Structuralism

A critic, Roland Barthes, said “Literature is the question minus the answer” meaning many different things. However, in the play “Comedy of Errors” by William Shakespeare, a question arises many times throughout the play. What causes Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus willing to suffer? This reveals that when people are desperate for belonging, and the lack of love is making them willing to suffer. In the play , “Comedy of Errors”, a poor woman sold her boys, Dromios to Egeon to…

Semiotics is, in simple words, the study of signs. Semiotics can be exercised to anything that can be seen as signifying something, that is to say, to everything that has meaning within a culture. The main goal of a semiotic analysis is to establish the elemental conventions by identifying significant differences and oppositions in an attempt to show the system of categories, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, connotations, distinctions and the rules of combination present. Using a…

In Walter Mignolo’s reading “Epistemic Obdience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom” he says “decolonialty is called a “programmatic” of delinking from contemporary legacies of coloniality.” He says, it is a “response to needs unmet by the modern Rightist or Leftist government.” I think what he means by Epistemic Obdience is that, it is the decolonial way of thinking which recognizes and implements reason, which eliminates the strong tendency to think that Western European way of…

through a scene of a man publicly weeping. The truths questioned in this poem evolve from social and cultural mindsets about ostensible right and wrong behaviours regarding gender. However, to grasp a comprehensive understanding of the text, post-structuralism, and philosopher…

Signs are a commonplace feature of daily life. A sign is defined as anything that can be used to represent something else. (Berger, 2013). Commodity signs are a crucial part of consumer culture. These signs can be found on websites, in advertisements or even in a company’s logo. The principles of semiotics and the criteria for a successful commodity sign can be seen in the logo for Apple Inc. Semiotics is the study of signs and the meanings and codes created by these signs. The pioneers of…

In Saussure’s, Course in General Linguistics, he conceives of the linguistic sign as a psychological entity with a concept and a sound-image (Saussure, 66). He does this in order to avoid the fallacy of examining only the sound-image, or phonetic pronunciation of the word, for according to him, each recalls the other, and a concept without a sound-image is voiceless, and a sound-image without a concept is meaningless (Saussure, 67). The main crux of Saussure’s argument is that because “because…

Communication in advertising transpires through decoding and encoding levels of messages from the sender to the receiver via a particular medium. Advertisers use on-linguistic and linguistic cues designed to communicate a desired message towards a targeted audience in order to achieve their ultimate goal of selling their product. This essay examines the Katy Perry ‘Killer Queen’ perfume advertisement with a semiotic analysis approach. Furthermore, it analyses the conglomeration of connotations,…

Introduction This essay it will be looking at the ways that Ferdinand de Saussure ideas contribute towards the modern linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure was responsible for the systematic study of language and he was also responsible for the three directions in the study of language and involve the branches of linguistic diachronic and synchrony and he contributed on the idea of the sign which includes the signifier and the signified. Ferdinand who was the father of linguistics came up with…

Sociolinguistic anthropologists aim to study the use of languages by different peoples and how such uses form thought and social relationships between individuals. Hence, language can often be associated with power. That is to say that the use of a language differently amongst different individuals can establish a social hierarchy in which certain words become associated with gestures which are indicative of social status. Sociolinguistic anthropologists can study the relationship between power…

According to Barara Miller, Cultural anthropology is defined as the study of contemporary people and their cultures worldwide. This includes the changes that many cultures and societies undergo. To better understand how and why the people are living the way their cultures and society says is adequate, anthropologist must make assumptions about how their ancestors lived. Where the groups of hunter and gatherer humans settle may directly impact why some countries are rich and some are poor but are…