5.1. The differences between structuralism and stylistics

Structuralism

1. Study underlying structures of signification which occurs wherever there is a meaningful event or in the practice of some meaningful action.

2. Phonology becomes the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different forms.

3. An approach to analyzing the narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure.

4. Focused not on the use of language (parole, or speech) but rather on the underlying system of language (langue).

5. Interested in the way that a text like a piece of language.

6. Has the tendency to adopt particular moments from the history of linguistics that seems useful or applicable.

7. Structuralists are interested in cultural practices and have some degree of involvement in linguistics.

Stylistic

1. Study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context.

2. Attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language.

3. A distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language.

4. Stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language.

5. Interested in the way that a text is a piece of language.

6. Has been closely connected with the development of linguistic theories.

7. Stylisticians are often linguists with an interest in literature.

Sources:

• http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/structuralism.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylistics_%28linguistics%29
• Saptenno, M.A.I. The Influence of Linguistics in Structuralism. Universitas Nasional. 2001

5.2. Short information about Geneva school

Geneva School

The expression Geneva School refers to (1) a group of linguists based in Geneva who pioneered modern structural linguistic and (2) a group of literary theorists and critics working from a phenomenological perspective.

Geneva School of Linguistics

The most prominent figure of the Geneva School of Linguistics school was Ferdinand de Saussure. Other important colleagues and students of Saussure who comprise this school include Albert Sechahave , Albert Riedlinger, Sergej Karcevski and Charles Bally.

The most significant linguistic book connected with this school is 'Cours de languistique générale', the main work of de Saussure, which was published by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sehechaye. The book was based on lectures with this title that de Saussure gave three times in Geneva from 1906 to 1912. Sehechaye and Bally did not themselves take part in these lecture classes, but they used notes from other students. The most important of these students was Albert Riedlinger, who provided them with the most material. Furthermore Bally and Sehechaye continued to develop de Saussure's theories, mainly focusing on the linguistic research of speech. Sehechaye also concentrated on syntactic problems.

Russian formalism

Russian formalism was an influential school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars (Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Grigory Vinokur) who revolutionised literary criticism between 1914 and the 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, and on structuralism as a whole. The movement's members are widely considered the founders of modern literary criticism. Under Stalin it became a pejorative term for elitist art.

Russian formalism was a diverse movement, producing no unified doctrine, and no consensus amongst its proponents on a central aim to their endeavours. In fact, "Russian formalism" describes two distinct movements: the OPOJAZ (Obscestvo izucenija POeticeskogo JAZyka - Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St. Petersburg and the Linguistic Circle in Moscow. Therefore, it is more precise to refer to the "Russian Formalists", rather than to use the more encompassing and abstract term of "Formalism".

The term "formalism" was first used by the adversaries of the movement, and as such it conveys a meaning explicitly rejected by the Formalists themselves. In the words of one of the foremost Formalists, Boris Eichenbaum: "It is difficult to recall who coined this name, but it was not a very felicitous coinage. It might have been convenient as a simplified battle cry but it fails, as an objective term, to delimit the activities of the "Society for the Study of Poetic Language.

The Prague Linguistic Circle in 1920s and 1930s

The Prague Linguistic Circle was one of the most influential schools of linguistic thought in pre-war linguistics. Through its former members like Roman Jakobson or René Wellek, it influenced modern American linguistics as well as many other linguists in the world. In the spring of 1996, many renowned linguists came to Prague to pay homage to the heritage of the Prague Linguistic Circle and to Roman Jakobson during a conference to 70 Years of Existence of the Prague Linguistic Circle and 100th Anniversary of Roman Jakobson's Birthday.

Although the 'classical period' of the Circle can be dated between 1926, the year of the first meeting, and the beginning of WWII, its roots are in much of the earlier work of its members, and also it did not completely cease its work with the outbreak of the war.

Among the founding members were such personalities as Vilém Mathesius (President of PLC until his death in 1945), Roman Jakobson, Nikolay Trubetzkoy, Sergei Karcevskiy, Jan Mukarovský, and many others who began to meet in the mid-twenties to discuss issues of common interest.

The, at first, irregular meetings with lectures and discussions gradually developed into regular ones. The first results of the members' cooperative efforts were presented in joint theses prepared for the First International Congress of Slavicists held in Prague in 1929. These were published in the 1st volume of the then started series Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague.

The Théses outlined the direction of the work of the Circle's members. Such important concepts as the approach to the study of language as a synchronic system which is, however, dynamic, functionality of elements of language, and the importance of the social function of language were explicitly laid down as the basis for further research.

Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes in the 1940s

Claude Levi-Strauss relates that the post was offered to him first, but that since Koyre wanted it, "I acquiesced" (Levi-Strauss and Eribon, 1988, p. 62). He also reports that he and the philosopher were friends at the time, and credits Koyre for providing him with an introduction to Roman Jakobson, an encounter that led to his application of linguistic theory to the analysis of kinship systems, and to their undertaking to teach jointly a seminar on Structuralism.

In his capacity as secretary general, Levi-Strauss was recalled to France for consultations in the fall of 1944. The anthropologist, who by his own account had little contact with colleagues other than Koyre and Jakobson, and in his published memoirs expressed contempt for most of his fellow academic exiles, proposed to fold the Ecole into a broadened Alliance Francaise. But his idea failed to gain support, and in the spring of 1945 he returned to NewYork as the cultural counselor to the French Embassy--a clear indication of his political standing, as de Gaulle was then at the peak of his power--with orders to close down the school.

Parisian Structuralism from 1950-1970

Post-structuralism emerged as a response — by Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and others — to Parisian structuralism in the late 1960s. Since then, it has gained many followers worldwide. Its increased popularity is particularly based on translations spreading in Anglo-American academic circles, influencing especially the humanities, in the 1980s and 1990s. Post-structuralism cannot be subsumed under any of the three syntheses we here discuss. Quite often, post-structuralism is included as one variety of social theory, but it is distinct in the sense that it does not aim to provide a new transcendental philosophical foundation for social science. Post-structuralism rather claims that the only role an intellectual can take is to deconstruct any such fundament. Post-structuralism is a program to negate any notion of theory, and especially fundamental ones. It moves from cognitive skepticism into cognitive nihilism. Thus it also differs from interactionism, since it denies the notion of middle range theories. It takes skepticism against the accumulation of knowledge to the bitter end. Scientific knowledge cannot be demarcated in any way, it is not something that accumulates, it is always part of everyday actions. Post-structuralism see only fully discontinous knowledge regimes. It is thus left with a generalized sociology of knowledge in which any alleged social science theory is an interpretation of the present (cf. lower right corner of Figure 1). There is no notion of theory, although one may — critically — claim that post-structuralism “feeds” on transcendental social theory in a “negative” way!

Among followers of Foucault, knowledge regimes are seen as embedded in power relations. A knowledge regime is linked to the way in which institutions of power (the state at the macro level, various institutions as the prison, hospital, etc. at the meso level, and e.g. the family father at the micro-level) interpret their present predicament. “Interpretation” here indicates not primarily a broad picture of the present, but the many classificatory and standardizing schemes by which the state, the firms, and other institutions count, group and thus impose discipline on the members of society.

It is certainly important for social science to be aware of the fact that the data analyzed are often produced by the state. Even many of the categories and classifications they use have been defined by the state for practical purposes that are often related to domination/discipline. Such a view may be highly appealing to social movements on the defensive. The more monolithic and uncompromising the established power structure seems, the more tempting it is to reduce any production of knowledge to the workings of this structure. Taken to the extreme, however, this becomes reductionism on the part of power-relations, denying any autonomy for the research collective. This reduction is not a functionalist one; it rather uses the structure of the language as a model for the impact of power/knowledge on the dominated subjects. The reliance on this one basic analogy often leads post-structuralists to overemphasize the role of cultural codes in history. The danger is that this leads to a sort of “imperialism of the humanities”, incapable of comparative analysis and of interdisciplinary sensitivity. A more detailed assessment of whether post-structuralist studies on historical topics have avoided this danger cannot be given here.

5.3. Ferdinand de Saussure’s Main Concepts

Geneva School

The expression Geneva School refers to (1) a group of linguists based in Geneva who pioneered modern structural linguistic and (2) a group of literary theorists and critics working from a phenomenological perspective.

Geneva School of Linguistics

The most prominent figure of the Geneva School of Linguistics school was Ferdinand de Saussure. Other important colleagues and students of Saussure who comprise this school include Albert Sechahave , Albert Riedlinger, Sergej Karcevski and Charles Bally.

The most significant linguistic book connected with this school is 'Cours de languistique générale', the main work of de Saussure, which was published by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sehechaye. The book was based on lectures with this title that de Saussure gave three times in Geneva from 1906 to 1912. Sehechaye and Bally did not themselves take part in these lecture classes, but they used notes from other students. The most important of these students was Albert Riedlinger, who provided them with the most material. Furthermore Bally and Sehechaye continued to develop de Saussure's theories, mainly focusing on the linguistic research of speech. Sehechaye also concentrated on syntactic problems.

Russian formalism

Russian formalism was an influential school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars (Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Grigory Vinokur) who revolutionised literary criticism between 1914 and the 1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, and on structuralism as a whole. The movement's members are widely considered the founders of modern literary criticism. Under Stalin it became a pejorative term for elitist art.

Russian formalism was a diverse movement, producing no unified doctrine, and no consensus amongst its proponents on a central aim to their endeavours. In fact, "Russian formalism" describes two distinct movements: the OPOJAZ (Obscestvo izucenija POeticeskogo JAZyka - Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St. Petersburg and the Linguistic Circle in Moscow. Therefore, it is more precise to refer to the "Russian Formalists", rather than to use the more encompassing and abstract term of "Formalism".

The term "formalism" was first used by the adversaries of the movement, and as such it conveys a meaning explicitly rejected by the Formalists themselves. In the words of one of the foremost Formalists, Boris Eichenbaum: "It is difficult to recall who coined this name, but it was not a very felicitous coinage. It might have been convenient as a simplified battle cry but it fails, as an objective term, to delimit the activities of the "Society for the Study of Poetic Language.

The Prague Linguistic Circle in 1920s and 1930s

The Prague Linguistic Circle was one of the most influential schools of linguistic thought in pre-war linguistics. Through its former members like Roman Jakobson or René Wellek, it influenced modern American linguistics as well as many other linguists in the world. In the spring of 1996, many renowned linguists came to Prague to pay homage to the heritage of the Prague Linguistic Circle and to Roman Jakobson during a conference to 70 Years of Existence of the Prague Linguistic Circle and 100th Anniversary of Roman Jakobson's Birthday.

Although the 'classical period' of the Circle can be dated between 1926, the year of the first meeting, and the beginning of WWII, its roots are in much of the earlier work of its members, and also it did not completely cease its work with the outbreak of the war.

Among the founding members were such personalities as Vilém Mathesius (President of PLC until his death in 1945), Roman Jakobson, Nikolay Trubetzkoy, Sergei Karcevskiy, Jan Mukarovský, and many others who began to meet in the mid-twenties to discuss issues of common interest.

The, at first, irregular meetings with lectures and discussions gradually developed into regular ones. The first results of the members' cooperative efforts were presented in joint theses prepared for the First International Congress of Slavicists held in Prague in 1929. These were published in the 1st volume of the then started series Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague.

The Théses outlined the direction of the work of the Circle's members. Such important concepts as the approach to the study of language as a synchronic system which is, however, dynamic, functionality of elements of language, and the importance of the social function of language were explicitly laid down as the basis for further research.

Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes in the 1940s

Claude Levi-Strauss relates that the post was offered to him first, but that since Koyre wanted it, "I acquiesced" (Levi-Strauss and Eribon, 1988, p. 62). He also reports that he and the philosopher were friends at the time, and credits Koyre for providing him with an introduction to Roman Jakobson, an encounter that led to his application of linguistic theory to the analysis of kinship systems, and to their undertaking to teach jointly a seminar on Structuralism.

In his capacity as secretary general, Levi-Strauss was recalled to France for consultations in the fall of 1944. The anthropologist, who by his own account had little contact with colleagues other than Koyre and Jakobson, and in his published memoirs expressed contempt for most of his fellow academic exiles, proposed to fold the Ecole into a broadened Alliance Francaise. But his idea failed to gain support, and in the spring of 1945 he returned to NewYork as the cultural counselor to the French Embassy--a clear indication of his political standing, as de Gaulle was then at the peak of his power--with orders to close down the school.

Parisian Structuralism from 1950-1970

Post-structuralism emerged as a response — by Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and others — to Parisian structuralism in the late 1960s. Since then, it has gained many followers worldwide. Its increased popularity is particularly based on translations spreading in Anglo-American academic circles, influencing especially the humanities, in the 1980s and 1990s. Post-structuralism cannot be subsumed under any of the three syntheses we here discuss. Quite often, post-structuralism is included as one variety of social theory, but it is distinct in the sense that it does not aim to provide a new transcendental philosophical foundation for social science. Post-structuralism rather claims that the only role an intellectual can take is to deconstruct any such fundament. Post-structuralism is a program to negate any notion of theory, and especially fundamental ones. It moves from cognitive skepticism into cognitive nihilism. Thus it also differs from interactionism, since it denies the notion of middle range theories. It takes skepticism against the accumulation of knowledge to the bitter end. Scientific knowledge cannot be demarcated in any way, it is not something that accumulates, it is always part of everyday actions. Post-structuralism see only fully discontinous knowledge regimes. It is thus left with a generalized sociology of knowledge in which any alleged social science theory is an interpretation of the present (cf. lower right corner of Figure 1). There is no notion of theory, although one may — critically — claim that post-structuralism “feeds” on transcendental social theory in a “negative” way!

Among followers of Foucault, knowledge regimes are seen as embedded in power relations. A knowledge regime is linked to the way in which institutions of power (the state at the macro level, various institutions as the prison, hospital, etc. at the meso level, and e.g. the family father at the micro-level) interpret their present predicament. “Interpretation” here indicates not primarily a broad picture of the present, but the many classificatory and standardizing schemes by which the state, the firms, and other institutions count, group and thus impose discipline on the members of society.

It is certainly important for social science to be aware of the fact that the data analyzed are often produced by the state. Even many of the categories and classifications they use have been defined by the state for practical purposes that are often related to domination/discipline. Such a view may be highly appealing to social movements on the defensive. The more monolithic and uncompromising the established power structure seems, the more tempting it is to reduce any production of knowledge to the workings of this structure. Taken to the extreme, however, this becomes reductionism on the part of power-relations, denying any autonomy for the research collective. This reduction is not a functionalist one; it rather uses the structure of the language as a model for the impact of power/knowledge on the dominated subjects. The reliance on this one basic analogy often leads post-structuralists to overemphasize the role of cultural codes in history. The danger is that this leads to a sort of “imperialism of the humanities”, incapable of comparative analysis and of interdisciplinary sensitivity. A more detailed assessment of whether post-structuralist studies on historical topics have avoided this danger cannot be given here.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_school

http://praguelinguistics.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/russian_formalism

http://angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/

http://encyclopedia.com

5.4. The Models of Structuralism

The Models of Structuralism

Claude Lévi-Strauss

The advent of structural linguistics completely changed this situation. Not only did it renew linguistic perspectives; a transformation of this magnitude is not limited to a single discipline. Structural linguistics will certainly play the same renovating role with respect to the social sciences that nuclear physics, for example, has played for the physical sciences. In what does this revolution consist, as we try to assess its broadest implications? N. Troubetzkoy, the illustrious founder of structural linguistics, himself furnished the answer to this question. In one programmatic statement, he reduced the structural method to four basic operations. First, structural linguistics shifts from the study of conscious linguistic phenomena to study of their unconscious infrastructure; second, it does not treat terms as independent entities, taking instead as its - basis of analysis the relations between terms; third, it introduces the concept of system - "Modern phonemics does not merely proclaim that phonemes are always part of a system; it shows concrete phonemic systems and elucidates their structure" finally, structural linguistics aims at discovering general laws, either by induction "or . . . by logical deduction, which would give them an absolute character."

Like phonemes, kinship terms are elements of meaning; like phonemes, they acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems. "Kinship systems," Finally, the recurrence of kinship patterns, marriage rules, similar prescribed attitudes between certain types of relatives, and so forth, in scattered regions of the globe and in fundamentally different societies, leads us to believe that, in the case of kinship as well as linguistics, the observable phenomena result from the action of laws which are general but implicit. Although they belong to another order of reality, kinship phenomena are of the same type as linguistic phenomena.

The study of kinship problems is today broached in the same terms and seems to be in the throes of the same difficulties as was linguistics on the eve of the structuralist revolution. In both cases, it is solely (or almost solely) diachronic analysis which must account for synchronic phenomena. Troubetzkoy, comparing structural linguistics and the old linguistics, defines structural linguistics as a "systematic structuralism and universalism," which he contrasts with the individualism and "atomism" of former schools. And when he considers diachronic analysis, his perspective is a profoundly modified one: "The evolution of a phonemic system at any given moment is directed by the tendency toward a goal. ... This evolution thus has a direction, an internal logic, which historical phonemics is called upon to elucidate." The "individualistic" and "atomistic" interpretation, founded exclusively on historical contingency, which is criticised by Troubetzkoy and Jakobson, is actually the same as that which is generally applied to kinship problems. Each detail of terminology and each special marriage rule is associated with a specific custom as either its consequence or its survival. We thus meet with a chaos of discontinuity. No one asks how kinship systems, regarded as synchronic wholes, could be the arbitrary product of a convergence of several heterogeneous institutions (most of which are hypothetical), yet nevertheless function with some sort of regularity and effectiveness.

Source: Structural Anthropology, 1958 publ. Allen Lane, The Penguin Press., 1968. Various excerpts reproduced here.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/levistra.htm

Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), who had already begun to absorb non-positivistic ideas in the second decade of the twentieth century, long before copies of Saussure's Cours reached Russia.

In the case of Roman Jakobson, we must reckon with an additional complicating factor, namely that he was exposed to Saussure's ideas in two stages. First, he had a colleague and friend, Serge Karcevski, who had studied in Geneva, where he absorbed Saussurean doctrine from Charles Bally, Saussure's friend and immediate successor. On the first page of a paper on the poetry of Khlebnikov, first presented in Moscow in May 1919, Jakobson voiced the Saussurean distinction between synchronie and diachronie but without using Saussure's own terminology.

In the same year (viz. 1929), Roman Jakobson gave the following much-quoted thumbnail definition of structuralism: "Were we to comprise the leading idea of present-day science in its most various manifestations, we could hardly find a more appropriate designation than structuralism. Language is a system all parts of which can and should be considered in their synchronic inter-dependence. Note that Karcevski uses Saussure's idiosyncratic term "synchronique" here, instead of the more traditional "statique." The term "structuralism" was, however, not created de novo by linguists in the late 1920s but had already been in use among psychologists a generation earlier.

While that starting point is still tantalizingly shrouded in mystery, however, there is no doubt that Jakobson was a key figure in the wider dissemination of the notion of structuralism to his fellow linguists in western Europe in the 1930s. Later, his association with Claude Lévi-Strauss in New York in the early 1940s was of crucial importance in the spread of some of the key ideas of structuralism to anthropology and from there subsequently to other social sciences (one thinks in this connection of Jean Piaget in psychology). The use of terms like "structure," "structural," etc. was, for instance, of terms like "organism" and "morphology," which were borrowed by comparative philologists in the nineteenth century from biology and geology, two fields with unimpeachably scientific legitimacy.

There perhaps three (not two) fundamental developments in twentieth-century linguistics, namely the rise of structuralism, the turning away from historical studies, and the vogue of Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale. Facts of this kind lead me to raise the awkward question of the relation between linguistics and literary criticism in the period up to the emergence of structuralism in Prague in the late 1920s. In this area, it seems abundantly clear that linguistic theory was tributary to early twentieth-century modernist movements in literature, not to mention the fine arts. I realize that historians of linguistics may be loath to investigate links between their own field and the study of literature and art, which they, perhaps understandably, regard as fundamentally unscientific and hence of no possible relevance to the history of their own discipline. But sooner or later the problem will have to be faced.

http://people.ku.edu/~percival/Jakobson&Structuralism.html

Gerard Genette's

In extending the range of the textual we have not decreased the complexity or meaning-power of literature but have in fact increased it, both in its textual and in its cultural meaningfulness. If the reader and the text are both cultural constructions, then the meaningfulness of texts becomes more apparent, as they share meaning-constructs; if the cultural is textual, then the culture's relation to the textuality of literature becomes more immediate, more pertinent, more compelling. Literature is a discourse in a world of discourses, each discourse having its protocols for meaning and typical uses of language, rhetoric, subject area and so forth.

The thesis that what seems real to us is coded and conventional leads to a consideration of how 'reality' is represented in art -- what we get is a 'reality effect'; the signs which represent reality are 'naturalized', that is, made to seem as if we could see reality through them -- or in another way of saying, made to seem to be conforming to the laws of reality. This is achieved through 'vraisemblance', truth-seeming, or 'naturalization'. Some elements of vraisemblance (from Culler, Structuralist Poetics) are as follows.

a. There is the socially given text, that which is taken as the 'real' world -- what is taken for granted. That we have minds and bodies, for instance. This is a textual phenomenon. (Every term of "we have minds and bodies", the relations between most of these terms, and what we mean by them, in fact codify culturally specific assumptions.)

b. There is the general cultural text: shared knowledge which would be recognized by participants as part of culture and hence subject to correction or modification but which none the less serves as a kind of 'nature'. This is the level at which we interpret motive, character and significance from descriptions of action, dress, attitude and so forth. "Jake put on his tuxedo and tennis shoes" will provide an interpretation of Jake or will look forward to an explanation of why he broke the cultural code, in this case a dress code. "Harry gazed for hours on the picture of Esmeralda" is a culturally coded statement: we read Harry's attitude, and so forth. We 'imitate' 'reality' by recording cultural codes.

c. There are the conventions of genre, a specifically literary and artificial vraisemblance -- "the series of constituent conventions which enable various sorts of works to be written." The lines

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; The center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

require certain conventions of reading. If we were to read it as part of a paragraph in Dickens they would make less sense. One convention of literature is that there is a persona who is articulating the text -- that it comes from some organizing consciousness which can be commented on and described. Genre is another convention: each genre designates certain kinds of action as acceptable and excludes others.

d. There is what might be called the natural attitude to the artificial, where the text explicitly cites and exposes vraisemblance of the kind directly above, so as to reinforce its own authority. The narrator may claim that he is intentionally violating the conventions of a story, for instance, that he knows that this is not the way it should be done according to the conventions, but that the way he is doing it serves some higher or more substantial purpose -- the appeal is to a greater naturalness or a higher intelligibility.

e. There is the complex vraisemblance of specific intertextualities. "When a text cites or parodies the conventions of a genre one interprets it by moving to another level of interpretation where both terms of the opposition can be held together by the theme of literature itself." -- e.g. parody, when one exploits the particular conventions of a work or style or genre, etc. Irony forces us to posit an alternate possibility or reality in the face of the reality-construction of the text. All surface incongruities register meaning at a level of the project of interpretation itself, and so comment as it were on the relation between 'textual' and 'interpretive' reality.

In short, to imitate reality is to represent codes which 'describe' (or, construct) reality according to the conventions of representation of the time.

The conventions of reading. We read according to certain conventions; consequently our reading creates the meaning of that which we read. These conventions come in two 'layers':

a. how we (culturally) think that reality is or should be represented in texts, which will include the general mimetic conventions of the art of the period, which will describe the way in which reality is apprehended or imagined, and

b. the conventions of 'literature' (and of 'art' generally), for instance,

a. the rule of significance whereby we raise the meaning of the text to its highest level of generalizability (a tree blasted by lightning might become a figure of the power of nature, or of God);

b. the convention of figural coherence, through which we assume that figures (metonyms, metaphors, 'symbols') will have a signifying relationship to one another on a level of meaning more complex than or 'higher' than the physical;

c. the convention of thematic unity, whereby we assume that all of the elements of the text contribute to the meaning of the text. These are all conventions of reading.

The facts that some works are difficult to interpret, some are difficult to interpret for its contemporaries but not for later readers, some require that we learn how its contemporaries would have read them in order fully to understand them, these facts point to the existence of literary competence, the possession by the reader of protocols for reading. When one reads modernist texts, such as The Waste Land, one has to learn how to read them. One has in fact to learn how to read Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and so forth. Culler remarks that

reading poetry is a rule-governed process of producing meanings; the poem offers a structure which must be filled up and one therefore attempts to invent something, guided by a series of formal rules derived from one's experience of reading poetry, which both make possible invention and impose limits on it.

Structuralism is oriented toward the reader insofar as it says that the reader constructs literature, that is, reads the text with certain conventions and expectations in mind. Some post-structural theorists, Fish for instance, hold that the reader constructs the text entirely, through the conventions of reading of her interpretive community.

In joining with formalism in the identification of literariness as the focus on the message itself as opposed to a focus on the addressee, the addresser, or the referential function of the message, structuralism places ambiguity, as Genette points out, at the heart of the poetic function, as its self-referential nature puts the message, the addresser and the addressee all in doubt. Hence literary textuality is complexly meaningful.

Structuralism underlines the importance of genre, i.e., basic rules as to how subjects are approached, about conventions of reading for theme, level of seriousness, significance of language use, and so forth. "Different genres lead to different expectations of types of situations and actions, and of psychological, moral, and esthetic values." (Genette). The idea that literature is an institution is another structuralist contribution; that a number of its protocols for creation and for reading are in fact controlled by that institutional nature.

Through structuralism, literature is seen as a whole: it functions as a system of meaning and reference no matter how many works there are, two or two thousand. Thus any work becomes the parole, the individual articulation, of a cultural langue, or system of signification. As literature is a system, no work of literature is an autonomous whole; similarly, literature itself is not autonomous but is part of the larger structures of signification of the culture.

The following are some points based on Culler's ideas about the advantages of structuralism, having to do with the idea that literature is a protocol of reading:

a. Structuralism is a firmer starting-point for reading literature as literature than are other approaches, because literariness and/or fictionality does not have to be shown to be inherent in the text, but in the way it is read. It explains, for instance, why the same sentence can have a different meaning depending on the genre in which it appears, it explains how the boundaries of the literary can change from age to age, it accommodates and explains differing readings of a text given differing reading protocols -- one can read a text for its 'literary' qualities or for its sociological or ideological qualities, for instance, and read as complex a text in doing so.

b. One gains an appreciation of literature as an institution, as a coherent and related set of codes and practices, and so one sees also that reading is situated reading, that is, it is in a certain meaning-domain or set of codes. It follows that when literature is written, it will be written under these codes (it can break or alter the codes to create effects, but this is still a function of the codes).

c. Consequently one can be more open to challenges to and alterations of literary conventions.

d. Once one sees that reading and writing are both coded and based on conventions one can read 'against the grain' in a disciplined way, and one can read readings of literature -- reading can become a more self-reflexive process.

http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/struct.html

A.J. Greimas

Greimas applied the system of language into literature in the form of narrative theory. He did not make any limitation. Starting from Saussure and Jakobson’s concept of binary opposition, Greimas described that the oppositions include what he called the elementary structure of signification. He later argued that the binary opposition is the basis of an actantial model, the superficial surface structure, from where individual stories derived and generated. Thus his binary opposition and actantial model are parallel with Saussure’s concepts of langue and parole and later Noam Chomsky’s concept of language competence and performance.

He theorized that within narrative there are three pairs of binary oppositions, the first being subject/ object, which is connected with desire, search and aim. Secondly there is sender/receiver, which is connected with communication. The last opposition is helper/opponent, connected with auxiliary support and hindrance (Hawkes 92-93). Greimas thought of narrative in terms of relationships between entities. He broke down Propp's thirty-one functions into twenty, which can be divided into the following three categories (Hawkes 94):

1. Contractual: concerned with establishing or breaking of contracts or rules

2. Performative: concerned with the actions of the characters

3. Disjunctive: concerned with the sequence of events and how they relate to each other

"Structuralism" can be viewed as an extension of "Formalism" in that both "Structuralism" and "Formalism" devoted their attention to matters of literary form (i.e. structure) rather than social or historical content; and that both bodies of thought were intended to put the study of literature on a scientific, objective basis. "Structuralism" relied initially on the ideas of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. Like Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier (words, marks, symbols) as arbitrary and unrelated to the concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular society uses language and signs, meaning was constituted by a system of "differences" between units of the language. Particular meanings were of less interest than the underlying structures of signification that made meaning itself possible, often expressed as an emphasis on "langue" rather than "parole." "Structuralism" was to be a metalanguage, a language about languages, used to decode actual languages, or systems of signification.

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov believed the existence of a ‘grammar’ of narrative from which individual stories ultimately derive. He believed that the relations between the elements in literature can be divided into two types, the syntagmatic or in-praesentia and paradigmatic or in-absentia. The first type is the configuration or contruction relation in which there exists the causality between the elements which support the theory. This relationship often focuses on the syntactic aspect in narration. The second type is the relation between the presence and absence in a text. Basically, Todorov indentified three aspects of the narrative.i.e. the semantic aspect (its content), syntactical aspect (combinations of various structural units); verbal aspect (manipulation of the particular words and phrases).

The work of Tzvetan Todorov shifts from an emphasis on literature as writing to an emphasis on the connected activity of reading (Hawkes 95). He is another major critical thinker who seeks to establish a scientific account of narrative structure. He believes that all narratives need proposition, which is the smallest, most basic unit of narrative. This can be an agent (i.e. a person) or a predicate (i.e. an action). He also uses the story of Oedipus Rex, an abstract yet universal myth to stress his theory, which could also be referred to as an algebraic formula (Selden 75):

-X is King -X marries Y

-Y is X’s mother -X kills Z

-Z is X’s father

In this example, the first three (king, mother, father) propositions denominate agents. These are specific people or nouns. The first and last two propositions contain predicates or actions: to be a king, to marry and to kill. He then goes on to present two higher levels of organization:

1.) Sequence: a group of propositions form a sequence

2.) Text: a group of sequences form text.

The basic sequence is made up of five propositions which outline a basic state of narration that is "disturbed" and then "re-established." For example (Selden 76):

EQUILIBRIUM¹ (stability or peace)

FORCE¹ (a disruption of peace i.e. enemy invades)

DISEQUILIBRIUM (climax i.e. war)

FORCE² (in order to restore peace i.e. enemy is defeated)

EQUILIBRIUM² (peace on new terms or a form of compromise)

A succession of sequences form a text and this text can be organized in several different ways:

1.) Embedding: a story within a story, digression

2.) Linking: a string of sequences

3.) Alteration: interlacing of sequences

4.) Conglomeration: a mixture of all these forms

Todorov tried to identify the fundamental narrative units which come together to form larger structures in text. He aimed to develop a "universal grammar" which not only underlies all languages and signifying systems, but also acts as a guidebook for all language and lays out even the most basic functions and responsibilities of all human beings (Hawkes 97).

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes focused on the role, function, and contribution of the reader and the relation between the signifier and the signified. Barthes identified two types of readers, the first was called writerly, i.e. when the reader is not only a consumer but a producer of a text, and the second type the readerly, when the reader is left with very poor freedom, i.e. simply to accept or reject the text. It was in the first type that Barthes saw the function as agencies which modify, determinate, and generate meaning closer to the ways in which language works. Therefore Barthes believed in the plurality of a text. A text should divide into a series of lexia or reading units of conderable length. A lexia can include a few words or several sentences. It’s determined by understanding the meanings, dimensions, connotations that appear in each of the words, phrases, and sentences.

Poem Analysis "Theme For English B"

The Rhythm and Meter

First Stanza:

_ / _ / _

The instructor said, >> Trochaic dimeter, 1 foot monosyllable.

/ _ _ /

Go home and write >>Iambic monometer, Trochaic monometer.

_ / _ /

a page tonight. >>Trochaic dimeter.

_ / _ / _ / _ /

And let that page come out of you-- >>Trochaic tetrameter.

_ _ / _ /

Then, it will be true. >>Spondee monometer, Iambic monometer,1 foot Monosyllable.

Second Stanza:

_ / _ _ / _ / _

I wonder if it's that simple? >>Trochaic monometer, Spondee monometer,

Iambic dimeter.

/ _ / _ / / _ / _ / _ / _

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. >> Iambic dimeter, Anapestic

monometer, Iambic trimeter.

_ / _ / _ _ / _ _ /

I went to school there, then Durham, then here >> Trochaic dimeter, Spondee

monometer, Iambic monometer, Trochaic monometer.

_ / _ / / _ / _ / / _

to this college on the hill above Harlem. >>Trochaic dimeter, Iambic dimeter, Anapestic

monometer.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ / _ /

I am the only colored student in my class. >>Trochaic hexameter.

_ / _ _ / _ / _ / / _

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, >>Trochaic monometer,

Spondaic monometer, Iambic dimeter,

Anapestic monometer.

/ _ / _ / _ _ / _ /

Through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, >>Iambic trimeter, Trochaic dimeter.

/ _ / _ / _ _ / _ / _ /

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, >> Iambic trimeter, Trochaic trimeter.

_ / _ / / _ / _ / / _ / _

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator >> Trochaic monometer,Dactylic

monometer, Trochaic dimeter, Iambic monometer.

_ / _ / / _ _ / _ /

up to my room, sit down, and write this page: >> Trochaic dimeter, Iambic monometer,

Trochaic dimeter.

Third Stanza:

_ / / _ _ / / _ / _ / _ /

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me >>Dactylic monometer, Spondaic

monometer,Iambic trimeter,1 foot

Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ _ /

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what >>Trochaic tetrameter, Spondaic

monometer,1 foot Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _ / / _ _ / _

I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: >> Trochaic trimeter, Iambic

monometer,Trochaic monometer,1 foot

Monosyllable.

/ _ / _ _ / / _ / _ / _

hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page. >>Iambic dimeter, Trochaic

monometer,Iambic trimeter.

_ / / _ / _ /

(I hear New York, too.) Me--who? >>Trochaic monometer, Iambic dimeter,1 foot

Monosyllable.

/ _ / _ / _ / _ / _ /

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. >>Iambic pentameter, 1 foot

Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ / _

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. >>Trochaic pentameter, 1 foot

Monosyllable.

_ / _ / / _ / _ / _

I like a pipe for a Christmas present, >>Trochaic dimeter, Iambic trimeter.

_ / _ / _ / _ /

or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach. >>Trochaic tetrameter.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ / _

I guess being colored doesn't make me not like >> Trochaic pentameter, 1 foot

Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ / _ / _

the same things other folks like who are other races. >> Trochaic hexameter, 1 foot

Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _ / _ / _ /

So will my page be colored that I write? >> Trochaic pentameter.

/ _ / _ / / _ /

Being me, it will not be white. >>Iambic dimeter, Anapestic monometer,1 foot

Monosyllable.

/ _ / _

But it will be >>Iambic dimeter.

_ / _ / / _ /

a part of you, instructor. >>Trochaic dimeter, Iambic monometer,1 foot Monosyllable.

/ _ /

You are white-- >>Iambic monometer, 1 foot Monosyllable.

/ _ / _ / _ / _ _ / _ /

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. >>Iambic tetrameter, Trochaic monometer.

/ / _ / _

That's American. >>1 foot Monosyllable, Iambic dimeter.

_ / _ / _ / _ _ / _ / _ /

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. >>Trochaic trimeter, Spondaic

monometer,Iambic dimeter,1 foot Monosyllable.

/ _ / / _ / _ / _ / _ /

Nor do I often want to be a part of you. >>Iambic monometer, Anapestic

monometer,Iambic trimeter,1 foot Monosyllable.

_ / _ / _

But we are, that's true! >>Trochaic dimeter, 1 foot Monosyllable.

_ / / _ /

As I learn from you, >>Dactylic monometer, Trochaic monometer.

_ / _ / _ /

I guess you learn from me-- >>Trochaic trimeter.

/ _ _ / _ _ /

although you're older--and white-- >>Iambic monometer, Trochaic

monometer,Spondaic monometer,1 foot Monosyllable.

_ / _ _ /

and somewhat more free. >> Trochaic monometer, Spondaic monometer, 1 foot

Monosyllable.

Fourth Stanza:

/ _ _ / _ / _ /

This is my page for English B. >> Iambic monometer, Trochaic trimeter.

The Rhyme

Theme For English B by Langston Hughes

The instructor said, A

Go home and write A

a page tonight. A

And let that page come out of you-- B

Then, it will be true. B

I wonder if it's that simple? A

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. B

I went to school there, then Durham, then here C

to this college on the hill above Harlem. B

I am the only colored student in my class. D

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, B

through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, D

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, E

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator F

up to my room, sit down, and write this page: A

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me A

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what B

I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: C

hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page. D

(I hear New York, too.) Me--who? C

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. E

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. E

I like a pipe for a Christmas present, B

or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach. F

I guess being colored doesn't make me not like E

the same things other folks like who are other races. G

So will my page be colored that I write? B

Being me, it will not be white. A

But it will be B

a part of you, instructor. C

You are white-- A

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. D

That's American. E

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. B

Nor do I often want to be a part of you. D

But we are, that's true! D

As I learn from you, D

I guess you learn from me-- B

although you're older--and white-- A

and somewhat more free. B

This is my page for English B. B

The Tone

The tone of this poem is sorrow because it implies the feelings of the author. In this poem, the author was not asking for sympathy or an apology, just understanding. He wish is to be accepted not as a black man but as an American. Every stanza describes the sadness or the sorrow of the author’s feeling.

Paraphrase

Things will be not the same if you are colored. I feel the different treatment from the society because I am not white even though I eat, drink, and sleep, just like they do.

I have seen many unpleasant things about discrimination till my age of twenty-two and I realize that whatever it takes, I will not be white but as an American, I want to be treated as equal as the real American, the white American.

Denotation and Connotation

* Instructor

Denotation : teacher or trainer

Connotation: government especially the white who usually give command

* Colored

Denotation : having the color that is mentioned

Connotation: of a race that does not have a white skin

* White

Denotation : of the color of fresh snow

Connotation: of a pale-skinned race

Imagery

* Visual imagery: instructor, page, colored, Winston Salem, school, Durham, college, hill, Harlem, student, class, park, St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, Y, Harlem Branch Y, elevator, room, see, New York, a pipe, records, folks, races, white, American, older.

* Auditory imagery: said, hear, talk.

* Kinesthetic imagery: said, go home, write, wonder, went, steps, lead, cross, take, sit down, talk, eat, sleep, drink, work, read, and learn.

* Abstract imagery: true, simple, easy, guess, feel, be in love, understand life, being, a part of you, free.

Figurative Language

Symbol:

* The instructor said (line 1), symbolizing the white especially the government.

* I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem (line 7), symbolizing other races that are not white.

* I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you (line 18), symbolizing black people that are live in Harlem (the area of black people).

* I hear New York too (line 20) symbolizing area where the white people become the majority who live in especially the wealthy.

* Being me, it will not be white (line 28), symbolizing white American, not from black races.

Personification:

* I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you (line 18)

* Hear you, hear me – we two – you, me, talk on this page (line 19)

They are personification because you here refer to Harlem. Harlem is an area where the black people live in. It can not talk or do an activity like human do. Harlem, I hear you mean that the poet understands the sadness and the pain of black people that are treated bad or differently by society.

Apostrophes:

* I wonder if it’s that simple? (line 6)

* So will my page be colored that I write? (27)

They are apostrophes because the poet asks his questions to the world or blind things so it can not be answer.

Theme

Races discrimination leads to anger, disappointment, and dissatisfaction.