Module 10

CLASSICAL AGE

What Will You Learn From This Module?

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of literary criticism than the way in which
theories launched in the classical age have kept a grip on people’s minds. In the 17 th and 18th
centuries, writers were still hotly debating how far the authority of the ancients ought to
determine literary practice.
In the 4 th century BC, Aristotle wrote the Poetics, a typology and description of literary
forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art. Poetics developed for the first
time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, which are still crucial in literary studies.
Do you want to know more?

Let’s

NATURE OF THE LINGUISTICS SIGN

-Ferdinand de Sassure
Born on 26 th November, 1857 in Geneva, Ferdinand de Saussure laid the
founadation in linguistics in the 20th century. He perceived linguistics as a branch of a
general science of signs he proposed to call semiology. His work “Cours de Linguistique
Generale” (Course in General Linguistics) was published in 1916, 3 years after his death.
The book was edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye based on his lecture notes.
This became a seminal linguistic work, perhaps the seminal structuralist linguistics work,
in the 20th century. Saussure emphasized a synchronic view of linguistics in contrast to
the diachronic (historical study) view of the 19th century. The synchronic view looks at
the structure of language as a functioning system at a given point of time. This
distinction was a breakthrough and became generally accepted. Roland Barthes, in his
look mythologies, demonstrated how Saussure’s system of sign analysis could be
extended to a second level, that of myth.
Dear student, the present essay is the clear and precise statement of the views
Saussure put forward. It is written in a very logical and lucid style. Do read the essay
before you proceed to the next section.
 STRUCTURALISM: AN INTRODUCTION
Here we will try to absorb Saussure ideas presented in the essay through our
terms and examples. Hope you are ready and we will begin.
As an academic study discipline, structuralism is primarily concerned with the
study of structures. It analyses how things get organised into meaningful entities. It
studies the structural relationship between things as well. Structuralism is a philosophical
method of understanding the world too. Structuralists argue that the entities that
constitute the world we perceive (human beings, meanings, social positions, texts,
rituals…) are not the works of God or the mysteries of nature. It is an effect of the
principles that structure us. The world without structures is meaningless. It will then be a
random and chaotic continuum. Structures order that continuum and organize it
according to certain set of principles. And thus we make sense of it. In this way
structures make this world meaningful and real. Once discovered, structures show us
how meanings come about.
Let’s see it in a different way.
Think about your teacher. His name is X. He is teaching poetry in a class room. We say,
without doubt, he is a teacher. Yes, we are right. When the same is at home, what is he?
Is it appropriate to make the earlier statement? He is a husband/ father/ brother etc. that
seems better, no? Yes, that is better.
Now he is husband. When X sitting in the consultation room of a Doctor, he is not a
teacher or husband/ father/ brother. There he is a patient. When he is in a polling booth,
standing in a queue, he is a voter. So, the class room, family, hospital, polling booth…all
these are structures which provide him an identity, a meaning and reality. Without these
structures, X has no identity or meanings.
Do not think that Saussure is the first man in history who thought like this. It
is perhaps centuries old, but only in philosophical treatises. This principle of the
arbitrariness of the linguistic sign was not an original conception: Aristotle had noted
that ‘there can be no natural connection between the sound of any language and things
signified’. In Plato’s Cratylus, Hermogenes urged Socrates to accept that ‘whatever
name you give to a thing is its right name; and if you give up that name and change it for
another, the latter name is no less correct than the earlier, just as we change the name of
our servants; for I think no name belongs to a particular thing by nature’. ‘That which
we call a rose by any other name would smell and sweet’, as Shakespeare put it. It is in
the first two decades of the 20th century that it got established in Western thought. In
other words, it is through Saussure that we started feeling this argument. The interesting
thing is that all these came primarily from the study of language.
We can say that the roots of structuralism lie in the linguistic observations
of Saussure summarized in his seminal work, course in general linguistic. Saussure was
thinking how meanings are generated and maintained in a language. Apart from
Saussure, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss did contribute much. As an
anthropologist, Levi Strauss was studying myths. He used the structural method to
explain how myths make meanings. Later structuralism became a method to study almost
all disciplines like literature, fashion, dress code, power and so on. During the 1950’s the
movement was in vogue through out Europe and especially in France. Roland Barthes
(he comes in the next section) developed these arguments.
Saussurian linguistics was innovative and radical in many ways. During the
19th century, linguists were mainly interested in the historical aspects of language.
Saussure instead concentrated on the patterns and functions of language in use at the
time. His studies were mainly on the functions of grammatical structures and he
emphasized how meanings are maintained and preserved. Primarily, he argues, language
is a sign system:
It is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a
system of writing, the alphabet of the deaf/mute, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military
signals etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.
A sign is a complex of signifier (symbol) and signified (referent).

The symbol could be verbal or an image. Regarding the relation between the
signifier and the signified, Saussure made 3 major pronouncement:
a) Meaning is Arbitrary
Saussure argues that there is no natural relation between the signifier and the
signified. Whatever relation that exists is just imposed and maintained by culture. If
it were otherwise, the flower rose would have had the same name in all languages.
Moreover, if a particular group decides to call the same flower with any other name,
it won’t make any problem among them. Hence, Saussure concludes that the relation
between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
b) Meaning is Relational
The times of any word depends upon its relation with other words, which are
adjoining with it in meaning. This notion is explained by using the phonemic theory
of difference.
We can’t arrive at a definition of the phoneme ‘b’ except by means of distinguishing
it from other phonemes like’ p, d, k, t’ etc. For example, the meaning of the word
King is related with its position in the ‘syntagmatic chain’: Knight, Lord, King,
Monarch, Autocrat, Emperor… The meaning of any one of these will be altered if
 any one of the words is deleted from the chain. Saussure even pronounced that in
language there are only differences without positive terms.
c) Language Constitutes Reality:
The traditional notion has been that language is a medium of communication
and it communicates a reality, which is pre-existent.
On the contrary, Saussure argues that it is language, which constitutes reality.
It is the word, which we used to describe a person or object that defines its quality
What are you reading right now? Is it a Guide? Is it University Notes? Or is
it Self Instructional Material? Can it be an analytical essay on structuralism? (I am
sure not many won’t say so). For some it is a Guide, for some others University
Notes as the case may be.
For the person who prepared it, it is something that he has written. But the thing remains
the same. The word or words we use constitute reality.
Yes, these 3 pronouncements were strong enough to topple the foundations of
Western thought. People started viewing things in a different way. We have to
familiarize with two more concepts introduced by him.
1. Langue and Parole
Saussure gave structuralists a way of thinking about the larger structures,
which were relevant to the study of literature as well. Langue signifies language as a
system or structure as a whole and parole designates any utterance, which is made in
accordance with that structure. Parole makes sense only if you have the
corresponding langue in you.
What the Structuralist critics do:
a) Analyse literary works relating the next to some larger structure. The structures
in question can be the conventions of a particular genre or a network of connections
or an underlying universal structure.
b) Interpret literature in terms of a range of underlying parallels as described by
modern linguistics.
c) Tend to study anything from Greek myths to paper advertisements as ‘systems
of signs’ and apply the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the study
of these.
Thus the aim of structuralism is to construct a new poetics, which is to function
as grammar does in the study of language. Apart from literature, structuralism had it
is deep influence in the study of myths, social rituals & practices and other modes of
cultural articulations.
In analyzing a ritual, the Structuralist uses his language (English, French, etc) to
interpret and explain a sign system. But, in the case of analyzing a poem written in
English, the critic uses the language to speak about the same. In other words, here the
object of study and the means of study remains the same. Hence criticism is a kind of
Metalanguage.
THE ESSAY.
Nature of linguistic sign is an excerpt from Ferdinand de Saussure’s book,
Course in General Linguistics. The book is a summary of his lectures at the University of
Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure examines the relationship between speech and the
evolution of language, and investigates language as a structured system or signs. The text
includes an introduction to the history and subject-matter of linguistics; an appendix
entitled “Principles of Phonology;” and it has five main sections.
Part One : General Principles,
Part Two : Synchronic Linguistics
Part Three : Diachronic Linguistics,
Part Four : Geographical Linguistics,
Part Five : Concerning Retrospective Linguistics.
Obviously, the present essay is from Part One: General Principles.

GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY

In his treatise, Saussure defines linguistics as the study of language, and as the
study of the manifestations of human speech. He says that linguistics is also concerned
with the history of languages, and with the social or cultural influences that shape the
development of language.
He then differentiates between language (langue) and the activity of speaking
(parole). Speaking is an activity of the individual; language is the social manifestation of
speech. Language is a system of signs that evolves from the activity of speech.
Any spoken language is a link between thought and sound, and is a means for
thought to be expressed as sound. Thoughts have to become ordered, and sounds have to
be articulated, for language to occur and communication to happen. Saussure says that
language is really a borderland between thought and sound, where thought and sound
combine to provide communication.

Language is a product of the speaker’s communication of signs to the listener. Spoken

language includes the communication of concepts by means of sound – images from the
speaker to the listener. Saussure says that a linguistic sign is a combination of a concept
and a sound-image. The concept is what is signified, and the sound-image is the signifier.
The combination of the signifier and the signified is arbitrary; i.e., any sound image can
conceivably be used to signify a particular concept. (see the introduction in the preceding
section)
 Linguistic sign are by nature linear, because they represent a span in a single
dimension. Auditory signifiers are linear, because they succeed each other or form a
chain. Visual signifiers, in contrast, may be grouped simultaneously in several
dimensions.
Semiology is the study of signs, and linguistics is a part of semiology. He
maintains that written language exists for the purpose of representing spoken language.
A written word is an image of a vocal sign.
Language is a structured system of arbitrary signs. On the other hand, symbols
are not arbitrary. A symbol may be a signifier, but in contrast to a sign, a symbol is never
completely arbitrary. A symbol has a rational relationship with what is signified.
Linguistic signs may, to a varying extent, be changeable or unchangeable.
Deterrents to linguistic change include: the arbitrary nature of signs, the multiplicity of
signs necessary to form a language, and the complexity of the structure of language.
Synchronic (static) linguistics and diachronic(evolutionary) linguistics. Synchronic
linguistics is the study of language at a particular point in time.
Diachronic linguistics is the study of history or evolution of the language.
Diachronic change originates in the social activity of speech. Changes occur in
individual patterns of speaking before becoming more widely accepted as a part of
language. Speaking is an activity which involves oral and auditory communication
between individuals. Language is the set of rules by which individuals are able to
understand each other.
Nothing enters written language without having been tested in spoken
language. Language is changed by the rearranging and reinterpreting of its units. The
units of language can have a synchronic or diachronic arrangement.
Saussure’s investigation of structural linguistics gives us a clear and concise
presentation of the view that language can be described in terms of structural units. He
explains that this structural aspect means that language also represents a system of
values. Linguistic value can be viewed as a quality of the signified, the signifier, or the
complete sign.
The linguistic value of a word (a signifier) comes from its property of standing
for a concept (the signified). The value of the signified comes from its relation to other
concepts. The value of the complete sign comes from the way in which it unites the
signifier and the signified.
The meaning of signs is established by their relation to each other. The relation
of signs to each other forms the structure of language. Synchronic reality is found in the
structure of language at a given point of time. Diachronic reality is found in changes of
language over a period of time.
 Language has an inner duality, which is manifested by the interaction of the
synchronic and diachronic, the syntagmatic and associative, the signifier and signified.

THE SCOPE OF STRUCTURALISM.

What are the ways in which structuralism is used as a method of study? And
how did it revolutionize our habits of reading and understanding things? Let’s see
1. Structuralism enables both the reading of texts and reading of cultures: Through
semiotics, structuralism leads us to see everything as ‘textual’, that is, composed of
signs, governed by conventions of meaning, ordered according to a pattern of
relationships.
2. Structuralism enables us to approach texts historically or trans-culturally in a
disciplined way. Whenever we have to move objectively, when we are transversing
barriers of time, say, or of culture or interest, then the structural method, the search for
principles of order, coherence and meaning, become dominant.
3. This sort of study opens up for serious cultural analysis of texts which had hitherto
been closed to such study because they did not confirm to the rules of literature, hence
were not literature but ‘popular writing’ or ‘private writing’ or ‘history’ and so forth.
When the rules of literary meaning are seen as just another set of rules for a signifying
arena of a culture, then literature loses some aspects of its privileged status, but gains in
the strength and cogency of its relationship to other areas of signification. Hence literary
study has expanded to the study of textuality, popular writing has been opened up to
serious study, and the grounds for the relationship between the meaning-conventions of
literature and the way in which a culture imagines reality have been set, and we can
speak more clearly of the relation of literary to cultural (or, ‘human’, or ‘every-day’)
meanings. 4. As everything that can be known, can be known by virtue of its belonging
to a signifying system, then everything can be spoken of as being textual.

a. All documents can be studied as texts – for instance, history or sociology can be
analyzed the way literature can be.
b. culture can be studied as text. Anthropology, among other fields, is revolutionized
through ethnography; qualitative rather than quantitative study becomes more and more
the norm in many areas of social science.
c. Belief-systems can be studied textually and their role in constructing the nature of
the self understood.
 TOWARDS FEMINIST POETICS
-Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter (1941---) is an American literary critic and feminist. She is one
of the founders of feminist literary criticism in the US. Her well-known works include:
‘Towards Feminist Poetics’(1979), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern
Media(1997). And ‘Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001)
Feminist criticism started as a revolt against male domination in literature.
Behind it lies, two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s social and political
rights. The basic view of feminist criticism is that Western civilization is pervasively
patriarchal, the prevailing concepts of gender are largely cultural constructs generated by the
pervasive patriarchal biases and that the patriarchal ideology pervades those writings which
have been traditionally considered great literature.
In the essay, ‘Towards a Feminist Poetics’, Elaine Showalter advocates a new
way of reading. The author traces the history of women’s literature and divides it into three
phases----‘Feminine’(1840 -1880), “Feminist’ (1880-1920), and ‘Female” (1920 to the
present)Women should turn to female experience as the source of an autonomous art. The
feminist criticism, free from the divided consciousness of ‘daughters’ and ‘sisters’ is to be
made a permanent home.
Feminist criticism can be divided into two varieties. The first one is concerned
with women as reader of male produced literature. Showalter calls this kind of analysis as
‘the feminist critique’. It is a historical grounded enquiry. Its subjects include the images and
the stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and misconceptions about women in
criticism, and the exploitation and manipulation of the female audience in popular culture
and film. The second type is concerned with woman as writer, i.e with woman as the
producer of literature; its subjects include the psychodynamics of female creativity,
linguistics and the problems of female language. Showalter calls this type of analysis as
‘gynocritics’.
It is a type of criticism designed by feminists to evaluate works by women as feminist
works. It takes into consideration the circumstances in which a work of art is produced, the
point of view of the author, and the motivation and attitudes of the characters.
One of the problems of feminist critique is that it is male-oriented. If we study
the stereotypes of women, and the limited roles women play in literary history, we are trying
to learn not what women have felt and experienced, but only what men have thought women
should be.
Showalter traces different phases in the evolution of a female tradition. He calls
these phases as follows: the Feminine, the Feminist and the Female stages. During the
Feminine phase, (1840 – 1880) women wrote in an effort to equalise the intellectual
achievements of the male culture and internalized its assumptions of female nature. The
 distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym. The feminist content of feminine is
typically oblique, displaced, ironic and subversive; one has to read it between the lines, in
the missed possibilities.
In the feminist phase (1880 – 1920) women reject the accommodation postures of
femininity and to use literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood.
In the female phase (1920 onwards) women rejected both imitation and protest.
They considered these two as forms of dependence. Instead, they turn to female experiences
as the source of autonomous art. For example, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf
begin to think in terms of male and female sentences and divide their work into ‘masculine’
journalism and ‘feminine’ fiction.
The feminist criticism revised and even subverted related ideologies especially
Marxist aesthetics and structuralism. It altered their vocabularies and methods to include the
variable of gender.
The current theoretical impasse in feminist criticism comes from the divided
consciousness of women, the split in each of them. Women are both the daughters of the
male tradition, or their teachers, and professors, or publishers, a tradition which asks them to
be rational, marginal and grateful. Women are also the sisters in a new women’s movement,
which demands them to renounce the pseudo-success of token womanhood.
The task of feminist critics is to find a new language; a new way of reading that
can integrate women’s intelligence and experience their reason and their suffering. This
enterprise should not be confined to women. Critics, poets and philosophers should share it
with them. Showalter concludes saying that feminist criticism is not visiting. It is here to
stay.

Let’s see how far you’ve learned in Module 10 by answering these Comprehension Questions
1. What was the first change Saussure brought about in the field of language
studies ?
2. “It is structure which provide meanings” Explain.
3. Establish the arbitary nature of sign.
4. Why Saussure says that meaning is relational? 5. What is ‘binary opposites’
5. What is Sassure’s contribution to modern linguistics?
6. Language is a system of differences: Explain.
 Hints: no natural relation between the signified and signifier… One sign
derives its meaning through its differences from other signs…example of
letters, word chain…
7.Language Constitutes reality. Explain. Hint: The explanation below the title:
Language Constitutes Reality
8.How does Saussure argue that everything is textual? Text is system of
signs…
The meaning of these signs is relational/differential…no sign has an innate
sense…it derives this out of the structure to which it belongs…the same is the
case of everything…human beings, positions, rituals…So, everything is
textual.
9.Explain the terms langue and parole.

COME TO THINK OF IT!!!!

Structuralism is primarily concerned with the study of structures.

Language is a product of the speaker’s communication of signs to the listener.
Spoken language includes the communication of concepts by means of sound –
images from the speaker to the listener
Elaine Showalter (1941---) is an American literary critic and feminist. She is
one of the Feminist criticism can be divided into two varieties. The first one is
concerned with women as reader of male produced literature.
Module 11
The second type is concerned with woman as writer, i.e with woman as the
producer of literature; its subjects include the psychodynamics of female creativity,
linguistics and the problems of female language.