Structuralism

'''Structuralism '''

discussion        “Although it is often associated with Marxism, ‘structuralism’ entails a much larger body of theory that aims to understand the basic elements that govern or ‘structure’ human behavior… As Dreyfus and Rabinow have argued, structuralism entails an effort to ‘treat human rationality scientifically’ by searching for ‘basic elements (concepts, actions, classes of words) and the rules by which they are combined’ (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: xix-xx). Where phenomenology and hermeneutics are principally concerned with the ways in which individuals interpret social realities (and their practices within these realities), structuralism emphasizes the idea that a general theory of human action may be developed on the basis of linguistic and cultural interaction. One early and influential body of structuralism was linguistic structuralism, which held that scientific principles could be used to understand the grammatical rules and codes that structure the culture of human discourse. An earlier pioneer in the field was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who argued that language could be divided between the ‘surface features of speech,’ what he termed parole, and the structural/grammatical rules of language systems (langue), which make language and communication possible (Morrow and Brown 1994)” (Johnson 2009:65).