „already written‟.
Structuralists are interested not in the
development of the novel or the transition
from feudal to Renaissance literary forms,
but in the structure of narrative as such and
in the system of aesthetics governing a
period.
Their approach is necessarily static and a
historical: they are interested in neither the
moment of the text’s production (its
historical context, its formal links with past
writing, etc.) nor the moment of its
reception or ‘reproduction’.
 At the heart of structuralism is a scientific
ambition to discover the codes, the rules,
the systems, which underlie all human
social and cultural practices.
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