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Bressler
Literary Criticism:
An Introduction to Theory and Practice
Introduction
Flourishing in 1960s, STRUCTURALISM is an
approach to literary analysis grounded in structural
linguistics, the science of language.
SIGN = SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED
For example:
When we hear the sound ball, the sound is signifier
and the concept of a ball that comes to our minds is
the signified.
As oxygen combines hydrogen to form water, Saussure
says, so the signifier joins with the signified to form a
sign that has properties unlike those of its parts.
Accordingly, for Saussure a word does not represent
referent in the objective world, but a sign.
The linguistic sign is ARBITRARY= the relation
between the signifier (ball) and the signified (the
concept of ball) is a matter of convention.
With few exceptions, proclaims Saussure, there is no
natural link between the signifier and the signified,
nor there is any natural relationship between the
linguistic sign and what is represents.
If, as Saussure maintains, there is no natural link
between the linguistic sign and the reality it
represents, how do we know the difference between
one sign and another? In other words, how does
language create meaning?
We know what a sign means, says Saussure, because it
differs from all other signs.
By comparing and contrasting one sign with other
signs, we learn to distinguish each individual sign.
Individual signs; then, can have meaning (or signify)
one within their own langue
Because signs are arbitrary, conventional, and
differential, Saussure concludes the proper study of
language is not an examination of isolated entities but
the system of relationships among them. He asserts,
for example, that individual words cannot have
meaning by themselves.
Because language is a system of rules governing
sounds, words, and other components, individual
words obtain their meaning only within that system.
To know language and it functions, we must study the
system (langue) not individual utterances (parole) that
operate according to the rules of langue.
For Saussure, language is the primary sign system
whereby we structure our world. Language’s structure
is like that of any other sign system of social behavior,
such as fashion, table manners, and sport.
Like language, all such expressions of social behavior
generate meaning through a system of signs.
Saussure proposed a new science called semiology that
would study how we create meaning through these
signs in all our social behavioral systems.
Although semiology never became an important new
science as Saussure envisioned, a similar science was
being proposed in America almost simultaneously by
philosopher and teacher Charles Sanders Pierce.