Theory & Criticism
Structuralism
Structuralism is a movement in the humanities of the 20th century that regards cultural phenomena as sign systems built according to certain internal laws (structures). Its methodological foundation was Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics, with its distinction between language (langue) and speech (parole), the sign as a unity of signifier and signified, and synchrony and diachrony. In literary studies, structuralism seeks to describe the 'grammar' of a text — the system of oppositions and invariant relations that generate meaning. Key figures: Claude Lévi-Strauss (the structural anthropology of myth), Roman Jakobson (the poetic function of language), the early Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and A.-J. Greimas (the semantics of narrative). Structuralism laid the foundations of narratology and semiotics but was later criticized by poststructuralism for ignoring history, the subject, and context.
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Compare “Structuralism” with another term
Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
A movement and its revision. Structuralism (1960s) seeks stable, OBJECTIVE structures and closed systems of meaning, believing in the scientific character of describing the "grammar" of culture. Poststructuralism (from the late 1960s) EMPHASISES instability, plurality and the endless "play" of meaning, the dependence of the sign on context and power, dissolving the centralised subject and the completed structure (Derrida, Foucault, the late Barthes). The first builds a system; the second shows its limits and ruptures.
