Daffodil International University
Faculty of Humanities and Social Science => English => Topic started by: Gopa B. Caesar on December 06, 2011, 12:09:38 PM
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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
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
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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.â€
--African proverb
truth told by the ones in power
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Literary theory can handle Bob Dylan just as well as John Milton.
-Terry Eagleton
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
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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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The meaning of a word is a function of its signifier’s difference from other signifiers:
Meaning is also a function of a word’s 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.
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Structuralism as a method of classification
a. underlying or hidden principles
b. internalization of conceptual frameworks
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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.
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Signs don’t have to be words of course. For example, RED or GREEN light in a traffic signal.
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i. If the basic units of language can be analyzed as sign systems, then it must be possible to categorize larger units of language
If words can be understood as signs, than can’t we do the same for all forms of meaning-making?
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. )
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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
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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:
Myths and arts, as models productive of social cohesion, have an exemplary role in society
All myths are homologous in structure as well as analogous in function.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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 “â€The cat sat on the matâ€â€
ҠThe mat sat on the cat “â€
English word order :SVO
Japanese word order:SOV etc.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 hero’s 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 world’s stories within a single culture…the text thereby loses its difference.â€
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carry on!
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thabk you! :)
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lemme ask, "Why theory"? :P
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lemme explain when we meet again! ;)