Attempting Structuralism
One of the many new thoughts I have stumbled upon after intensively laboring through our Structuralism readings is that speaking of literature and ideology as two separate concepts which are interrelated is unnecessary. For a time I had been lost in confusion thinking that literature was something outside of ideology. Then I took a deep breath and realized that literature is an ideology and that it has many intricate relations to social power...
The way in which I try to understand Structuralism is that eventually some theorists strove for a more scientific or disciplined way in which to form an objective system in order to prove that literature formed a system that works by certain objective laws, and that these laws are how all literary works are structured. This idea that literature forms a system moves one away from the interpretation of the individual literary work and causes one to attempt to understand the larger abstract structures that contain them.
Saussure sought to prove that language is only a system of pure values and that ideas and sound are the two elements involved in its functioning. Saussure made the famous statement that, " In language there are only differences without positive terms." I began to understand this statement after reading that signs function through their relative position to one another, not through an essential value. Saussure spoke of differences in terms of sound and phonic differences and how those differences are what make it possible to distinguish one word from all the others. Saussure also speaks of how language had no ideas or sounds before the existence of the linguistic system and that the only differences have been those created by the system. He further discusses that a linguistic system is a series of differences of sound and ideas in order to make sense out of the vague and nebulous existence life would be without language. This is such an important thought because it helps us decode how meanings of words are maintained and we can see words as relational because no word can be defined in isolation from other words. It is this model of a system that gives Structuralists belief in the existence of larger structures.
The way in which I try to understand Structuralism is that eventually some theorists strove for a more scientific or disciplined way in which to form an objective system in order to prove that literature formed a system that works by certain objective laws, and that these laws are how all literary works are structured. This idea that literature forms a system moves one away from the interpretation of the individual literary work and causes one to attempt to understand the larger abstract structures that contain them.
Saussure sought to prove that language is only a system of pure values and that ideas and sound are the two elements involved in its functioning. Saussure made the famous statement that, " In language there are only differences without positive terms." I began to understand this statement after reading that signs function through their relative position to one another, not through an essential value. Saussure spoke of differences in terms of sound and phonic differences and how those differences are what make it possible to distinguish one word from all the others. Saussure also speaks of how language had no ideas or sounds before the existence of the linguistic system and that the only differences have been those created by the system. He further discusses that a linguistic system is a series of differences of sound and ideas in order to make sense out of the vague and nebulous existence life would be without language. This is such an important thought because it helps us decode how meanings of words are maintained and we can see words as relational because no word can be defined in isolation from other words. It is this model of a system that gives Structuralists belief in the existence of larger structures.
posted by L.C. Gendall at
9:34 PM
1 Comments:
i agree with what you wrote on structuralism. i never thought about language in the way in which Saussure did but once i read his thoughts it made sense to me. no word can have meaning alone from other words. i thought this though was important that you wrote too....Saussure also speaks of how language had no ideas or sounds before the existence of the linguistic system and that the only differences have been those created by the system. He further discusses that a linguistic system is a series of differences of sound and ideas in order to make sense out of the vague and nebulous existence life would be without language....it brings up a good point, without language what would life be?
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