Matrix of Distinctive Features of SpeechConsonantal Coronal Anterior Voiced Nasal Strident Continuant
/p/+–+––––
/b/+–++–––
/s/+++––++
/k/+––––––TABLE 1.
both its “opposite” and its “negation” (Greimas, 1966,
pp. 18–29).
Furthermore, there is now increasing evidence that all
normal operations of the brain are computer-like, in that in-
formation is passed from one part of the organism to another
in a digital binary code of on/off signals. If your biological
processes are controlled in this way, it seems highly probable
that processes by which thoughts are generated in the brain
are of the same general kind.
But while at one level Lévi-Strauss is arguing that the
reality of culture is “a model in the mind” rather than out
there in the world, he is also claiming that the patterns of
relationship that can be recognized in cultural phenomena
out there in the world are directly linked, by transformation,
with this preexisting model in the mind. Human culture and
human society are made by men, but what is made is a pro-
jection of a structure which already exists in the maker’s
mind.
Saussure’s structural linguistics. This aspect of the
theory was derived, through Jakobson, from the structural
linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1916), which included
two further types of paired opposition, both of which have
been adopted in one form or another by nearly all modern
structuralists.
First, there is the notion of the linguistic sign, which is
a totality composed of two interdependent parts: (1) the con-
cept in the mind (the signified) and (2) the sound pattern
on the breath, which is out there in the world and which con-
stitutes the linguistic signal (the signifier). The concept is a
transformation of the sound signal, and vice versa. It is a cru-
cial feature of Saussure’s argument that, where concepts form
part of a system, they are “defined not positively, in terms
of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items
in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is
being whatever the others are not” (Saussure, 1983, p. 115).
Lévi-Strauss argues in exactly the same way both with
regard to the relationship between the components of his
cultural “model in the mind” and the components of objec-
tively observable culture out there in the world, and also with
regard to the significance of cultural elements stemming
from differentiation. The meaning of any member of a set
of components is determined by whatever all other members
of the set are not.The other type of paired opposition that Lévi-Strauss
and most other modern structuralists have taken over from
Saussure is the contrast between syntagmatic (metonymic,
melodic) relations and associative (paradigmatic, metaphor-
ic, harmonic) relations. In the first case the relations are those
of contiguity: the links between elements are as in a chain.
The sequence of words in a sentence provides the prototype
of such a chain. In the second case the relations are those of
asserted similarity: “My love is like a rose.” All forms of lin-
guistic utterance employ both these polar types of relation-
ship, but whereas rational and scientific statements are heavi-
ly biased toward metonymy, poetic and religious utterances
are biased toward metaphor.In Lévi-Strauss’s work these distinctions are particularly
important for his analyses of myth, a concept which he dis-
cusses at enormous length but never defines. In practice, a
Lévi-Straussian myth is almost invariably a story (or rather
a set of stories) about “impossible” happenings, as when birds
and animals talk like men, men fly like birds or are trans-
formed into fish. Such transformations are metaphoric, but
the society of birds, fish, or whatever which is then described
is spoken of “as if” it were a society of human beings. The
metaphor entails a transposition, as with a musical change
of key. Social relations among real human beings are primari-
ly relationships of contiguity depending upon metonymy; re-
lationships among individual characters in myth are likewise
metonymic. By implication, the stories are about men even
when, in explicit terms, the characters are non-men. In many
cases this is obvious, but the point about anthropological
structuralist analysis is that intuitions of this sort can be sys-
tematized and shown to conform to unexpected regularities
of pattern.The question of validity. Admittedly, at the conclusion
of a structuralist analysis the reader will often be left with a
feeling that he has been told no more than what he knew al-
ready. But the exercise may still have been worthwhile, if
what was originally no more than intuition has now become
grounded in reason. Moreover, there are some occasions
when a structuralist analysis will provide quite unexpected8750 STRUCTURALISM [FIRST EDITION]