structuralist

Seeks underlying patterns

A structuralist analyzes systems by examining the relationships between their parts rather than the parts themselves.

The term applies across disciplines—linguistics, anthropology, literary criticism—where practitioners seek underlying patterns and rules that organize surface phenomena.

The structuralist reading emphasized binary oppositions in the text.

As an adjective, structuralist describes this approach: structuralist theory, structuralist methods.

linguistics

signifier

Meaning-bearing form

signifiedExpressed meaning symbolically
langueLinguistic system, not speech
paroleConditional early release

paradigm · phonology · syntax · grammar · morpheme · synchronic · diachronic · Chomsky · Bloomfield · arbitrariness

semiotics

sign

Mark conveying information

codeSymbolic communication system
denotationWord's explicit dictionary meaning
connotationImplied sense, not dictionary

myth · narrative · text · ideology · readerly · writerly · mythologies · signification · second-order · advertising

anthropology

Lévi-Strauss

French structural anthropologist

kinshipState of being related
mythologyBody of traditional tales
totemismBelief linking clans to symbols

bricolage · incest taboo · exchange · classification · reciprocity

legacy

deconstruction

Analysis exposing self-contradiction

DerridaGrammatology's French author
FoucaultProminent French family name
LacanFrench psychoanalytic theorist

critique · discourse · power · genealogy · anti-foundationalism · intertextuality

philosophy

epistemology

Theory of knowledge

systemConnected parts forming whole
totalityComplete aggregate amount
ahistoricalIgnoring past events

objective · scientific method · unconscious · determinism · anti-humanism · subject · agency · universal · invariant · formal

structuralist

signifier

sign

Lévi-Strauss

deconstruction

epistemology

structuralist

Opposites

Categories

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