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STRUCTURALISM
In the 1960s, structuralism is an approach to literary
analysis grounded in structural linguistics, the science of language. By using
the techniques, methodologies, and vocabulary of linguistics, structuralism
offers a scientific view of how we achieve meaning not only in literary works
but also in all forms of communication and social behavior.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Pre-Saussurean Linguistics
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
philology, not linguistics, was the science of language. The philologists
described, compared, and analyzed the languages of the world to discover
similarities and relationships. Their approach to language study was
diachronic, that is, they traced language change throughout long expanses of
time, discovering how a particular phenomenon such as a word or sound in the
language had changed etymologically or phonologically throughout several
centuries, and whatever a similar change could be noted in other languages.
Language, they believed, mirrored the structure of the
world it imitated and therefore had no structure of its own. Known as the
mimetic theory of language, this hypothesis asserts that words (Either spoken
or written) are symbols for things in the world, each word having its own
referent – the object, concept, or idea that represents or symbolizes that
word. According to this theory, the symbol (a word) equals a thing: Symbol
(word) = thing.
In the first decade of the 1900s, a Swiss philologist
and teacher, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913), began questioning these long
– held ideas, and by so doing, triggered a reformation in language study.
Through his research and innovative theories, Saussure changed the direction
and subject matter of linguistic studies. His Course in General Linguistics,
a compilation of his 1906 – 1911 lecture notes published posthumously by his
students, is one of the seminal works of modern linguistics and forms the basis
for structuralist literary theory and practical criticism. Through the efforts
of this father of modern linguistic, nineteenth – century philology evolved
into the more multifaceted science of twentieth-century linguistic.
Saussure began his linguistic revolution by affirming
the validity and necessity of the diachronic approach to language study used by
such nineteenth-century philologist as the Grimm brothers and Karl Verner.
Structure of Language
According to Saussure, all languages are governed by
their own internal rules which do not mirror or imitate the structure of the
world. The basic building block of language is the phenomena-the smallest
meaningful (significant) sound in a language.
Although each
phenomena makes a distinct sound that is meaningful and recognizable to
speakers of a particular language, in actuality a phoneme is composed of a
family of nearly identical speech sounds called allophones.
In addition to
phonemes, another major building block of language is the morpheme-the smallest
part of a word that has lexical or grammatical significance.
Another major
building block in the structure of language is the actual arrangement of words
in a sentence or syntax.
Having established the basic building blocks of a
sentence - phonemes, morphemes, and syntax – language provides us with one
additional body of rules to govern the various interpretations or shades of
meaning such combinations of words can
evoke: semantics.
Langue and Parole
Prescriptive
grammar is the rules of English grammar invented by eighteenth and nineteenth
century purists who believe that there were certain construction that all
educated people should know. But in five or six year old native speakers of a
language have learned, Saussure calls langue, the structure of the
language that is mastered and shared by all its speakers.
Whereas langue
emphasizes the social aspects of language and an understanding of the overall
language system, an individual’s actual speech utterances and writing, Saussure
called parole. In other words for Saussure, the proper study of
linguistics is a system (langue), not the individual utterances of its speaker
(parole).
Saussure’s Redefinition of a Word
Languages must be investigated both diachronically and
synchronically, Saussure then re-examined philology’s definition of a word.
Rejecting the long-held belief that a word is a symbol that equals a thing,
Saussure proposed that words are signs made up of two parts: the signifier (a
written or spoken mark) and a signified (a concept): sign = signifier / signified.
Furthermore, the linguistic sign, declares Saussure, is
arbitrary: the relationship between the signifier (ball) and the signified (the
concept of ball) is a matter of convention.
For Saussure, language is the primary sign system
whereby we structure our world. Although semiology never became an important
new science as Saussure envisioned, a similar science was being proposed in
America almost simultaneously by philosopher and teacher Charles Sanders
Peirce. Called semiotics, this science borrowed linguistics methods used by
Saussure and applied them to all meaningful cultural phenomena. Distinguishing
among the various kinds of signs, semiotics as a field of study continues to
develop today. Because it uses structuralist methods borrowed from Saussure,
the terms semiotics and structuralism are often used interchangeably, although
the former denotes a particular field of study whereas the letter is more an
approach and methods of analysis.
Assumptions
Borrowing linguistic vocabulary, theory, and methods
from Saussure and to smaller degree from pierce, structuralist – their studies
being variously called structuralism, semiotics, stylistics, and narratology,
to name a few – believe that codes, signs, and rules govern all human social
and cultural practice, including communication. Sturcturalist want to discover
these codes which they believe give meaning to all our social and cultural
customs and behavior. The proper study of meaning and therefore reality, they
assert, is an investigation practices themselves. To discover how all the parts
fit together and function is their aim.
The proper study of literature, for the structuralists,
involves and inquiry into the conditions surroundings the act of interpretation
itself (how literary conveys meaning), not in-depth investigation of an
individual work. Because an individual works can express only the values and
beliefs of a system of which it is part, structuralists emphasize the system
(langue) whereby relate to each other, not an examination of an isolated text
(parole). They believe that a study of the system of rules that govern literary
interpretation becomes the critic’s primary task.
Such a belief
presupposes that the structure of literature is similar to the structure of
language. Before structuralism, literary theories discussed the literary
conventions-that is, the various genre or types of literature such as the
novel, the short story, or poetry. For these prestructuralist theorists, the
proper study of literature was an examination of these conventions and of how
individual texts used these conventions to make meaning or how readers use the
conventions to interpret the texts. Structuralist, however, seek out the system
of codes that they believe convey a text’s meaning. For example, how a symbol
or a metaphor imparts meaning is now of special interest. For instance, in
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” most reader assume that the
darkness of the forest equest with evil and images of light represent safety.
For the structuralist, how a symbol or any other
literary device functions becomes of chief importance, not how literary devices
initiate reality or express feelings. By explaining literature as a system of
signs encased in a cultural frame that allows that system to operate, no
longer, says structuralism, can a literary work be considered a mystical or
magical relationship between the author and the reader, the place where author
and reader share emotions, ideas, and truth.
Structuralism attempts to strip literature of its
magical power or so-called hidden meanings that can be discovered only by
small, elite group f highly trained specialists.
METHODOLOGIES
Methodologies strategy of structuralism:
- Claude Lẻvi-strauss
One of the first scholars to implement Saussure principle of
linguistic to narrative discourse in 1950s and 1960s was anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Attached to the rich symbol in myths, Lévi-Strauss spent years studying many of
the world’s myths. Myth, he assumed, possessed a structure like language. Each
individual myth was therefore an example of parole.
The meaning of any individual myth, then, depends on the interaction
and order of the mythemes within the story. Out of this structural pattern
comes the myth’s meaning.
As we unconsciously master our language’s langue, we also master
myth’s structure. Ur ability to grasp this structure, says Lévi-Strauss is
innate. Like langue, myths are simply another way we classify and organize our
world.
- Ronald Barthes
His contributions to structuralist theory is best summed up in the
title of his most famous text, s/z. In Balzac’s Sarrasine, Barthes noted that
the first s is pronounced as the s in snake, and the second as the z in zoo.
Barthes then applies his assumption that meaning develops through
difference to all social contexts, including fashion, familial relations,
dining, and literature, to name a few. When applied to literature, an
individual text is simply a message-a parole-that must be interpreted by using
the appropriate codes or signs or binary operations that form the basis of the
entire system, the langue.
- Vladimir Propp
A group of structuralists called narratologists began another kind
of structuralism, structuralist narratology, the science of narrative. Using
this idea at his starting point, Russian linguist Vladimir Propp investigated
Russian fairy tales to decode their langue. According to his analysis, which
appears in his work The Morphology of the Folktale (1968), all folk or
fairy tales are based on 31 fixed elements, or what Propp calls “functions”,
wich occur in a given sequence.
- Tzevtan Tordorov and Gerad Gennete
Another narratologist, Bulgarian Tzevtan Todorov, declares that all
stories are composed of grammatical units. By applying a rather intricate
grammatical model to narrative – dividing the texts into semantic, syntactic,
and verbal aspects-Todorov believes he can discover the narrative’s langue and
establish a grammar of narrative. An individual text (parole) interests Todorov
as ameans to describe the overall properties of literature in general (langue).
Other narratologist such as Gerard Genette and Roland Barthes have
also developed methods of analyzing a story’s structure to uncover its meaning,
each building on he former work of another narratologist an adding an
additional element or two of his own. Genette, for example, believes that
tropes or figures of speech require a reader’s special attention. Barthes on
the other hand, points us back to Todorov and provides us with more linguistic
terminology to dissect a story.
- Jonathan Culler
By the mid-1970s, Jonathan
Culler become the vice of structuralism in America and took structuralism in
yet another direction. In Structuralist Poetic (1975), Culler declared
that abstract linguist models used by narratologist tended to focus on parole,
spending too much time analyzing individual stories, poems, and novels. What
was needed, he believed, was a return to an investigation of langue, Saussure’s
main premise.
According to Culler, readers, when given a chance, will somehow make
sense out of the most bizarre text. Somehow, readers possess literary competence.
In Structuralist Poetics Culler asserts that three elements under grid any reading, for instance, of a poem:
- A poem should be unified.
- It should be thematically significant.
- This significance can take the form of reflection in poetry.
A Model of Interpretation
Many structuralists theories abound, a core of structuralist believe
that the primary signifying system is best found as a series of binary
oppositions that the reader organizes, values, and then uses to interpret the
text.
No matter what is
methodology, structuralism emphasizes form and structure, not actual content of
a text. Although individual texts must be analyze, structuralists are more
interested in the rule-governed system that underlies texts than in the texts
themselves. How a text’s underlying structural codes combine to produce the
text’s meaning rather than a reader’s personal interpretation is
structuralism’s chief interest.
Source:
Source: Bressler, Charles E. 1998. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.
Prentice Hall. New Jersey.
thank you !
BalasHapus