Structuralism

Structuralism is the name given to a wide range of discourses that study underlying structures of signification. Signification occurs wherever there is a meaningful event or in the practice of some meaningful action. Hence the phrase, "signifying practice”. Such an analysis would reveal the patterns that characterize the system that makes such texts and practices possible. One cannot see a structure or a system per se. As a matter of fact, it would be inconvenient for us if people were aware at all times of the structures that make the signifying practices possible. Rather, they remain unconscious but still retain the necessary aspects that convey their purpose in imparting information. Structuralism therefore promises to offer insights into what makes people the way people are.

This, in fact, is exactly what structuralism is about. 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, families, political systems, fashion, chemistry classes, and of theory study guides.

Structuralists have the notion that everything could be analyzed in terms of a deep structure. Ferdinand de Saussurecame 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 further: If underlying patterns or structures govern language, as logic would have it, the underlying patterns or structures shape all human experience. Because structuralism emerged from linguistics, theorists from this school deals primarily with language. Language may be defined simply as that thing people do when people open mouths and put some words together in a sentence. For structuralists, language can be any form of signaling—not just speech or words, but anything that involves communication including nonverbal cues. To look at the implications of structuralism for cultural and literary studies, structuralist literary critics pay close attention to literary form, leading some skeptics who knew little about structuralism to say that they were not different from new critics.In fact, they proposed a sharply different set of goals from the new critics, so different that the critical world, accustomed to new critical assumptions, had a tough time recognizing and processing the radical shift of structuralist thinking. In structuralist thinking, the world is not something that one discover. It is something that people produce and construct, through language. In learning a new language,one also learn a new way of seeing and understanding. The structures one apprehend in the world depend on the way the human mind imposes structure.

Structuralism as a school of thought emphasizes the view that society is prior to individuals. It employs the nature of social interaction as patterned behavior and uses it as a tool in all sociological analysis.The elements which are basic to human mind and those deemed universally applicable determine the possible varieties of social structure.