重要觀念與議題
Important concepts and Topics

A.  structuralist linguistics: Saussure's langue and parole; signifier and signified binary opposition
B.  structuralist analysis of narrative (narratology):
C.  structuralist poetics: Roman Jakobson's metaphor and metonymy
D. Barthes' semiotics (theory of signs)

A. structuralist linguistics: Saussure's langue and parole; signifier and signified binary opposition

1. Premise 前提--Anti-humanism
1. The author is dead.
2. Structuralism finds out the grammar of literary works.

 
2. Saussure's Language Theory
1. langue and parole
langue and parole--the language system and the individual utterance
<<--object of structuralist study: langue; the system of rules, the grammar, underlying literary works>>
 
2. sign = signifier and signified
How language refers to things
sign = signifier--signified; the relation between is arbitrary (e.g. red = stop, green = go);
meaning is not fixed. A signifier means by its difference from the other signifiers.
(Green and LeBihan)-on signification
signifier + signified = sign--referent
Saussure "The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. . . The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other.
 
"The linguistic sign is arbitrary. It is unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified."   What about Onomatopoeia, 象形文字?
 
signifier + signified -referent triad: The inclusion of the concept within the triad of signification suggests that there is no natural or immediate relation between the words and the 'thing.'
 
1. binary opposition
-- Underlying our use of language is a system, a pattern of paired opposites, or binary oppositions.--or a system of differences
-- Signs work not by referring to things but by taking up a position within a system of signs. No word has meaning on its own: there is always present in each word all the synonymous and antithetical terms in relation to which they are all used by speakers.
-- In Saussure's model, the arbitrary linking of signifier and signified is forgotten in the practice of actual speakers who behave as if a sign were a perfect unity, but in Lacan and others the signifier's arbitrariness determines the whole operation of signification.
e. g. the opposition between the old man and the river in
「公無渡河，公竟渡河，墮河而死，當奈公何?」中

• three kinds:

• syntax as the basic model for their analysis: Suject + predicate = Actant + function
• Propp: for him there are 7 "spheres of action" (villain, hero, false hero, donor[provider], helper, dispatcher, princess [and her father].) and 31 functions.
• e. g. Cinderella and its modern versions: do we have fairy godmother as the helper today?
• e.g. education of the Hero: Hercules, Lion King, Mulan
•  "Should Wizard Hit Mommy?"  Is the wizard or Mommy the "villian"?
• "Young Goodman Brown" : Brown (Subject) + [going to the forest]+ Object?  (Is black sabbath his object?)   -->

 What is his opponent at the end, the whole town, or himself?
Suggestion:
1. Usually interesting analysis happens when the characters break these categories or confuse them.
2. You can set up your own categories.
3. This kind of structuralist analysis is useful on popular cultural products or shorter texts.
• Greimas: refines and develops Propp's work  Example: "The Purloined Letter";

Greimas: some notes and an introductory essay.
• three pairs of actants: Helper/Opponent, Sender/Reciever, Subject/Object
• three basic patterns of action: contractive, disjunctive, and performative.

 
• Greimas' semiotic rectangle: four terms, instead of two.

  e.g.  "The Purloined Letter"

III. structure of narration (narrator-narratee)

• Genette
• text, story, narration
• tense: order, duration, frequency
• mood: distance and perspective (focus) --regulation of information
• voice: time of narrating, narrative levels (the level of the story, the level of the narrating), and "person"
• Jonathan Culler (The Pursuit of Signs)
• story and discourse: A distinction should be made between the sequence of events and the way they are told.  The critic should also decide if the the former's revelation depends on the latter.
• For example, in the story of Oedipus the King, Oedipus admits to killing the king after he knows that he is the king's son, whereas in the witness's account it's "three robbers" that kills the king, but not three "travellers."
• Seymour Chatman ("What Novels Can Do That Films Can't [and Vice Versa]") uses the distinction between the story time and discourse time to talk about the differences between film narration and novelististic narration.  He argues that films (because of the illusion of motion, or visual continuity) cannot really stop and describe, whereas novels can.

 

• His study of aphasia: two major kinds of disorder--'similarity disorder' and 'continguity disorder'
• He relates these two kinds to the two basic rhetoric figures: metaphor and metonymy.  Linguistic signs, for him, are formed through the two-fold process of "selection" and "combination."

(Structuralism and Semiotics p. 78)
• Jacobson's methodology:

1. discover the distributive pattern which link the stanzas of poems in a variety of combinations;
2. shows that the central lines are a some way distinguished and set off from the rest.
3. Example: "Spleen"

reference: Structuralism and Semiotics pp. 123-134 (focus: 123-25; 130-34)
e. g. national flag, ads of your choice
reference: R. Barthes "Myth Today"
1. All social practices as sign-systems. E.g. clothes
1. He regards all social practices as sign-systems which operate on the model of language. Any actual 'speech' presupposes a system (langue) which is being used.

e.g. sentence: an ensemble of blouse + skirt + high heeled shoes
blouse + trousers + snickers

system: a. blouse, shirt, T-shirt
b. skirt, trousers
on Punk Style
• Dick Hebdige thinks that Levi-Strauss's concept of "homology" can be used to read punk subculture as a third level of discourse.  Punk style "deconstruct" itself by representing the experience of class contradictions in the forms of visual puns, bondage, ripped tee shirts and the link.  In linguistic terms, these stylistic signifiers of sex and class refer to other signifiers, not to signifieds.
• As a result, punk style becomes a "dislocated, ironic, and self-aware" third-level discourse signalling the values of contradiction, disruption, and process.
1. Hebdige uses as support Resistance Through Rituals, in which the authors use the concepts of homology and bricolage to explain how a certain subcultural style appeal to a particular group of people.
2. "The skinheads were cited to exemplify this principle.  The boots, braces, and cropped hair were only considered appropriate and hence meaningful because they communicated the desired qualities: 'hardness, masculity and workingclassness.'" (Praxis, 184)
 
2. primary signification & secondary signification (e.g. in myth, literature, advertisement)
signifier + signified = sign (full)--denotation
(empty)
form + content = sign --connotation
primary signification:
sign (rose) = signifier (rose) + signified (passion)
+ my intention + social conventions = secondary signification: