Dis(order)

You may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. --T.H.White, The Once and Future King

Why theory?
The main reason for studying theory at the same time as literature is that it forces you to deal consciously with the problem of ideologies...There are many truths and the one you will find depends partly on the ideology you start with. [Studying theory] means you can take your own part in the struggles for power between different ideologies. It helps you to discover elements of your own ideology, and understand why you hold certain values unconsciously. It means no authority can impose a truth on you in a dogmatic way--and if some authority does try, you can challenge that truth in a powerful way, by asking what ideology it is based on... Theory is subversive because it puts authority in question. - Bonnycastle, In Search of Authority, p. 34

ideology
The term ideology describes the beliefs, attitudes, and habits of feeling which a society inculcates in order to generate an automatic reproduction of its structuring premises. Ideology is what preserves social power in the absence of direct coercion. (Ryan)

Until lions tell their stories, tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.
African proverb
truth told by the ones in power

Literary theory can handle Bob Dylan just as well as John Milton. -Terry Eagleton

 Now we can treat this image as part of a system that signifies a practice...
Once upon a time, this picture represented only a bird ...

The world as a text...

Empiricists would name a thing or a mental object Logos would hold that meaning is inherent ....

There is always something yet to be determined

Paradigm shift
in the Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), Thomas Kuhn demonstrated how all knowledge produced within communities condition the questions which might be posed. This framework of knowledge is termed as paradigm.
Radical reconstitution of facts occur within a community Copernican shift

The Name Game

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. Genesis 2:19-20.

Structuralist Philosophy
Language and history precede the self. We are born into a world where language is already there and history has already decided how language will be used.
Before Saussaure, the study of language (philology) was essentially historical, tracing change and development in phonology and semantics within and between languages or groups of languages. Diachronic linguistics or historical linguistics:
Language, seen thus, is a word-heap gradually accumulated over time and its primary function is to refer to things in the world.

In other words, words are mere symbols that correspond to referents. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure raised the following two questions that helped the development of structuralism:
What is the object of linguistic investigation? What is the relationship between words and things?

 Saussures semiotics (science of signs) is a scientific reexamination of language.

Language is systematic (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts); Its elements are relational The nature of linguistic elements are arbitrary (i.e. functional) Language has a social nature

Linguistic turn
In a series of lectures given by Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist proposed an abandonment of analytical perspectives in order to use language as the norm of all other manifestation of speech Language is not simply a tool devised for the representation of a pre-existing reality
It is rather a constitutive part of reality, deeply implicated in the way the world is constructed as meaningful
Langue and parole

 Language, seen thus, is a word-heap gradually accumulated over time and its primary function is to refer to things in the world. In other words, words are mere symbols that correspond to referents.
Before Saussure, the study of language (philology) was essentially historical, tracing change and development in phonology and semantics within and between languages or groups of languages.
Diachronic linguistics

Langue and Parole

Saussure focuses on what makes a language what it is at any given moment, forgetting about time altogether. Synchronicl inguistics. Synchronic linguistics studies what he calls la langue (which is French for "language"):: the language system. an arrangement of interrelated elements and accounts for the way these elements relate to each other. The elements in Saussures language system are signs. It is because of the specific ways in which these signs interrelate in the system that it is possible to say anything at all. When we do say anything it is an instance of what Saussure calls parole (French for speech). An instance of parole can be called an utterance. An utterance is any meaningful event that has been made possible and governed to an extent by a pre-existing system of signs.

The Cat
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English catt, probably from Late Latin cattus, catta cat. Date: before 12th century. 1 a: a carnivorous mammal (Felis catus) long domesticated as a pet and for catching rats and mice b: any of a family (Felidae) of carnivorous usually solitary and nocturnal mammals (as the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah). 2: a malicious woman. 3: a strong tackle used to hoist an anchor to the cathead of a ship.

Ferdinand de Saussure and structural linguistics Course on General Linguistics (1915).

He understood language as a differential system.

Meaning is a function of difference, not identity. There is no "identity," no natural relation, between word and thing.

The meaning of a word is a function of its signifiers difference from other signifiers: Meaning is also a function of a words differential relationships between signifieds: And finally, meaning is a function of difference in the sense that the same word can mean different things depending on the context in which it appears
"the old man" "The old man the boat"

We determine the meaning of the word man (or any other word) retroactively, by using the clues provided by the words that follow it; thus, meaning arises relationally, or differentially. It is not immediately present in the word itself.
binary oppositions the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, conventional, not natural, socially constructed.

1. Structuralism as a method of classification a. underlying or hidden principles b. internalization of conceptual frameworks

i. a system of signs ii. Sign = signifier + signified The sign (or word) is made up of two parts, a signifier (the acoustic image) and a signified (the mental concept). iii, Any signifier that does not evoke a signified is not a word.

Signs dont have to be words of course.

i. If the basic units of language can be analyzed as sign systems, then it must be possible to categorize larger units of language ii. If words can be understood as signs, than cant we do the same for all forms of meaning-making? iii. Structural Anthropology. An entry point for cultural analysis. Structuralists are interested in the interrelationship between UNITS ( also called "surface phenomena," ) and RULES (the ways that units can be put together. )

Structuralism
The structuralists drew an analogy between language systems and social systems Language has a systematic (synchronic) as well as a historical (diachronic) form They defined societies as complex systems ruled by a social contract
The participant are not always conscious of this (latent) contract

Structuralism is a unified theory that aims to establish the overall structure of society at large

 Logocentrism puts meaning at the centre, imagines that the signified exists in some realm of pure consciousness and then finds its outward form in language. Saussure's phonocentrism and his logocentrism, learned from the culture he inhabits, contradict the radical possibilities of his argument that meaning is an effect of the signifier, that the priority belongs to language itself, that we learn to mean.

Language and society

What is the status of words in society Is literature to be compared to ritual, or does it work in a distinctively different way? According to Geoffrey Hartman, these questions lead to two important discoveries: 1. Myths and arts, as models productive of social cohesion, have an exemplary role in society 2. All myths are homologous in structure as well as analogous in function.

An example

Three characters: princess, stepmother, and prince A princess is persecuted by a stepmother and rescued (and married) by a prince ex. Cinderella units are:princess, stepmother, and prince "rules" are: stepmothers are evil, princesses are victims, and princes and princesses have to marry.
Structuralism analyses the relationship between units and rules.

Structuralist notions on units and rules

Structuralists believe that the underlying structures which organize units and rules into meaningful systems are generated by the human mind itself, and not by sense perception. As such, the mind is itself a structuring mechanism which looks through units and files them according to rules. So structuralism sees itself as a science of humankind, and works to uncover all the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel

Structuralist analysis posits these systems as universal

Every human mind in every culture at every point in history has used some sort of structuring principle to organize and understand cultural phenomena. Every human culture has some sort of language, which has the basic structure of all language: words/phonemes are combined according to a grammar of rules to produce meaning. Every human culture similarly has some sort of social organization All of these organizations are governed, according to structuralism, by structures which are universal.

Structure

A structure is any conceptual system that has the following three properties: Wholeness:
This means that the system functions as a whole, not just as a collection of independent parts.

Transformation:
This means that the system is not static, but capable of change. New units can enter the system, but when they do they're governed by the rules of the system.

Self-Regulation:
This is related to the idea of transformation. You can add elements to the system, but you can't change the basic structure of the system no matter what you add to it. The transformations of a system never lead to anything outside the system.

Saussure ideas on linguistics

I: THE NATURE OF THE LINGUISTIC SIGN Language is based on a NAMING process, by which things get associated with a word or name.

The linguistic SIGN (a key word) is made of the union of a concept and a sound image. A more common way to define a linguistic SIGN is that a SIGN is the combination of a SIGNIFIER and a SIGNIFIED. Saussure says the sound image is the SIGNIFIER and the concept the SIGNIFIED.

The SIGN, as union of a SIGNIFIER and a SIGNIFIED, has two main characteristics.
The SIGN, as union of a SIGNIFIER and a SIGNIFIED, has two main characteristics. This principle dominates all ideas about the STRUCTURE of language. It makes it possible to separate the signifier and signified, or to change the relation between them. The second characteristic of the SIGN is that the signifier exists in TIME, and that time can be measured as LINEAR.

II: LINGUISTIC VALUE

Thought is a shapeless mass, which is only ordered by language. One of the questions philosophers have puzzled over for centuries is whether ideas can exist at all without language. No ideas preexist language; language itself gives shape to ideas and makes them expressible. The VALUE of a sign is determined, however, not by what signifiers get linked to what particular signifieds, but rather by the whole system of signs used within a community. VALUE is the product of a system or structure (LANGUE), not the result of individual relations (PAROLE).

III.SYNTAGMATIC AND ASSOCIATIVE RELATIONS

The most important kind of relation between units in a signifying system, is a SYNTAGMATIC relation. This means, basically, a LINEAR relation. In spoken or written language, words come out one by one .Because language is linear, it forms a chain, by which one unit is linked to the next. An example The cat sat on the mat The mat sat on the cat English word order :SVO Japanese word order:SOV etc.

SYNTAGMS
Combinations or relations formed by position within a chain are called SYNTAGMS. The terms within a syntagm acquire VALUE only because they stand in opposition to everything before or after them. Each term IS something because it is NOT something else in the sequence. SYNTAGMATIC relations are most crucial in written and spoken language, in DISCOURSE, where the ideas of time, linearity, and syntactical meaning are important.

ASSOCIATIVE
Signs are stored in your memory, for example, not in syntagmatic links or sentences, but in ASSOCIATIVE groups. "Education" "-tion":education, relation, association Similar associations: education, teacher, textbook, college, expensive. Random set of linkages: education, baseball, computer games, psychoanalysis ASSOCIATIVE relations are only in your head, not in the structure of language itself, whereas SYNTAGMATIC relations are a product of linguistic structure.

Conclusion: Saussure's structuralism is based upon three assumptions

the systematic nature of language, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts the relational conception of the elements of language, where linguistic "entities" are defined in relationships of combination and contrast to one another the arbitrary nature of linguistic elements, where they are defined in terms of the function and purpose they serve rather than in terms of their inherent qualities

The Structuralists
Saussure (Course in general linguistics, 1915) holds that linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology [signs]): 1. What is the object of linguistic investigation? 2. What is the relationship between words and things? Langue (social system) and Parole (individual utterance) Levi-Strauss sought the common element of all cultures, traceable ultimately to universal structures embedded deep in the human mind (The Raw and the Cooked). Mythemes. Vladimir Propp (1928) studied fairytales to trace 7 possible characters and 31 functions. A.J. Greimas (Structural Semiotics 1966) combined Saussure and Levi-Strauss to find a pattern for all stories, centring on the conflict between the heros quest for individual freedom and the constraints of the existing order. Roland Barthe in S/Z: to see whole landscape in a bean to see all the worlds stories within a single culturethe text thereby loses its difference.