Structuralist theorists are interested in identifying and

analyzing the structures that underlie all cultural

phenomena—and not just literature. They want to
understand the "deep structure" of football games. Of
families. Of political systems. Of fashion. Of chemistry
classes and of theory study guides.
Structuralists got the notion that everything could be
analyzed in terms of a deep structure from the
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He came up with this
idea that language is a "sign system" made up of
unchanging patterns and rules. The structuralists who
were influenced by Saussure took that deep structure
idea even deeper: If underlying patterns or structures
govern language (they said), doesn't that mean that
underlying patterns or structures shape all human
experience?
Because structuralism emerged from linguistics,
theorists from this school make a big deal about
language. But what really is language, anyway?
Structuralists define "language" super broadly: sure,
language is that thing we do when we open our mouths
and put some words together in a sentence. But for
structuralists language can be any form of signaling—
not just speech or words, but anything that involves
communication. Red, yellow and green traffic lights?
Yup, that's a language. National flags? Check. Our fancy
Louis Vuitton bag that we wouldn't be caught dead
without in public? Yes dahling, that's key to the
language of "fashion": by sporting that bag we're
signaling to everyone who stares after us in envy: "I'm
stylish and I'm loaded."
Structuralist thought is pretty central to the way we
approach reading and talking about great books. When
it comes to literature, structuralist theorists care about
discovering the structures or rules that govern groups of
literary works. So when we talk about the narrative
elements of a novel, for example—things like plot,
character, conflict, setting, point of view—we're
borrowing the structuralist idea that there are certain
principles or structures that can be found in all novels.
The same goes for other types of literature. Whether
we're talking about epic poetry, or tragic drama, or
postmodern literature, we're assuming that there are
certain "structures" that these texts have in common
with one another. Like the green-means-go of traffic
lights, but more relevant in a lit class.

Why Should I Care?

When we try to define things, we often start with what
they're not. It's hot because it's 97 degrees out, but we
understand that because we know it's not cold.
Something's cooked because it's not raw. The
Kardashians are famous because they're not not famous
(is there any other reason?). Structuralism is all about
determining sets of opposites and using those to figure
out deep patterns underlying the structure of pretty
much anything.
Structuralism is great because, according to the
theorists who love it and live by it, it can be applied to
whatever you want to learn more about the deep
structures responsible for the world as we know it. It's
about understanding those underlying patterns that
govern how we behave, how we speak, how and why
we write literature. Structuralism, in other words, gives
you a blueprint that you can redraw to map onto
whatever you want.
Why Should Theorists Care?
If you're a theorist, then you should extra care about
structuralism. Because without structuralism, we
wouldn't have a whole bunch of other pretty important
theories. Heard of post-structuralism? That's the one
that came after structuralism. Deconstruction? Another
way of saying not-structuralism. Queer theory? That
one's totally related too. So, none of those would exist if
it weren't for structuralism.
But why? The simple answer is that many of the
theories that came afterstructuralism first developed
as critiques of structuralism. Some scholars and
academics looked at structuralism, decided it wasn't
their thing, and then when they began explaining the
problems with structuralism, ended up with a whole
bunch of new fun theories that built on structuralism
but went beyond it. So, regardless of whether we agree
with structuralists or not, we have to thank them for
one thing: their ideas led to an explosion of many other,
possibly better, definitely more adventurous, branches
of theory.

How Does It Work?

1. Analysis of patterns in language & media, taking into
account the structure + the human faculties of
comprehension.
2. Antihumanism: the abolishment of the individual.
The boundaries of language force speakers to think in
certain ways, thus is it so irrational to assume that
these boundaries affect action as well?
 3. Determinism: People are prisoners of language and
cannot escape, no more than a physicist can find an
observation point outside of nature.
4. Consideration of clothing, etiquette, myth, gesture,
etc., as ‘languages’; less focus on content, more on
patterns & structure.
5. However, offered a new principle of certainty, a
“science of the permanent” (Claude Lévi-Strauss).
6. Johannes Weissinger marked this as one of the most
extraordinary of modern intellectual trends,
describing it as “the penetration of mathematics,
mathematical methods, and above all the
mathematical way of thinking, into areas which
previously appeared to be closed to it.”

When Did It Originate?

 Principal figures in the movement are the linguist

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), the anthropologist

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2005), literary critic
Roland Barthes (1915-1980), and linguist Noam
Chomsky (1928-present).
 Others associated with it are child psychologist Jean

Piaget (1896-1980), intellectual historian Michel

Foucault (1926-1984), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
 (1901-1981), and Marxist philosopher Louis
Althusser (1918-1990).
 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of
modern linguistics, is generally regarded as the father
of structuralism.
 He distinguished between actual speech acts or
utterances (parole) and the underlying system one
learns when one learns a language (langue). He
argued that linguistics should concentrate on the
latter.
 Saussure urged that synchronic linguistics should
take the place over diachronic or historical linguistics,
i.e. defining the elements of linguistics in terms of
their relations with one another.
 Following Saussure’s suggestions, Jakobson and
other linguists produced analyses of sound systems
of various languages.
 For Lévi-Strauss, these structural analyses in
phonology, with their descriptions of systems of rules
and oppositions that may operate unconsciously,
provided a model for structuralism.
Synopsis: How Is Structuralism Relevant To Me?
 Introduced determinism as a significant issue. Forces

one to ask oneself whether or not they believe in free

will.
 Allows further understanding of contemporary
thought―why historical ideologies are so different
from those of today. Structuralism’s death was
modernity’s turning point.
 Elucidates the spectrum of objective vs. subjective,

tough- versus tender-minded realms of thought,

allowing one to see where one’s own thought lies
thereupon.
 Alerts people to how they are limited by their

language & vocabularies, perhaps inspiring the

learning of new words or even new languages (e.g.
the German word ‘schadenfreude‘, which has no
English equivalent). There is no such thing as a
synonym: every word has its own nuances which
make it distinct from similar ones.
 Fostering awareness that everything has symbolic

value; each thing represents more things, and the

chain of these is what leads to systematic structures.
.