French Structuralism
pp. 131-144
in: K. M. Newton (ed), Twentieth-century literary theory, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
Structuralism rose to prominence in France through the application by the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, of Saussurian structural linguistics to the study of such phenomena as myths, rituals, kinship relations, eating conventions. (For a discussion of Saussure, see the introduction to "Linguistic Criticism"). These were understood as signifying systems and therefore open to a linguistic type of analysis in which attention was focused not on empirical or functional matters but on myth or ritual as a set of relations in which meaning was created by differences between signifying elements. This use of language as a model for understanding aspects of reality that are predominantly non-linguistic in character established structuralism, particularly in the 1960s, as a powerful alternative to positivistic or empiricist methods of analysis.
