Structuralism is an approach to cultural studies that assumes society and language are products of, and part of a large overarching system. Under Structuralism, language and other cultural elements can only be understood as a part of this system. For Marx, the structure was inherently economic; for Freud, it was psychological; Althusser – ideology. While Structuralism has fallen out of favor in the last 50 years, its influence on contemporary philosophy and social science cannot be overstated.
Arabic: وَرْدَة (wardä)
Aramaic: rosi
Syriac: ܘܪܕܐ (wardā, wardo)
Hebrew: ורדא (wardā, wardo)
Bosnian: ruža (bs)
Breton: roz collective noun rozenn singular
Catalan: rosa, Chinese: 薔薇 (qiángwéi)
Croatian: ruža (hr)
Czech: růže (cs)
Danish: rose (da)
Dutch: roos (nl)
Estonian: roos (et)
Faroese: rósa (fo)
Finnish: ruusu (fi)
French: rose (fr)
Galician: rosa (gl)
German: Rose (de)
Greek: τριαντάφυλλο [tria(n)ˈdafiˌlo̞] , ρόδο [ˈro̞ðo̞]
Hebrew: ורד (vered)
Hindi: गुलाब (gulāb)
Hungarian: rózsa (hu)
Indonesian: bunga mawar
Italian: rosa (it)
Japanese: 薔薇 (ばら, bara), バラの花 (bara no hana)
Latin: rosa (la)
Lithuanian: rožė (lt)
Maltese: warda (mt)
Marathi: गुलाब (gulāb)
Norwegian: rose (no)
Persian: گل (gol)
Polish: róża (pl)
Portuguese: rosa (pt)
Romanian: trandafir (ro) , roză (ro)
Russian: роза (ru)
Cyrillic: ружа
Roman: ruža
Slovene: vrtnica (sl)
Spanish: rosa (es)
Swedish: ros (sv)
Telugu: గులాబి (gulaabi)
Turkish: gül (tr)
Urdu: گلاب (ur) (gulāb)
Yiddish: רויז (roiz)
Whatever you call it, it still has thorns. Maybe Shakespeare was a structuralist 300 years before Ferdinand de Saussure.
What Bill and Ferd were both pointing out was the word “rose” has no real relationship to the thing we call a rose. “Rose” is not a living thing; it does not smell; the spoken word does not sound like the flower and the written letters make no sound; it is not even shaped like the flower. In fact, nothing about “rose” relates to the plant except that someone long ago decided “rose” would be linked to the flower in a specific way. “Rose” the word is the signifier which conjures a mental conception (the signified) of a thing. Furthermore, not only does the signifier (word: rose) have no real relationship to the thing, neither does the signified (whatever you think of when you hear or see the word “rose”). Like the word, the thought does not look like, smell like, sound like or feel like the flower. Together, the signifier and the signified form the sign for the usually fragrant, often red, generally attractive botanical thing that was distributed to millions earlier this week as a sign of love. (But why that is requires a whole long discussion by itself.)
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(This is not a pipe) The Treachery of Images, by painter René Magritte (1929) |
Despite having no tangible connection to the things they represent, Saussure argued that signs (the combined signifier and signified) were not arbitrary. Language in all forms is part of a large meaningful system of culture. This system has a form or structure and understanding language (or any element of culture) requires an understanding the larger structure and language’s place in that structure, hence the term Structuralism.
Structuralism seems a natural next step from the psychoanalytic theory of culture where signs are the product of the Symbolic, which is a product of, but distinct from the Real and the Imaginary. Saussure believed that language could be opened up to reveal the hidden reality and ideology that produced the language. His approach was to separate the use of language, which he termed parole, from the langue, which were the rules of language, or grammar. Langue is the set of rules we learn about how to construct phrases, sentences, texts, and conversations. Parole is the specific acts of language in use. Separating these two concepts was central to Saussure’s argument. As parole, specific texts contain elements with are sometimes unique to an individual and based personal experience. Langue, on the other hand, is an impersonal social phenomenon, whose rules apply to everyone. As such, the processes involved and the influential conditions that form its creation can be studied as generalities that apply to the whole culture.
Consider the following metaphor: You may be able to tell a lot about a person by the clothes they wear: size, gender, personality, cultural associations, typical physical environment, and the list goes on... You can also tell a lot about humans by looking at clothes generally. We generally have two arm and two legs. Humans seem to come in two basic shapes (male, female). Humans grow over time and have changing physical needs. Our bodies have limited resistance to environmental conditions. The list goes on…
Saussure believed the commonalities of language, as part of a social structure, revealed things about people in that society like how they thought, how they organized information, what they valued. The list goes on… Furthermore, because language is how we connect to and express elements of reality, language influences our perception of reality. People with fundamentally different languages may experience the same phenomenon in different ways.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
On Halloween, 2009 the “father of modern anthropology” died, just 28 days short of his 101st birthday. Claude Lévi-Strauss was a contemporary of Saussure and actually first used the term “structuralism” to describe this theoretical approach to linguistic and culture. While his work has had significant influence on a number of disciplines, his primary contribution to media and cultural criticism may be his study of myth. Lévi-Strauss pointed to the commonality of myths from divergent cultures to make statements about how human beings see themselves relative to both the experienced and idealized universe. Myths and mythical thought provide a way to mediate or resolve contradictions and oppositional elements. In Le Cru et le cuit (The Raw and the Cooked), Lévi-Strauss tries "to reduce apparently arbitrary data (the myths) to some kind of order, and to attain a level at which a kind of necessity becomes apparent, underlying the illusions of liberty".
Later critics and theorist would build on Lévi-Strauss’ theories to examine films and other popular narratives. Will Wright applied structural views of myth to examine Hollywood Westerns. Wright identified 16 stages common to myths and Western movies specifically. Likewise, Joseph Campbell received fairly wide recognition for his work on myths. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell argued for the existence of the “Monomyth”. Pointing to similarities between Jesus Christ, Luke Skywalker, and Neo (The Matrix), he argued that all hero myths have the same structure. Campbell collaborated with Bill Moyers on the PBS series The Power of Myth, which was first broadcast in 1988. It is a six part series, of which, each part is available on Youtube.
Joseph Campbell--Myth As the Mirror for the Ego
Roland Barthes
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Roland Barthes sought to “make explicit what too often remains implicit in the texts and practices of popular culture” (Storey, 118). He elaborates on Saussure’s “signifier/signified” design by pointing out a “secondary signification” beyond the “primary signification.” To clarify by way of an animal, consider the word ‘jackass.’ At the primary level, the word signifies a male donkey. This is the “denotation” of the word. At the secondary level, the signified male donkey becomes the signifier to produce a new meaning: a stupid person, or a democrat. This is the “connotation” of the words. Barthes “claims that it is at the level of secondary signification or connotations that myth is produced for consumption” (Storey, 119).
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Both Levi-Strauss and Barthes were interested in studying the nature of mythology and its ideological implications. Levi-Strauss focuses on the classic conception of myths as stories and finds it noteworthy that myths around the world share similarities. As shown earlier, Joseph Campbell shared this fascination. In considering language in terms of myth, Levi-Strauss wrote that “there is a very good reason why myth cannot simply be treated as language if its specific problems are to be solved; myth is language: to be known, myth has to be told; it is part of human speech. In order to preserve its specificity we must be able to show that it is both the same things as language, and also something different from it” (Lemert, 314). Levi-Strauss seems to be suggesting the connotative creation of meaning. However, when Barthes speaks of myth, he “means ideology understood as a body of ideas and practices, which by actively promoting the values and interests of dominant groups of society, defend the prevailing structures of power” (Storey, 119). In suggesting the connotative quality of signs, Barthes seeks to reveal the myths we are sitting on top of and experiencing constantly. More importantly, Barthes wants to reveal how these myths are used to manipulate.
The classic display of Barthes’ connotation according to Storey’s text is the example from the French Magazine Paris Match that depicts a young black soldier looking upward and saluting something unseen. Storey details the significance of this image, though the relevance is linked to historical incidents from which we, living 55 years later, are detached. As a more up to date example of how one might read a text, consider this Rolling Stone cover with Kanye West as Jesus.
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To name a few of the connotations the image conjures: abuse, struggle, martyrdom, holiness, defiance, or blasphemy. Just like the Paris Match soldier, Kanye is looking upward, a visual decision that creates the impression of his subordination and control. Who he is looking at remains in question. Whether it is God, a music Producer, or his fans, the one he is hailing is left to the person viewing the image. The text sharing the cover with Kanye’s face “controls the production of connotations of the image”(Storey, 122). In this instance, the main guiding text is “The Passion of Kanye West.” This connects to the widely seen movie “The Passion of the Christ,” and supports the reading the Kanye has endured all manner of abuse. We are to glean suffering from this image, the blood on Kanye’s cheek. But his defiant eyes maintain his will and resolve. Should we ignore the other texts on the page: “Out of Control,” “Inside the War Room of the Religious Right,” “Wilson Pickett 1941-2006”? These words attach themselves to Kanye and suggest a loss of control, religious leanings, and death! This reading of texts is dependent upon our experience of culture. “What makes the move from denotation to connotation possible is the store of social knowledge (a cultural repertoire) upon which the reader is able to draw when he or she reads the image” (Storey, 124). In the end, we can only draw from what we have experienced. Reflection Questions:
1. Structuralism argues that everything is language, what is meant by this? Give examples.
2. Cite and explain a “myth” that is part of our current culture. How is it being used to shape public discourse or actions?
3. What do you make of the connotations in either or both of these baby-centric magazine covers?
It is interesting to study about these theories that deal with social construction from a cultural studies perspective while, in one of my other classes, I am studying them from a sociological perspective. As I understand structuralism, there is a symbolic network that humans utilize to understand reality and to express reality. Of course, reality and the symbols that represent it are slippery, meaning both the signifier and the signified are attached artificially according to society and culture. The structure of parole and lingue are dependent upon how society has decided on “playing the game” of language regardless of what is, as Lacan would say, the Real. We play the game so well that we treat objects as inherently natural to the meaning we have unconsciously allotted to them. That is why Rene Magritte illustrates in her painting of a pipe, “This is not a pipe.”
ReplyDeletePeter Berger expresses this concept from a sociological perspective in his The Sacred Canopy. For Berger, the societal structure of language occurs in three ways: externalization, objectivation, and internalization. Externalization posits that “we continually outpour ourselves physically and mentally into the world. By doing so, we create products. These products are culture, the state, family, religion, the economy, etc. These products construct a world. Society is therefore a human product.” Objectivation is the idea that humans interact with the objects as objective reality, a “facticity that confronts the objects’ original producers.” In internalization, “The individual not only learns the objectivated meanings but identifies with and is shaped by them. He draws them into himself and makes them his meanings. He becomes not only one who possesses these meanings, but one who represents and expresses them. Through internalization, humans become a product of society.” Berger gives the example as a plow. After the plow was invented (externalization), people then were born and grew up in a society knowing what a plow is used for (objectivation) and use it (internalization).
I think this sociological approach to understanding language demonstrates Kevin’s first question of how structuralism argues that language is everything. We are agents of language that use language to make meaning and create order. Yet we are products of language as well, being born into a world that used a system of language which we interact with, though it was socially constructed. I think a good example that shows this is Helen Keller. I can’t speak in her behalf of how she felt as she experienced life without a system of language to understand the world around her, but the chaos which was represented by her “frustration, outbursts of anger, and fractious behavior” is clearly eclipsed by the order that ensued as her language grew.
http://youtu.be/9uheykreqCo
Let's get the obvious out of the way. The Kanye west picture was placed here for impact—shock value—which it of course achieved immediately from some. Having been in seminary at the time this issue of Rolling Stone came out, I was often asked what I thought of the cover. Some of the people asking were people who would read the picture on the cover (as well as West's insistence on his spirituality) in much the same way Barthes' argued the picture on the cover of Paris Match would have been read by the socialist reader. They felt this combination of communicative acts was a desperate AND misguided attempt to connect himself to both the pseudo-religiosity of his fan base and to proclaim himself a good in and of himself. I don't necessarily think of this image as an attempt at what Barthes would call the “symbol” reading position. I have no reason to believe that the picture was to be a representation meant to symbolize some sort of myth-turned-truth. For that reason, I never read the image from the “alibi” position. I can only conceive of a reading from the “alibi” position as a response to a perceived attempt at a presentation from the “symbol” position (Storey, 121).
ReplyDeleteI was, however, more called into a space of contemplation of the denotation “a black man with wearing a crown of thorns on his bloodied head” and the connotation “Black Jesus” from the perspective of the fourth reading position—the “mythologist” position (122). While a conversation about Kanye's presentation of himself in a Jesus-esque manner takes on even more interesting baggage considering all that happened to and with him after this photo, what I found more interesting when I looked at this image and the media that surrounded it was the connotation mentioned above: Black Jesus (here she goes again!).
This image, like all images that point to a Black Jesus, brought with it not just conversation about Kanye West, poor behavior, megalomania and sacrilege, but also brought with it conversations questioning the propriety of Black Jesus images in general. This is interesting in light of Barthes' understanding that, “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were made” (Storey, 122). I often joke that White Jesus is stalking me. This is just my way of recognizing that Westernized Christianity has so long presented images of Jesus that are blonde-haired and blue-eyed, that some believe that this is an actual depiction of the historical Jesus (if one admits such a character). Although a historical Jesus born where the bible says he was born would likely not have been blonde-haired and blue-eyed, a picture of a Jesus figure of color still seems to throw many for a loop.
The ideological impact of the Western images of Jesus is made plain in the progression of a conversation about the Kanye West cover found at: http://www.clarkyboy.com/kanyewest.htm . As one reads the site, the conversation-although supposedly about the Kanye West photo—glides swiftly through a conversation on rappers as Jesus directly to a discussion of questions of the propriety of Black Jesus images. Though it acknowledges that a historical Jesus would likely have been a person of color, the next transition the article takes is unsettling. Directly from Black Jesus, the article moves to the topic of sacrilegious images—the transition leaves itself open to the suggestion that Black Jesus images might be sacrilegious
This website does not seem to be anti-Kanye West or anti-Black Jesus. It's discussion of black Jesus images seemed almost a defense of the images' right to be. However, if I were a structuralist, I might say that the fact that the creators of the site even feel the need to justify Black Jesus in a conversation about Kanye West points to a structure in which this image is in some way illicit and needs at least explanation if not justification. Or I could be wrong about all of this :-)....See you all Tuesday!
Oh yeah and one more thing...
ReplyDeleteOne of my white seminary classmates once asked me, “Why are there so many Black churches with White Jesuses in them?” Barthes would maybe answer that it is because the image of the White Jesus, for Western culture, gets rid of the complexity of a faith tradition that has been historically used in order to subordinate and objectify people of color, but whose historical “hero” was most likely a person of color himself.
I will attempt to comment on the Sandra Bullock and baby Louis cover. When I first saw this image my heart was filled with admiration. All I could see was love from a mother to her child. Some images don't provide the whole story, but what I can gather from the cover is that love has no boundaries, love sees no color. This is my take on the first baby-centric magazine cover.
DeleteBarthes begins his analysis by establishing that the primary level of signification consists of the signifier: patches of color and figuration (Storey 119). In this image, the signified: 'a white woman holding a black baby'. Together they form the primary sign, which becomes the signifier 'white woman holding black baby', producing, now the level of secondary signification, the signified 'transracial or interracial adoption'. The cover, in my opinion, displayed a proud mother and the sense that it is alright to adopt outside your race, even celebrities are becoming more comfortable with doing so.
Barthes suggests that myth points out and it notifies, it also makes us understand something and forces it upon us. He goes on to say that connotations are therefore not simply produced by the makers of the image, but activated from an already existing cultural repertoire; meaning the image draws from the cultural repertoire while also adding to it. There are some positive and negative connotations formed from this image: happiness, nurturing, suspect and attention-seeking. He also states that myth is continually confronted by counter-myth. An example of this would be that adopting an African-American baby may be welcoming and non-controversial in one community or culture, while in other cultures it could be seen as unacceptable or controversial. Some communities believe that it is inappropriate to adopt outside your own race.
This image was taken after the movie, "The Blind Side", in which Sandra Bullock's character adopted a black son and in her real life, her husband, Jesse James, was found to have cheated on her with numerous women and he was also accused of admiring Hitler. He was labled as a racist; therefore, she had to be in people's minds. Some believed she was trying to save face by adopting baby Louis. But they were unaware or didn't care to know that she had been working to adopt him four years prior. Others believed she adopted him because adopting a black baby was a "trend" in Hollywood. All myths.
Barthes says context of publication is important (Storey 121). Would this image have generated less criticism if it was on the cover of the Parent magazine as opposed to People magazine and would the connotative meaning(s) been quite different? Would it have made little difference if Sandra were not a celebrity? I've seen issues like this before, but I can't recall a backlash such as this when they occurred. I feel that status plays a huge part in. Regardless, people should put aside their personal feelings and see this as a selfless and kind act.
So, I like the classic rose example, but I'd like to take that a step further. Today, I've undertaken the overwhelmingly frustrating task of trying to train my dog, Buster 'Bust-a-Move' Brown (see attached photo).
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Really adorable right? Problem is he keeps peeing everywhere and has no ideas about personal boundaries when it comes to dinner time. (Talk about ideology...)
Anyways, I've spent my day starting with a basic training exercise: sit.
Mind you, I’ve never trained a dog, so I really have no idea what the heck I’m doing. This entire process began with me, angered by the river that was flowing through my living room floor, yelling “Sit, go sit down and leave me alone.”
To borrow another Shakespearean phrase, therein lies the rub. (Hamlet)
The dog has no concept of the English language. When I say things like “Pee outside”, “Don’t poop on the rug”, or “Hey, that’s my quesadilla, you little jack a--” He has no grasp as to what I’m trying to convey. As far as I know, he’s hearing a series of barks or that trombone sound from the Peanuts cartoons.
So, what can I do? The word sit has no meaning to this animal. It’s just an arbitrary group of letters represented by an arbitrary group of sounds that in no way express my desire for him to tuck his back legs under himself and plant his little dog booty to the floor.
So, what am I doing now? Well, I have attempted to bridge the gap and work on his level. I’m attempting to as Barthes puts it “make explicit what too often remains implicit.” And how am I doing this? By adapting the essence of the concept “sit” into his own terms: the treat. So, I have adapted my method by implementing a new process wherein I take the dog place him in the seated position, repeat the word “sit” with an attached motion pointing downward, and then reward, or at least attempt to bribe, him with a treat. So, far the method has had mixed results. Mostly the bag of treats is quickly dwindling. So, perhaps my attempts at creating a structuralist system for my pooch have proved fruitless.
As an aside, if anyone is interested in a gently used Dachshund, feel free to email me.
I can’t help but notice how last week’s readings and this week’s readings deal with that undifferentiated mass called reality. Saussure and Lacan treat it in different ways, doing their best to confront it-- taming it with theory.
ReplyDeleteFor Lacan, each baby has its breach with the Real by recognizing its own image which is materially (ST 153) separate from herself and other things around her. “We long for a time…before the mediations of language…” (CTPC 104). That time without language is described by Saussure as as "uncharted nebula." He asserts, “without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas”(ST 157).
The affective component of longing definitely separates the two ideas of the mediating structure of language, but Lacan and Saussure see language as imposed and inescapable whether is it is desirable or not. Whether it is an existential break with my mother or a “heritage from preceding generations,” language is a condition for being a human negotiating Reality (ST 155).
I really have difficulty with Saussure’s differentiation between symbol and sign. The symbol is not “wholly arbitrary” (154). He says that there is a “natural bond” inferred between the concept and sound image; whereas a sign is “arbitrary” meaning there is no “natural connection” with the concept (ST 154). The sign is “unmotivated” (ST 154 & 318). Both Saussure and Barthes point to the sign being arbitrary because its quality of being “unmotivated”; I simply do not know what this means in this context. Somehow, a symbol is motivated (similarly a connotation is motivated)? Probably not, but describing a sign as “unmotivated” is not common. In an attempt to answer my own question, perhaps the use of the term motivate is to indicate there is no cause or provocation, but I wonder why “unmotivated” is a more exact term than “arbitrary” (ST 318). This seems arbitrary.
There are hundreds of myths that shape our current culture. Dr. Dorsey uses hero myths in his article about The X-Files. I would argue that the hero myth is one of the most frequently used mythological stories circulated through media. William Lewis also suggests that President Ronald Regan used myth to relate and build a connection with the American people. Along with the hero myth I think we also see a lot of the frontier myth (I can’t remember where I’ve read about this myth). The foundation for the frontier myth is that the American population/government is consistently looking for a way to civilize a wild frontier. I think we see this type of myth in events such as the Civil War, Native American relocation, and I would argue the current war/involvements in the Middle East. These frontier myths also serve as an avenue for hero myths…think of stories you have read about young men and women who have braved enemy fire to save their fellow soldiers. These myths shape how we discuss the US presence in the Middle East; it influences how we talk about soldiers who have served overseas.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw the two magazine covers I had mixed emotions. Both express the special relationship between mother and child. Often in my health communication courses the topic of breast-feeding is discussed (especially when the majority of my classmates are mothers). The different connotations that could be associated with this cover are endless. When I first looked at it I thought about the natural process of breast-feeding, but my mind quickly jumped to a student’s speech “Why women shouldn’t be allowed to breast feed in public.” The connotation that I assigned to the cover is most likely very different from those my student would assign. While I see a very natural, beautiful relationship in this cover, my student would argue that this was uncalled for. I also noticed that this cover was very similar to the Kanye & Paris Match pictures (the subject with eyes lifted). I think it would be interesting ask our students or people in the department what connotations they pulled from this cover.