Structuralism and Semiotics: WTF? Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes and Structuralism Explained
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- Structuralism is a form of literary theory which, inspired by semiotics and the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, emerged in France in the 1950s. In this week’s episode of What the Theory?, we take a look at how structuralism and structuralist theory enable us to identify the underlying structures which inform how literature, film, performance, visual art and all other forms of cultural text are created and read.
If you’re look for semiotics and structuralism explained simply and engagingly then, hopefully, this might be the video you’re looking for!
Also, if you’d like to get your hands on a copy of the script to this video with footnotes and references to pour over to your heart’s content then check out my Patreon at [ / tomnicholas ](ua-cam.com/users/redirect?q=ht...)
We begin by looking at genre as a form of structuralist analysis before taking a brief overview of Saussure’s notion of diachronic and synchronic linguistics and his suggestion that it is only possible to understand an individual use of language (which he calls parole) by understanding the wider linguistic system of which it is a part (something Saussure calls langue).
We then take a look at how various literary theorists including Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp and (very briefly) Michel Foucault have taken used structuralist linguistics as a basis for literary and cultural analysis. Distinguishing between “high structuralism” and “low structuralism”, we take a look at poetics and the pursuit of a consistent narrative structure of myth as well as looking at Roland Barthes’ notion of cultural codes and cultural myths as he outlines them in his 1957 book Mythologies.
Further Reading
Structuralism and Semiotics by Terence Hawkes
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Mythologies by Roland Barthes
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Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Levi-Strauss
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[The above are affiliate links. I receive a small kickback from anything you buy which, in turn, helps to support the channel.]
If you’ve enjoyed this video and would like to see more including my What The Theory? series in which I provide some snappy introductions to key theories in the humanities as well as PhD vlogs in which I talk about some of the challenges of being a PhD student then do consider subscribing.
Thanks for watching!
Twitter: @Tom_Nicholas
Website: www.tomnicholas.com
Thanks for watching all! A slightly tough topic this week but an important part of literary and cultural theory. As always, if you like my stuff, I’d super appreciate you checking out my Patreon at patreon.com/tomnicholas
Is there a video you make about CDA?
Great video as usual, but I'm hear to be the pedantic asshole correcting french pronunciation.
"Langue" is pronounced as in "Long".
Have you read Camille Pagia's writings? What are your thoughts on her attitude towards Foucault, Lacan & post-structuralism, etc.? Thank you for your videos!
12:58 I would expect a cat to hiss at a vacuum cleaner. Cat's aren't fond of loud noises and vacuums are usually pretty loud. They usually just flee them, but it would make sense for a cat to hiss at one too.
Comparatively it would be strange for a cat to hiss at a mouse. Cats hiss as a threat, meaning they find what they hiss at, a threat. Mice aren't usually considered threats by cats. Lion would likely be considered a threat and be hissed at.
Overall I don't see any bases for this argument of how we read words. We consider the whole meaning of the sentence. For example "He chopped up some bark" One would not expect someone to be chopping bark, but it's still a innocuous statement. "He chopped up some orphans" Similar lack of expectation for this to be the ending, but obviously has a more sinister implication. If with wider context the "orphans" were chickens who's parents are dead (thus orphans) the meaning changes again.
@Carlos B I have no idea why did I post that message (now that I read it again). I must have been bored to dead, because indeed it sounds pedantic and stupid.
Cheers mate, take care!
As one of my professors once said, the whole structuralist approach could be summarised in one postulate: "the complexity of reality is based upon simple structures"
That’s an awesome way to phrase it, I wish I had the evolution to come up with turns of phrase like that!
and what did they say about poststructuralism?
@@butterflymoon6368 Simple: "The complexity of reality is based upon simple poststructures" ;)
Your channel has such a great quality! You have a proffessoral vocation, your explanations are clear, concise and dynamic. The videos are very well edited. Thank you!
Thank you very much for saying so, that means a lot!
My pleasure!
Agreed.
Agreed. I like this guy a lot.
At one point in this video I got shivers, when it finally fell into place for me how Noam Chomsky’s work as a linguist connects to broader political analysis and activism. Thank you!
That's a UA-cam video in itself waiting to be made, maybe an essay or a book. I've never seen anyone really try to explain or explore the connection between these two strands of Chomsky's work.
Why am I getting major deja vu from this comment lol
@@JohnMoseley I'm sure there's plenty of work on this subject already, you just have to research a bit
@@user-tp7wi4lt2b Maybe, yeah.
@@JohnMoseley don't agree with all of it but Chris Knight's "Decoding Chomsky" is interesting
I'm doing my MA in Sociology right now and my lecturer isn't the best at explaining theories so these are VERY helpful. Thank you so much for this!
Hope your lecturer doesnt see this...
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Will be eagerly waiting for you're video on post structuralism
It’s in the works, don’t worry! Likely to add a third code to my Society of the Spectacle mini-series first but poststructuralism will be up next!
Hi Tom, I feel the need to point out, whenever you use the word "infer," it seems that you mean "imply." Simply put, the text doesn't "infer" anything--we do that. The text only "implies." Same with people. The speaker, producer (or writer of the text) implies, while the listener, recipient, etc., infers. It's a very common error, but fyi.
The energy here is unmatched and my oh my! one of the best explanations out there. Students survive and thrive at times too because such amazing lectures exist.
I wish we had you as our college professor. You're really good at explaining complicated concepts effectively. Thank you.
Bless you for doing this. I have an exam tomorrow and I've just discovered your videos. You describe all of this better than my assigned literature in my native language. Thank you for giving me a chance to pass this class.
Did you pass buddy?
Hey Tom, would you ever be interested in doing an introduction to Deleuze and Guattari?
Just wanted to say how useful this was - really appreciate the effort you've put in!
Please, continue making these videos. Not only are they extremely useful for my studies, but also you explain things very well and make the topic even more interesting!
I’m thrilled to have discovered your channel, Tom. Keep up the stellar work! Jmx
Thank you! Im a semiotics and culture theory student from Estonia and this helped me a lot when i started :)
Really glad to hear it was helpful!
Hey Tom, thanks so much for this resource! Wanted to let you know that our high school literature teacher assigned this to us to watch when talking about literary theories! I was really surprised but I’m glad that your channel is reaching so many people :)
Excellent summary. I learned these things prior to the internet's popularity and its numerous resources. That is, I read the original texts you cited, and it was hardgoing, because all of this was/is outside my field of study. I appreciate how you summed up everthing in an easily-understood and engaging way.
This video was EXTREMELY helpful for me to understand and make a presentation about the topic. Thank you so much, I really appreciate the effort you put in.
Just stumbled upon this video while working on my final. I think that this is easily one of the best informative/teaching type videos ive ever seen. Just as the top comment says, this is a great video. You make great connections which are concise and applicable and this really helped me make some big connections. :) thank you
Thank you so much for your lucid and thorough presentations. They really help me in my work. Keep going!
Thank you so much for your videos, Tom. They have helped immensely for my studies of Literary Criticism.
Tom, this is so easy to digest. Thank you. My textbook on lit theory and my lecturer went on too many tangents for me to grasp the concept well. I really appreciate this video.
Fascinating! These are theories I'll have to delve deeper into. Thank you for the introduction.
Thank you for this explanaton! I was really confused from what I read in my textbook but after watching this video, it all now makes great sense
Read structuralism from Peter Barry, then watched this video and read Barry again. Felt like an altogether different text. Thanks for these videos, Tom.
19:10 and this is a very important concept of Manufacturing Consent :)
Your content is helping me SO INCREDIBLY MUCH in my first year of cultural studies. I really appreciate the way you present these theories, makes it quite easy to grasp :)
Thanks for sharing! After having lessons on Levi-Strauss and Totemism, haven't really got the idea of what structuralism means. This video helps me understand it better.
Man. Thanks for this video, it's been super instructive. Well done
This has helped me a lot.Thanks Mr.Nicholas
Thanks for that video ! That is one excellent summary of the ideas of structuralism which gives a nice overview of the subject matter and its key thinkers.
I'm seeing this for my Critical Theories exam tomorrow.. You're a life savior, thank you! 😄
totally in love with this channel!!!
Awesome presenting of the idea🙏
Very well explained! Keep up the good work :)
amazingly thorough, thank you!
now I want to research the history of Structalism in Psych
it frustrates me to no end that literally none of my professors up until this point have mentioned that structalism was a literary theory because they seem to go really hand in hand
Love your videos, especially this one! Combing through your catalog (since I've only recently found your channel) has been a blast
Tom, I love your channel. Thank you for it. I would love it if you did a video on dyadic pairs within structuralism.
gosh, the animal/mineral/vegetable example was fantastic. so intuitive
Fantastic this was the clearest resource on the matter I could find
thank you so much, this video was so helpful and it can allow to deepen my study on structuralism.
Damn, I appreciate your channel so much!
THANK YOU !!!! I have been struggeling with this for so long !!
No worries, glad I was able to help in some way!
Thank you! It is so well explained!
Really great content. I wish you all the best :)
My history professor has been discussing Saussure in class but it was mostly incoherent to me. You are much better at explaining stuff. Thank you!
Very, very useful!! 👏 Waiting for the next one.
Really glad to hear it!
Thank you for the clear explanation! It was very helpful!
I have a midterm tomorrow and this really helped me. thanks man
Love your videos so much! You’re switching infer and imply, wanted to let you know.
I loved this one, it's been fascinating
Thanks! So glad to hear that. Was slightly worried that I’d returned to the linguistics stuff a bit too often!
Yo Tom, much appreciated. Cheers.
Hey Tom, thank you so much for this video. This is really very helpful for a student like me we have developed love in semiotics just a few days back and want to explore more and more in this field. Thank you ❤️
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Thank you sir for a comprehensive explanation of Structuralism.
Very nice explanation!
I love your videos, super accessible
I started watching them under a year ago and go back and forth in the books and the authors you mention
You are definately one of my top references/resources on the net
Thanks and peace from Montréal
Thank you, I'm so glad you've found some of what I make useful!
Thanks man ! Great video
Discovered this channel recently, find your explanation of complex ideas very accessible, think this [apart from other things] makes your videos distinct, please, keep up the good work and videos coming.
Thank you, really appreciate you saying so!
Thank you so much for this! Extremely helpful
Your intro style reminds me of CBBC and I'm very much here for it
P.s. appreciate what you do. Thank you!
well done. Really a great help
I really like your work!!
I subscribed. Thank you so much! You saved my life!!!
I'm studying linguistics at the university and we've been talking about Saussure for a month at every single class, starting with our professor saying that He's now our father, mother and lover at the same time. randomly seeing his name again on a youtube video was so weird
anyway, great vid! I deeply enjoy your work
I love your videos! thank you!
Brilliant Job. When you speak about myths it would be really interesting to mention René Girard, even though he's on a category of its own.
Very digestible, thank you
amazing content. Thank u so much
I finally made it through this video😭. It took me a long time to fully absorb this but thank u so much for making this.
I learned a bunch of this at design college. I have never used it much as a web developer but it was kinda interesting from what I remember of it.
Excellent video. You could have as well added a mention to the works of Greimas and the discoursive (or french) semiotics. Accordinng to François Dosse "semiotics is to linguistics as algebra is to mathematics". Greimas' main work Structural Semantics is focused on how beyond the threshold of the phrase (considered the linguistic unit by Saussure), the text, or discourse also has an underlying structure. His concept of generative course of meaning is central to many works in literary and visual arts analysis. I myself wrote a paper analyzing a computer game, just as might a poem, a tale or a ballet.
Thank you for this informative vid.
Thank you! Most helpful❤️
More video excellent-ness. Cheers. Keep it up. Love your enthusiasm.
Thanks, glad you liked!
Fascinating, thank you!
you are a very intelligent scholar. thanks for the explanation
I appreciate that when you depicted Perseus at 8:43 you included the wang
Very well done. If you are not a professor, I humbly suggest you consider that field.
Wonderful video, thanks!
Cheers Ash, hope you enjoyed!
You are the best university in the world. Thank you so much !
Joseph Campbell’s, The Hero’s Journey, is a fascinating piece of work looking at the archetypes consistent throughout cultures found in literature.
Yes, The Hero With a Thousand Faces is an interesting piece of work and has had a massive impact particularly on film writing. I did have a whole bit about it in this video but I cut it for time in the end and because it’s more Jungian than Structuralist in its approach even if the results are similar. I don’t know in what esteem it’s viewed by anthropologists though.
Tom Nicholas your channel is still rocking it when it comes to the quality of its content.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, really appreciate you saying so! I'll do my best!!
I've studied cultural studies for both my BA and MA and now started a phd in STS/history of science. It's shocking how much you forget if you're not actively using these things regularly. Really great videos! They help me refreshing my knowledge on key concepts in an accessible way when I can't bare reading another text.
But one thing....why on earth would a cat hiss at a mouse?? ;)
Mmmm bare…. bear…
love your videos and your infos, thank you for that. I must ask what did you study in uni ?
I absolutely love your amazing channel!!!!! This is so amazing to even speak of all I want to say is your lovely! And please keep sharing its food I need! 🤪😉
Whoa, that's fancy, I'm subscribing.
@Tom Nicholas Thank you for this excellent taster on Structuralism. I am looking into the idea of meaning and this subject is a great area for studying that. It was great to see Propp's name come up only a day after I'd first heard him mentioned in a talk on Old Testament criticism.
Regarding meaning, a few times you said that a sentence or text 'infers' something. I wonder whether you meant to say 'implies'. A writer may imply something by their words, i.e. point to something without saying it directly (implicit versus explicit) whereas it is the reader who infers something from the words by 'reading in' a meaning which they have imagined. For example, you might say, "Mary was not a cook" and you might mean to imply that she was an awful cook whereas I, the reader, could infer that she considered cooking to be a bad use of her time, or any other plausible idea.
Usually, inference is the domain of the listener or reader rather than the speaker or writer.
I'm very pleased to have seen this comment, and I appreciate you offering friendly corrections where they're necessary.
I am a great fan of Propp (and Schlovsky). I used Barthes' S/Z writerly reading technnique for my Ph.D. dissertation, applyig it to Joyce's short story, "Clay" in Dubliners.
Once again your approach to something helped understand something else... Please, consider commenting Chomsky's "Manufacturing consent" with this stream ideas about structuralism in mind.
your videos help me a lot. I would do anything to get to know your channel earlier.
Good job!
Awesome video BTW. 😃
It s so fruitful academic feast. Thanx indeed
You are awesome.....thank you so much for sharing 🙏🙏
I fancy this. Clear and random 😁👍🏾
Pretty thorough for a 20 min vid!
this is great. thanks
You're a good man. Thank you
I’m after a TELEOLOGICAL analysis of a text. Why was it written? What does it do to the reader? What are the real world downstream impacts of the text? How aware is the writer or speaker of these impacts, and can different texts be created to mitigate or assist these impacts? Take the text “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine; a teleological analysis could drill down to the tone he uses, the pamphlet as a medium, the cultural context and how he represents a group of people who sought change, his desire to shock or inspire his reader, what might have happened if he had never written it etc. Anyone known for this? Thanks for a superb video!!!
Movie mistake: the cat purred at the mouse. A great addition to my anthropology notes :)
Great job. Very useful video and you gave overview of a vastly complex topic . Now, I will use whatever I have learnt from your video in analysing films .
Could you please suggest any books especially on structuralism and a book that gives in depth idea of post structuralism
Thanks! Propp's methodology is a good one to think about in terms of film. In a similar vein, you might like Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces or The Writers Journey by Christopher Vogel which is a slightly more reader-friendly version of the same ideas.
On the issue of poststructuralism, I'd suggest taking a look at Oxford University Press's A Very Short Introduction to Poststructuralism and the book Understanding Poststructuralism which I haven't read but which looks to be really good!