Structuralism is a mode of knowledge that focuses on relationships within systems, identifying meaning through structures rather than isolated individual objects. It originated in the early 1900s with Ferdinand de Saussure and was later developed by figures like Claude Lévi-Strauss and challenged by Noam Chomsky. Semiotics, introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce, explores the relationship between signs and their meanings, emphasizing the importance of interpretation in understanding signification.

1. Structuralism/ Semiotics

2. What is structuralism?
It is a mode of knowledge of nature
and human life that is interested in
relationships rather than individual
objects or, alternatively, where objects
are defined by the set of relationships
of which they are part and not by the
qualities possessed by them taken in
isolation.

3. Order or structure in everything.
structural patterns… society, culture, language, literature… even
thought and behavior.
Central to Structuralism are Binary Oppositions.
Literary texts are composed of a series of signs that make up their
hidden logic.

4. Originated in the early 1900s, in the
structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure.

5. Subsequently taken up by the Prague (Roman
Jakobson) Moscow and Copenhagen schools of
linguistics.

6. • In the late 1950s and early 1960s, structural linguistics
was challenged by Noam Chomsky and other like
theorists.
• Later on, Claude Lévi –Strauss revived structuralism. Noam Chomsky
American Linguist
Claude Lévi –Strauss
French anthropologist
and ethnologist

7. Ferdinand Saussure (1857-1913
- is considered as the “Father of
Structuralism”.
- He developed the idea of studying the
language of literary text by focusing on the
words and grammar play.
- His greatest creation of structuralism is the
Sign broken down into the idea (the
signified) and image (the signifier) which
creates the arbitrary (given by the society)
concept of meaning.

8. Structuralism Criticism Theory
Uses the structure of analysis analyzes pattern,
narratives, or codes of practice to interpret the text.
It is emphasize instead that the way a person’s behavior
is determined is cultural, social, and psychological. It
often provide one unified approach to one’s life that
would encompass all the instructions.

10. Example of structuralism is describing your
experience at the ocean by saying it is windy,
salty, and cold, but rejuvenating.

11. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
- Was a scientist, a philosopher best known as the
earliest proponent of pragmatism (after about 1905
called by Peirce “pragmaticism” in order to
differentiate his views from those of William James,
John Dewey, and others, which were being labelled
“pragmatism”).
- a theorist of logic, language, communication, and the
general theory of signs (which was often called by
Peirce “semiotic”)

12. Peirce’s Sign Theory, or Semiotic, is an account of signification,
representation, reference and meaning.
Peirce’s accounts are distinctive and innovative for their
breadth and complexity, and for capturing the importance of
interpretation to signification.
Sign is something which stands to somebody for something in
some respect or capacity.

14. An example of a sign whose sign-vehicle uses
existential facts is smoke as a sign for fire; the causal
relation between the fire and smoke allows the smoke
to act as a signifier. Other cases are the molehill
example used earlier, and temperature as a sign for a
fever. Any sign whose sign-vehicle relies upon
existential connections with its object is named, by
Peirce, a sinsign.