Structuralism - Levi Strauss

Structuralism - Levi Strauss

1. 1. Claude Levi-Strauss was the developer of structuralism

   • Claude Levi-Strauss was a structuralist and anthropologist whose work had a great influence on the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.
     • He emphasised the importance of structuring oppositions in myth systems and in language.

2. 2.Levi-Strauss also claimed that the structure of the human mind leads all humans to think in terms of binary opposition, or simply stated, the contrasts between two opposite things.

   • He believed that the way we understand certain words depends not so much on any meaning they themselves directly contain, but much more by our understanding of the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, as he called it 'binary opposites'.

3. EXAMPLES - Light and dark, hot and cold, rich and poor, black and white, slow and fast, villain and hero etc.