Structuralism Essay

Saussure Within The Great Gatsby Structuralism can be described as a critical movement of literature that studies how elements of a text can be understood more efficiently by examining its relationship to the overall composition of a text. Ferdinand de Saussure, the “father of modern linguistics” (845) is a prominent critic in the Structuralism movement. The understanding of Saussure’s theory in Structuralism will be examined using mathematical examples and applied to interpret The Great Gatsby. Saussure’s theory of literature centers on the “principle of the ‘arbitrary’ (purely conventional) nature of the sign” (846). According to Saussure, language is a “structured system of conventional signs, studied in their internal complexity as if…

Structuralism Essay The Flowers by Alice Walker uses several structuralist concepts that can help the reader better understand the story. There are three different structuralist terms emphasized while reading the story: sign, code, and symbol. A sign, in a literary sense, is a thing that makes you think of something else without an obvious connection between the sign and object. Codes are a set of ideas, rules, letters, numbers, symbols, etc., that are used to represent another thing. A…

In this essay I will explore structuralism and evaluate the usefulness of the theory. I will look at examples of Structuralism in ethnography, such as observable binary oppositions and interpretations of the importance of myth, also exploring criticisms of the theory. I will explore the claim that Structuralism is too theory-based and cannot account for the experience of the individual, and whether this means that Structuralism can be relied on to inform us about human life from an…

Structuralism Structuralism was the foremost school of thought in the history of psychology. Structuralism seeks to understand the structure, that is, the configuration of components of the mind and its perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components e.g. affection, attention, memory, sensation and so on. Structuralists were interested in deconstructing the mind into its elementary components and how those elementary components work together to create the mind.…

society influences humans and their behaviors. Structuralism and functionalism are theoretical perspectives in the social sciences such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and others. These two perspectives are different in certain ways. The Origins of Sociology The works of Marx, Durkheim and Weber were primarily European. However, the discipline has rooted in all the world and some of the most important contributions have come from the…

The manner in which information is signified is indissolubly linked with what’s being signified.” Structuralism is about how films use codes to convey meaning. Structuralism and semiotics has helped in the assessment of the two films. In The Rookie the speedometer on the side of the road serves as a signifier. Morris tests the speed of his fastball by throwing it past the sign. The sign shows him an inaccurate number that he believes. This serves as the signified. Morris doesn’t really know how…

Content Theory Structuralism Structuralism is a theory that suggests that all ideas have a structure; “structuralists” believe that structures are the “real things” that lie beneath “the surface” or the appearance of meaning. (Sternagel, 2012) When using structuralism theory, we attempt to analyse the meaning or try to see a forming pattern. In films this theory emphasizes how certain film clips convey meaning through the use of codes and conventions that are similar to the way languages are…

Jacques Lacan’s theory of development explains how infants mature psychologically. The stages of his concept include the Imaginary, the Mirror, and the Symbolic. The first is where children begin to understand control. Babies learn to manipulate their environment as an extension of their own base needs and desires. There is no separation between the baby and the outside world. Following the discovery of control, infants undergo the Mirror stage, where they learn to recognize their own image…

In The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events, E.E. Evans-Pritchard discusses one case study about the time he spent with the Azande tribe and what he learned about them and their interpretations of magic and witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard describes that the Zande have a philosophy that can easily be described by the following metaphor: witchcraft is the umbaga (or second spear) meaning that the Azande people use witchcraft to complement their understanding of reality (The Notion of…

The article I chose to critique is titled, “Promoting Social and Cultural Competence for Students from Diverse Backgrounds with Disabilities”, written by Beatrice Adera and Maria L. Manning (2014) and published in the journal of Multicultural Learning and Teaching, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp 67-82. Summary of the Article “Promoting Social and Cultural Competence for Students from Diverse Backgrounds with Disabilities” (Adera and Manning, 2014) examines social interaction, social competence, and cultural…