Structuralism and Semiotics: WTF? Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes and Structuralism Explained

Summary

In this episode of 'What The, Theory?', Tom explores Structuralism, a cultural analysis approach that uncovers the hidden structures beneath various cultural forms like literature and film. Drawing inspiration from linguistics, particularly Ferdinand de Saussure's work, Structuralism views culture as a language with its own system of meaning. Tom discusses the two main approaches: 'low structuralism', which uncovers narrative structures like in Vladimir Propp's work, and 'high structuralism', which examines how texts derive meaning from cultural context, as seen in Roland Barthes' analyses. The video provides an accessible introduction to understanding Structuralism and its applications in cultural criticism.

Takeaways

• 🌐 **Structuralism Overview**: Structuralism is a cultural analysis approach that uncovers underlying structures influencing the creation and interpretation of cultural texts like literature and film.
• 📚 **Cultural Texts as Language**: Structuralism views culture as a language, suggesting that cultural texts are not isolated but interconnected through shared structures and conventions.
• 🎭 **Genre as a Structuralist Lens**: The concept of genre exemplifies structuralist thinking by analyzing how different cultural texts relate and conform to specific narrative structures and tropes.
• 📈 **Origins in Linguistics**: Structuralism's roots lie in the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, who emphasized the synchronic study of language and the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs.
• 🔍 **The Role of 'Parole' and 'Langue'**: Saussure's distinction between 'parole' (individual utterances) and 'langue' (the broader linguistic system) is central to understanding how meaning is derived from cultural texts.
• 🔑 **Low Structuralism and Poetics**: Low structuralism, exemplified by Vladimir Propp's work, seeks a 'grammar' of storytelling by identifying recurring plot functions across different narratives.
• 🏛️ **High Structuralism and Semantics**: High structuralism, influenced by linguistic semantics, examines how cultural texts derive meaning from their relationships with broader cultural contexts and prevailing ideologies.
• 🗝️ **Cultural Codes and Textual Meaning**: Roland Barthes introduced the concept of 'cultural codes', arguing that texts rely on widely accepted societal knowledge or values to convey meaning.
• 🌟 **Barthes' Analysis of Myths**: Barthes' analysis of myths and cultural images reveals how their meanings are constructed by and reflective of the societal structures and power dynamics of their time.
• 🔄 **Structuralism and Poststructuralism**: Structuralism's reluctance to question the existence of societal structures led to the emergence of poststructuralism, which critically examines these structures and their implications.

Q & A

What is Structuralism in cultural studies?

Structuralism is an approach to analyzing culture that seeks to reveal the underlying structures which influence the creation and interpretation of cultural texts such as literature, film, and television.

How does Structuralism relate to the concept of genre?

Structuralism views genre as a cultural structure that sets expectations and influences how we interpret cultural texts. It suggests that our understanding of a text like 'Game of Thrones' is informed by our knowledge of the fantasy genre.

Who is Ferdinand de Saussure and how does his work relate to Structuralism?

Ferdinand de Saussure was a 19th-century linguist who revolutionized the study of language with his 'synchronic' approach, focusing on how language functions at a specific point in time rather than its historical evolution. His ideas on the arbitrary nature of language and the importance of relationships and differences between linguistic elements are foundational to Structuralism.

What is the difference between 'parole' and 'langue' in Saussure's theory?

'Parole' refers to individual instances of speech or writing, while 'langue' is the broader linguistic system that gives meaning to 'parole'. Saussure argued that 'parole' only holds meaning due to its relationship and differences with other elements within 'langue'.

How does the concept of 'high structuralism' differ from 'low structuralism'?

'High structuralism' is more concerned with the grand conclusions about how cultural texts infer meaning, often considering the broader cultural context. 'Low structuralism', on the other hand, focuses on more immediate and practical analysis of cultural texts, often looking for underlying structural patterns or 'grammar' within narratives.

What is the contribution of Vladimir Propp to Structuralism?

Vladimir Propp is known for identifying 31 'plot functions' in folktales that serve as stable, constant elements independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. His work provided a structuralist 'grammar' for analyzing human storytelling.

How does Claude Lévi-Strauss's approach to myth reflect Structuralism?

Claude Lévi-Strauss's approach to myth involves breaking down myths into their constituent parts and analyzing the thematic positions within them. He suggests that myths can reveal the 'structure of thought' of the societies that created them, reflecting the broader cultural structures.

What role do cultural codes play in Roland Barthes's analysis of cultural texts?

Roland Barthes believed that the meaning inferred by texts is not self-contained but reliant on context or 'cultural codes'. These codes are widely accepted knowledge or values that a text can use to invoke certain meanings, showing how individual texts are influenced by the broader culture.

How does Barthes's analysis of a Paris Match cover image demonstrate the influence of cultural codes?

Barthes's analysis of a Paris Match cover image shows how the image's meaning is influenced by cultural codes related to race, colonialism, and national identity. The image of a black man saluting the French flag is interpreted as a statement about French imperialism and colonialism, demonstrating how cultural codes shape our interpretation of cultural texts.

What is the significance of Structuralism in understanding the relationship between language and culture?

Structuralism emphasizes that both language and cultural texts are not direct reflections of the world but are shaped by underlying structures. This approach suggests that these structures influence how we perceive and understand the world, raising questions about the origins and implications of these structures.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to Structuralism

Tom introduces the concept of Structuralism, an approach to cultural analysis that uncovers the underlying structures influencing the creation and interpretation of cultural texts like literature, film, and TV shows. Structuralism views culture as a language with its own set of rules and conventions, much like genres in film and literature that shape our expectations and understanding. Tom encourages viewer interaction and introduces the video's aim to provide an accessible overview of Structuralism, its origins, methodologies, and applications.

05:02

🌱 The Roots of Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the 1950s in France, heavily influenced by the 19th-century linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure's synchronic approach to linguistics emphasized the study of language as a system at a particular moment in time, rather than its historical evolution. He argued that language is arbitrary and that meaning is derived from the differences and relationships between words within the system. This perspective laid the groundwork for applying similar structural analyses to cultural texts.

10:06

🔍 Low Structuralism and Poetics

Low Structuralism, as exemplified by the work of Vladimir Propp, seeks to uncover a 'grammar' of storytelling by identifying common plot functions across different narratives. Propp's analysis of folktales revealed 31 'plot functions' that occur in a consistent order, suggesting an underlying structure to storytelling. This approach is akin to linguistics' study of syntax, focusing on the relationships between elements within a text.

15:11

🏛️ High Structuralism and Cultural Codes

High Structuralism, in contrast to Low Structuralism, is concerned with the semantic relationships within a text, drawing parallels to linguistic semantics. It considers how meanings are influenced not only by the elements present in a text but also by the broader cultural context. Roland Barthes' work, particularly his analysis of a Paris Match cover image, illustrates how cultural codes shape the interpretation of cultural texts, revealing the political implications of Structuralism and its focus on the influence of societal structures on meaning.

20:16

🌟 Conclusion and Acknowledgments

Tom concludes the video by summarizing the key points of Structuralism, highlighting its implications for understanding how cultural texts derive their meanings from societal structures. He acknowledges the contributions of viewers, especially those who support him on Patreon, and encourages further engagement with the topic. The video ends on a note that invites viewers to reflect on the political and social dimensions of Structuralism, setting the stage for future discussions on poststructuralism.

Keywords

💡Structuralism

Structuralism is a theoretical approach that seeks to uncover the underlying structures governing cultural phenomena such as literature, film, and television. It posits that these structures are not apparent on the surface but guide the creation and interpretation of cultural texts. In the video, structuralism is introduced as a method to analyze culture by looking at the relationships between different cultural elements, rather than considering them in isolation. The concept is central to understanding how meaning is constructed within cultural texts.

💡Cultural Texts

Cultural texts encompass a broad range of media and expressions, including books, films, TV shows, and other forms of cultural production. The video discusses how structuralism views these texts not as isolated entities but as interconnected parts of a larger cultural system. The analysis of cultural texts is vital for structuralism as it aims to reveal the common structures and patterns that inform their creation and interpretation.

💡Genre

In the context of the video, genre refers to a category of cultural production that follows certain conventions and tropes. It is a structuralist concept because it looks at the relationships between texts and how they fit into broader categories that shape audience expectations and interpretations. The video uses the example of the fantasy genre and 'Game of Thrones' to illustrate how our understanding of a specific text is influenced by our knowledge of the genre.

💡Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and it plays a foundational role in the development of structuralism. The video highlights the influence of Ferdinand de Saussure, a linguist whose ideas about the structure of language and the arbitrary nature of the sign (the relationship between a word and what it represents) laid the groundwork for applying similar structural analyses to cultural texts.

💡Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure is a pivotal figure in the development of structuralist thought. The video discusses his distinction between 'langue' and 'parole', where 'langue' represents the systemic structure of language and 'parole' refers to individual utterances. Saussure's ideas are crucial for understanding how structuralism views the meaning of cultural texts as emerging from their relationship to a broader system.

💡Arbitrary

The term 'arbitrary' in the video refers to Saussure's concept that there is no natural, inherent connection between a word (signifier) and the object or concept it represents (signified). This idea challenges the notion that language is a transparent medium for expressing reality and instead suggests that language actively shapes our understanding of the world. The video uses this concept to explain how structuralism views cultural texts as constructed within a system of signs.

💡Poetics

Poetics, as discussed in the video, is a low structuralist approach that seeks to uncover the underlying structure common to a range of narratives. It takes inspiration from Aristotle's work on Greek tragedy and aims to identify the fundamental elements and patterns that characterize storytelling across different cultures. The video uses the concept of poetics to illustrate how structuralism looks for universal patterns in cultural expression.

💡Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp is mentioned in the video as a key figure whose work on the morphology of folktales aligns with structuralist methodologies. Propp identified a set of 'plot functions' common to many folktales, suggesting an underlying 'grammar' of storytelling. His work is used in the video to exemplify how structuralism looks for consistent structures beneath the surface of cultural narratives.

💡High Structuralism

High structuralism, as differentiated from low structuralism in the video, is an approach that aims to uncover the broader cultural and societal structures that inform the meaning of cultural texts. It is interested in the semantic relationships within a text and how these are influenced by the wider cultural context. The video discusses how high structuralism, as exemplified by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, seeks to understand how cultural texts are shaped by and reflect the dominant ideologies of their time.

💡Cultural Codes

Cultural codes, as introduced by Roland Barthes and discussed in the video, refer to the shared knowledge or values within a society that can be invoked by cultural texts to convey meaning. These codes are seen as essential to understanding how texts derive their meaning not just from what is present but also from what is absent or implied. The video uses Barthes' analysis of a magazine cover image to illustrate how cultural codes influence the interpretation of cultural texts.

Highlights

Structuralism is an approach to analyzing culture that seeks to reveal underlying structures guiding the creation and interpretation of cultural texts.

Structuralism views culture as a language with consistent structures informing the creation and meaning of cultural texts.

The concept of genre is a structuralist lens that considers the relationships and conventions between different cultural texts.

Structuralism emerged in France in the 1950s, inspired by the 19th-century linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's work on language.

Saussure introduced a 'synchronic' approach to linguistics, focusing on how language functions at a specific point in time.

Language is arbitrary and functions as a self-contained system where words operate on a principle of differentiation.

Meaning in language arises from the relationships and differences with other phrases or utterances in the linguistic structure.

Structuralist cultural criticism applies the insight that language is structural and determined by relationships to the analysis of culture.

Robert Scholes differentiates between 'high structuralism' and 'low structuralism', with the latter focusing on practical analysis of cultural texts.

Poetics, a discipline of low structuralism, seeks to uncover a common underlying structure in narratives, such as folk tales and myths.

Vladímir Propp's work on the 'grammar' of folktales identified 31 'plot functions' that occur in a consistent order across tales.

High structuralism is interested in the semantic relationships within a text, considering how meanings are influenced by the broader cultural context.

Claude Lévi-Strauss used structuralism to analyze myths as reflections of the societies that created them, revealing underlying societal structures.

Roland Barthes argued that the meaning of texts is not self-contained but reliant on 'cultural codes' that are widely accepted by society.

Barthes' analysis of a Paris Match cover image demonstrates how cultural codes influence the interpretation of cultural texts.

Structuralism raises questions about the existence and interests served by dominant societal structures of thought.

Structuralism's hesitancy to question the political implications of societal structures led to the rise of poststructuralism.

Transcripts

Hi, my name's Tom. Welcome back to my channel to another episode of What The

Theory?, my ongoing series in which I provide some accessible introductions to

key theories in cultural studies and the wider humanities. Today, we're taking a

look at Structuralism, an approach to analyzing culture which seeks to reveal

the underlying structures which sit beneath literature, film, television and

all other forms of culture and guide how they are created and also how they are

read. Before we get going, if you have any thoughts, questions or suggestions as we

go along then please feel free to pop those down below in the comments and, if

you're new around here and this seems like your kind of thing, then please do

consider subscribing and hitting that notifications button. Also maybe check

out my Patreon? I'll link it below. With that out the way however, let's take a

look at Structuralism: What The Theory?

Structuralism, in short, is a label used to describe a set of approaches to

understanding culture which, rather than approaching literary, filmic, televisual,

performance or other cultural texts individually, seeks to consider the

relationships between them. It proposes that, beneath the cultural texts with

which we entertain ourselves, there lie consistent structures which

inform how those texts are created as well as the meanings that we derive from

them. Taking its inspiration, as we'll see in a moment, from linguistics, it asks us

to view culture (in the broadest possible sense) not as a series of disconnected

books, films, TV shows, albums and whatever else but, instead, as itself a kind of

language. In fact, although we might not often think of it as such, many of us are

fairly used to discussing cultural texts in a structuralist manner. For the notion

of genre is a definitively structuralist lens; it asks us to consider how a wide

range of different texts relate to each other and employ similar conventions and

tropes. Furthermore, the notion of genre recognizes that the meaning that we

derive from watching, say, Game of Thrones is in some way informed by our wider

knowledge of the fantasy genre. Genres set up certain expectations and,

even when those expectations are subverted, part of us comes to appraise the

particular text we are reading or watching in relationship to those.

Genre, then, is a kind of cultural structure.

In today's video, we're going to take a look

at the origins of structuralist thinking and at some further examples of

structuralist approaches to analyzing culture. It is a massive subject and so

we won't be able to touch on everything and my aim, as always, is to give an

overview rather than an in-depth dive into any specific scholar. By the end,

however, you should have a decent understanding of what we mean when we

use the term structuralism, an overview of some of the ways that its

methodologies have been used in the past and, hopefully, an idea of how you might

be able to use these to inform your own approach to analyzing and otherwise

critically interpreting cultural texts.

So, some background. Structuralism first emerged as a

school of literary theory in France in

the 1950s. Yet it was inspired and, in its methodology, deeply informed by the work

of a 19th century linguist by the name of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure had, to

put it mildly, revolutionized the study of language. Previously, linguistics had

focused on what is referred to as the "diachronic" study of language—the study

of how particular words or grammatical conventions have evolved over time.

Saussure, however, forwarded what he referred to as a "synchronic" approach to

linguistics which put aside matters of history to focus on how a given language

functions at a given point in time. In undertaking such a study, he sought to

argue that language does not, as had often been thought in the past, have any

direct relation with the world around us but is in almost all cases entirely

arbitrary. There is, for instance, no reason that the word "tree" should be

used to describe a tall plant with branches other than that, over time,

speakers of the English language have come to a sort of agree that it does.

Language is, therefore, a self-contained system and words, rather than acting as

descriptors of certain objects, actions or whatever else, instead work on a

principle of differentation.

Some of you may have played the game Animal,

Vegetable, or Mineral as a child. The game works on the

principle that I think of an object or person and you have to guess what it is

that I'm thinking of. Say, for instance, I'm thinking of an oak tree. You begin by

asking me whether it is an animal or vegetable or a mineral and I reply that

it is a vegetable. You might ask me whether it is a tree and I reply yes. You

might ask me whether it is a deciduous or evergreen tree and I reply deciduous.

Eventually, you identify that I'm thinking of an oak tree. Along the way,

however, you are likely to have made a number of wrong guesses.

Perhaps you asked me whether I was thinking of a flower or a sycamore

tree. In fact, your process of determining what I was thinking of was based almost

entirely upon wrong guesses; my answer only had to be an oak because,

potentially, you'd already discovered that it was not a sycamore or a

willow or a fir. Saussure argues that this is how language fundamentally works. The

term "oak tree" doesn't refer to a tree which grows acorns because of some

innate quality of the words "oak tree" but largely because it doesn't refer to a

sycamore or a willow or fir. Saussure, indeed, argues that 'the conceptual part of

linguistic value is determined solely by relations and differences with other

signs in the language'. It therefore follows that we can learn very little

from looking at individual words or phrases. Individual written phrases or

verbal utterances which Saussure calls "parole" only come to hold meaning due to

their relationships and differences with other phrases or utterances in the wider

linguistic structure which Saussure calls the "langue". Analyzing what and how

given parole come to mean something, then, can only be achieved with reference to

the langue of which it is a part.

Structuralism as a literary theory takes numerous

influences from Saussure's work and modified versions of his specific

methodologies which we haven't touched on here can be found throughout

structuralist cultural criticism. Some of these we will touch on later in this

video. For now, however, it's enough to know that structuralist cultural

criticism seeks to apply this broad insight, that language is inherently

structural and determined by relationships and differences, to the

analysis of culture. It suggests that we can only truly understand how an

individual cultural text—like parole— comes to mean by observing its

relationships with other texts in the broader langue of culture.

Structuralist cultural criticism is, then, fairly diverse in its methodologies yet Robert

Scholes has argued that we can usefully differentiate between two dominant

approaches. The first he describes as "high structuralism" and the second as "low

structuralism". The former, he writes, is 'high in its aspirations' and comes to

some fairly grandiose conclusions about how cultural texts come to infer meaning.

We'll come to this "high structuralism" shortly but we'll begin with its "low"

counterpart which, as Scholes writes, 'aims to be more immediately useful' to

those of us looking to understand how cultural texts come to mean and is thus

a little easier to comprehend.

The 'discipline par excellence' of low

structuralism is, according to Scholes, what we refer to as "poetics". Taking its

name and some of its methodological cues from Aristotle's 335 BC treatise on

Greek tragedy, poetics seeks to uncover an underlying structure common to a

range of (and often all) narratives. The early examples of such an approach

attend to the study of folk tales and myths and proceed from the hypothesis

that, no matter where in the world a single myth originates, it never seems to

be too dissimilar in its narrative structure from other myths. Claude

Lévi-Strauss, for instance, writes that 'mythology confronts the student with a

situation which at first sight appears contradictory. On the one hand it would

seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to happen. But on the

other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity

between myths collected in wildly different regions. Therefore the problem:

if the content of a myth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact

that myths throughout the world are so similar?'. Lévi-Strauss' own work on

myth is certainly interesting and we'll touch on it briefly later. However, for

today's purposes, I'd like to focus on the approach of Vladímir Propp who,

though writing some decades prior to the advent of the European structuralism

proper, took an approach which we can fairly accurately describe as

structuralist. To understand Propp's argument, it's useful to return very

briefly to linguistics. For what Propp was trying to uncover in his 1928 book The

Morphology of the Folktale can usefully be likened to a "grammar" of human

storytelling. Take these three sentences: "The man ran down the road.", "The cat

hissed at the mouse." and "The rain fell on the field.". The meaning inferred by each

of these sentences is vastly different and, usually, it's this that draws our

attention. What we tend to think about less is the fact that they share the

exact same grammatical structure or what linguistics refer to as a "syntagmatic

relationship"—here, a subject does something to an object. Beneath the

almost unlimited potential meanings that a folktale could possibly have then,

Propp sought to find a similar syntagmatic relationship between plot elements.

On studying a range of different folktales, Propp identified 31 different

'plot functions' which, in his words, 'serve as stable, constant elements in a tale,

independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled'. These include 'one of the

family members absents himself from the family home', 'the villain causes harm or

injury to a member of a family' and 'the hero returns'. Propp does not argue that

all of these plot functions will appear in every single tale, however he does

suggest that, where they do appear, they will tend to happen in the same order.

Of course, just as with our three sentences above, the use of different characters,

different settings and so on allows one example of a function to appear very

differently in one tale to how it does in another. Yet Propp suggests that we

can often identify a similar "grammar", a similar set of syntagmatic

relationships at work beneath much of human storytelling, a consistent

structure under what initially appears to be limitless variation.

If "low structuralism" in the vein of Vladimir Propp seeks to uncover a "grammar" or

"poetics" of literature, film and other narrative forms, then, what are the aims

of "high structuralism". Well, it's useful here to go back to those example

sentences we looked at a moment ago. For, if low structuralism was interested in

the syntagmatic relationships present in a cultural text—that is, the

relationship between different plot elements

in a manner analogous to the relationship between words in a sentence—

then what Scholes refers to as "high structuralism" is interested in what

linguistics call the semantic relationships within a text. Terence Hall

explains this concept of semantics by suggesting that as well as having

relationships with the other words present in a sentence, 'each word will

also have relationships with other words in the language that do not occur at

this point in time, but are capable of doing so'. The sentence "The cat hissed at

the mouse.", for instance, has a different meaning to the sentence "The cat hissed

at the lion." or "The cat hissed at the vacuum cleaner." One seems fairly ordinary,

the other has an air of danger to it, the latter is mildly comical. And

structural linguistics holds that, whichever of these words is present in

the sentence in front of us, it also invokes the others which are not. The cat hissing

at the vacuum cleaner, for instance, is mildly comical precisely because we

would expect a cat to be hissing at a mouse. The meaning we derive from that

sentence is thus driven by the absence of mouse as much it is by the presence

of vacuum cleaner. Again then, structuralist cultural theorists in the

"high structuralist" tradition seek to apply this notion of semantic

relationships to cultural texts. Often, though not always, this takes the form of

considering how the meanings that we derive from individual texts might be

reliant not only on the words, images or sound that are present in that specific

text but also upon ideas dominant in the wider culture of which they are a part.

Just as, to Saussure, the individual parole or instance of speech or writing is

reliant upon the wider langue, so too does the individual text only infer meaning

in relationship to the wider culture in which it is either produced or read.

Where the previously dominant school of thought in literary theory, the New

Critics, had sought to bracket off context as a kind of distraction to

uncovering the true meaning of a literary text, then, the high

structuralists saw context as essential to the meaning that

a text infers. Indeed, though sharing an interest in myth with Vladímir Propp, the

work of Claude Lévi-Strauss primarily focuses on what the myths told by what

he saw as "primitive" societies might reveal about the societies which told

them. In his book Structuralist Anthropology, he dissuades us from

reading the story of Oedipus as simply the story of a king coming to terms with

having slept with his own mother. Instead, on breaking the myth down into its

constituent parts and considering the various thematic or positions contained

within it, he suggests it might be better read as a collective debate over the

origins of humankind. In this manner, the myth itself becomes a single parole

within a societal langue in which such a question is a current cause of

consternation with what Foucault might describe as the 'structure of thought' of

the society which engendered that myth revealed to be shaping the meaning of

the myth itself. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this high structuralism,

however, was Roland Barthes. Although later coming to question the structuralist

approach, many of his early- to mid-career works including The Fashion System and

S/Z sought to make the case that the meaning inferred by texts as disparate

as pieces of fashion journalism or the novels of Balzac are never, in fact,

self-contained but always reliant upon context or what he referred to as

'cultural codes'. A cultural code to Barthes was any piece of knowledge or maybe a

value statement so widely accepted by society that a cultural text can kind of

use it as a shorthand to invoke certain meanings. In S/Z, for example, he

analyzes a passage in Balzac's Sarrasine in which a character doodles in their

book during a lesson. Barthes posits that, without the influence of cultural codes,

we might think little of this. Nevertheless, the fact that we are likely

aware that such an activity is, in his words, 'outside regulated class activities'

enables the act of doodling to reveal the character to be lacking

in studiousness. Perhaps more interesting, however, is

Barthes' analysis, in his earlier book Mythologies, of the cover image on an

issue of the magazine Paris Match. He writes that 'on the cover, a young [black

man] in French uniform is saluting with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a

fold of the tricolour [the French flag]. All this is the meaning of the picture.

But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France

is a great empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully

serve under her flag and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an

alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this [black man] in serving his so-

called oppressors. Barthes' argument here is that, without the influence of

cultural codes, again, the image might mean little more than "here is a person

saluting a flag". Yet the intervention of cultural codes surrounding race,

colonialism and national identity in post-war France intervene to make it a

defiant response to calls for the decolonization of the remainders of the

French Empire. Furthermore, the cultural codes here are fairly clearly reliant on

the kind of semantic relationships I described earlier. For the fact that it

is a black man saluting the flag is notable largely because, in a context in

which the French colonies were calling for independence, it would likely have

been surprising that it was a black man rather than a white one saluting the

flag. The idea that it could have been a white man in this image thus influences

our reading of it as much as the fact that it is a black man. This excerpt from

Mythologies is a fairly early product of both Barthes' work and structuralism as a

whole. However I think it's useful to raise towards the end of this video for,

partly due to its subject matter, it reveals some of the underlying political

implications of this approach. For, as I mentioned towards the beginning of this

video, Saussure was adamant that language is

fundamentally arbitrary and, rather than allowing us to express

our experience of the world in some kind of objective manner, instead

shapes how we come to know the world. Structuralist approaches to culture hold

the same to be true of cultural texts. And, if, as Barthes suggests here, the meaning we

derive from cultural texts is heavily reliant upon the influence of the

dominant structures of thought of the societies in which they are produced,

then it raises questions about why these structures might exist. It prompts us to

ask in whose interest such structures might serve and to consider how they

might change over time. Many who embraced structuralism were somewhat hesitant to

answer such questions, confining themselves instead to simply describing

what they saw. And it's largely this hesitancy that would eventually see

structuralism challenged by a new theoretical movement which we now know

as poststructuralism. But that's for a future video.

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