Structuralism and Semiotics Study Notes: An Exhaustive Guide to Saussure, Propp, Barthes, and Macherey
Cultural Meanings and the Conceptualization of the Spinster
The concept of a "spinster" provides a primary example of how cultural meanings operate beyond literal definitions. While technically an unmarried woman, the term carries a vast stock of social images and connotations.
Disparities in cultural perception are evident when comparing various figures to the term. Cameron Diaz, despite being an unmarried woman, does not fit the structural archetype of a spinster. Conversely, one might associate a figure like the Queen of England with the term—despite her being married—rather than a figure like Naomi Campbell.
Shared conceptual notions of a spinster characterize the figure as boring, conservative, shy, and retiring, rather than enchanting, adventurous, or daring.
Structuralism and semiotics offer a rigorous alternative to common sense for analyzing how these cultural meanings are generated and what is at stake within them. These fields examine why cultural associations, such as "white lies" or "black marks" for bad actions, exist within specific societies.
The Discipline of Structuralism
Structuralism is an academic discipline focused on the study of structures—the organization of things into meaningful entities—and the relationships between them.
The core premise is that meaning is generated by underlying principles that can be identified through close analysis.
Structuralism posits that everything constituting the world—including people, meanings, texts, and rituals—is an effect of structuring principles rather than the work of a deity or natural mysteries.
The world without structures is viewed as a random and chaotic continuum of possibilities. Structures order and organize this continuum, making the world tangible, conceptually real, and meaningful.
Once discovered, structures reveal how meanings arise, why things appear as they are, and how they might be contested.
Ferdinand de Saussure and the Linguistic Foundation
Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, established central principles for structuralism in a series of lectures at the University of Geneva between and .
Language serves as a foundational structure for the world by organizing it into tangible entities for description and discussion.
Thought, prior to language, is described as a "vague, uncharted nebula." No ideas are pre-existing, and nothing is distinct before language appears.
Language does not merely provide the material phonic means for expressing pre-existing ideas; it serves as the link between thought and sound, creating reciprocal delimitations between units.
Language "works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses."
Before Saussure, language was viewed as a simple naming system for an objective reality that existed outside of it. Saussure revolutionized this by arguing that language realizes reality rather than just labeling it.
The Production of Meaning Through Structure and Difference
The meaning of "spinster" illustrates the structural dependency of language. To understand "spinster," one must first have the concept of "women" as the other of "men," which relies on a pre-existing notion of gender duality.
Meaning is further dependent on the prior establishment of marriage and the differential status of gender in relation to that institution.
Value is inherent in meaning. The term "spinster" is not a natural or inevitable truth but is produced by a system of cultural values open to debate.
Linguistic communities determine thought. In a community where women are not valued primarily by their marital status to men, the concept of a "spinster" might have no meaning.
The potential for different linguistic structures is highlighted by hypothetical scenarios: if a language lacked gender, or if it had three, six, or twelve gender terms, the way human existence is experienced would shift significantly.
Cultural examples verify this: Hindi includes the term "hijra," which designates a third category that is not translatable into English as man, woman, or something in between. This shifts the conceptual limits of gender for those speakers.
Saussure stated that in language, there are only differences "without positive terms." Meaning is generated through the logic of difference rather than intrinsic qualities.
The Threefold Significance of Saussure's Theory
Language is not natural but systematic.
Language is the primary system of cultural existence, structuring what humans think they know.
Cultural study shifts from authors and themes toward attention to texts as evidence of the linguistic construction of meaning.
Structuralism in Narrative and Anthropology
Vladimir Propp (): Propp performed the first structuralist analysis of literary texts on Russian folktales. He identified a single set of structural principles—a "grammar of storytelling"—analogous to syntax and grammar in language.
Form and content are intrinsically related. Narrative structures shape language into story form, making form essential to meaning.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: A structural anthropologist who applied Saussurean principles to "customs, institutions and accepted patterns of behaviour."
He argued that anthropology can identify universal laws that make up the "unconscious activity of the mind."
Individual thought and behavior are expressions of a "collective consciousness" determined by time and space modalities.
Roland Barthes and the Codes of Meaning
Roland Barthes in Mythologies () noted that "a little formalism turns one away from History, but… a lot brings one back."
Barthes analyzed the short story "Sarrasine" by Honoré de Balzac, identifying five codes of narrative structure through which the novel operates.
The analysis reveals that narrative codes both enable the story and mark its limits. In "Sarrasine," the central figure is a castrato whose gender is ambiguous and cannot be contained by the structural principles of male or female narrative attempts.
Identifying these structures allows the critic to find "footprints marking the escape of the text," showing that textual form is not unitary and opening the possibility of resisting cultural status quos.
Pierre Macherey and Symptomatic Reading
Pierre Macherey, in A Theory of Literary Production (), proposed that structural properties fail to contain the multiplicity of meanings they are built upon.
Reading Practice: Macherey advocated for "symptomatic reading," focusing on contradictions, inconsistencies, and "non-sense" rather than coherence.
Example: Deuteronomy Chapter , verse : "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God."
A symptomatic reading asks why such a law is necessary. The phrase "shall not" implies a legalistic prohibition, suggesting gender might be so precarious that garments threaten its undoing. This indicates that gender is a social construction rather than a natural one.
The text is symptomatic of a failure of meanings to stay where they are placed.
Semiotics: The Study of Signs
Semiotics is concerned with the "life of signs," from their production within signifying systems to their specific cultural implications.
Languages are composed of signs that constitute the minutiae of reality. Signifying systems extend beyond verbal speech to include visual regimes.
Visual sign systems—such as art, film, advertising, and sign language—work like language because they rely on an underlying system of logic to be intelligible.
Film Example: Technically, film is a series of marks from light on a photosensitive surface. Meaning is determined by association (montage). An image of a dusty outcrop of rocks means "danger" only when placed between an image of a mother and child and a man with a rifle. Its meaning is not intrinsic but determined by its position in the sequence of shots.
Signification and Ambiguity in Sequence
Verbal signs like "horse" are inherently ambiguous. In English, it can mean a four-legged animal, food, or heroin (slang).
The written sign h-o-r-s-e has no necessary link to the concept; it is a cultural association.
Meaning is narrowed through sequence and syntax. For example, in the sentence "I love horse, but hate pigs. Last week I got busted," the meaning of "horse" is narrowed to heroin due to the structural context of "pigs" (slang for police) and "busted."
Conclusions regarding signs:
Signs constitute meaning only within their system.
All sign systems function like language.
Cultural texts are signifying systems where meaning is open to change.
Cultural Critique and Textual Equality
Films and other cultural texts do not merely reflect reality; they manufacture it. They are sites for the constitution and contestation of cultural values.
Semiotics changes the practice of reading, implying all cultural texts are equally rich in meaning. A pop video is as replete with significance as a poem by John Donne.
The distinction between "high" and "popular" culture is often a matter of assigned value rather than structural complexity.
Reading literature as a system of signs allows for a process of decoding that reveals the ideological implications within the syntax and grammar of the work.