Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Traditional transmission: Language is transmitted from one generation to the next 
primarily by a process of teaching and learning (unlike the bee’s ability to 
communicate the source of nectar, which is passed on genetically). 
13.
Duality of patterning: The sounds of language have no intrinsic meaning, but 
combine in different ways to form elements (such as words) that do convey meaning 
(unlike animal calls which cannot be analyzed into two such levels of structure). 

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13 
LESSON - III 
STRUCTURALIST THEORY AND APPLICATIONS 
Structure is a system of interrelated elements, which derive their meaning from the 
relations that hold between them or in other words, a sequential pattern of linguistic elements, 
at some analytical level. 
Structuralism and after 
Formalist approaches displayed several limitations. They were unable to handle types 
of literature that did not use specifically ‘literary’ language and their microanalytic 
techniques were not suitable for larger texts such as the novel. As a result, an alternative 
approach developed during the 1950s based on the principles of structural linguistics. This 
provided a fresh focus for textual analysis concentrating on the function of the various 
elements in a text. The insights of the founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, 
were used to hypothesize rules governing the underlying system of meaning that a literary 
text expressed.
The Rise of Structuralism 
The extremely influential “Course de Linguistique Generale” (1916), published after 
Saussure’s death in 1913, was compiled from his students’ notes from his course in general 
linguistic (given three times between 1907 and 1911) at the University of Geneva. This book 
is credited with turning the tide of linguistic through from the diachronic (historical) 
orientation which had dominated nineteenth – century linguistics to interest in the synchronic 
(non-historical) study of language. Saussure emphasized the synchronic study of language 
structure and how linguistic elements are organized into the system of each language. His 
theory of signs has been very influential. Today, nearly all approaches to linguistics are 
“structuralist” in some sense and reflect Saussure’s monumental influence. 
The approach used by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1980) and 
others was to take the basic notion of a contrastive unit (or ‘eme’, as in ‘phoneme’) and apply 
it to the analysis of behavior (kinship, eating, etc) In literary studies, research focused on 
finding a common structure underlying the many kinds of narrative text (e.g. folk tales, 
myths, detective stories). For example, significant basic units of myth (‘mythemes’) were 
recognized, and organized as a set of binary oppositions, in the same way as phonemes. In 
one study (A.J.Greimas, (1966), it was suggested that three basic thematic contrasts occur in 
all narrative: 
1.
‘Subject’ Vs ‘Object’, which related to the desire or search that motivates a character 
at the beginning of the story (e.g. a detective searching for a murderer). 
2.
‘Sender’ Vs ‘Receiver’, as people communicates with each other about relevant event 
(e.g. establishing various facts about the murder). 
3.
‘Helper’ Vs ‘Opponent’, as characters assists or hinders the course of events. These 
notions, it was argued identified a common structure of themes, actions and character 
types underlying all kinds of narrative. 

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14 
Structuralism paid little attention in its analyses to the role of the human mind or social 
reality. A poem, for example, was to be understood not by studying the experience of the 
poet, the reader, or the world but by studying the text. The author was no longer the authority 
for interpretation; the meaning of text was to be found in its individual use of language. This 
meaning was accessible to the critic because author and critic both belonged to the same 
community language system (or langue). Language had been handed down to an author, who 
used it to construct a text. In this view, language did not reflect reality but created it. 
Structuralism brought a valuable objectivity into literary analysis, but at the expense of 
the total neglect of an author’s individuality, the social context, and the varying historical 
situation. In the late 1960’s accordingly, there developed a reaction to this ‘logocentric’ view, 
which came to be known as ‘post-structuralism’- a set of ideas whose implications have still 
to be fully explored. Here, language is seen not as a static structure, existing regardless of 
social, historical, or personal considerations, but as a system whose values shift in response to 
these factors, and whose meaning is too complex to be demonstrable by structuralist 
techniques. A range of post-structuralist view–points have developed which emphasize the 
limitations of binary analyses, draw attention to the multiple and overlapping meanings of 
words and stress the role of mental processes in interpreting linguistic relationships. The 
approach is highly critical of the scientific aims of structuralism, denying the possibility of 
objectivity in textual interpretation.