Structure

social? The answer to this is complicated and the intellectual history is

complex, but there are two general factors we can discern. The first was
a general intellectual turn towards the study of language within social
theory and philosophy. This is known as the linguistic turn and it placed
language at the heart of all analysis.57 Second is the widespread belief
among theorists that the driving logic of the social is the transmission
of meaning.
In short, the social milieu in which structuralism emerged, and a spe-
cific view of the object under study (ontology), already predisposed
social theorists towards the development of linguistic models of struc-
ture.58 Irrespective of how the story unfolds all continental structural-
ists believed that societies, myths, works of literature and so on have the
‘structure of a language’. Poststructuralists take this further, arguing that
language is a meta-structure that structures all other structures. Both
structuralists and poststructuralists take the structure of one human
domain as the model for other domains.
Saussure had suggested that meaning was to be found within the
structure of a whole language rather than in the analysis of individual
words. The early continental structuralists were drawn to this insight
since it meshed so well with their belief that the explanation of social
processes had to be embedded within a generalised theory of structure.
What Saussure gave them was a linguistic model of structure to work
with. A key component was the claim that language is a system of pure
oppositions.59 According to Saussure, the conceptual side of language is
made up ‘solely of relations and differences with respect to other terms
of language, and the same can be said of its material side’.60 This meant
that in ‘language there are only differences . . . a difference generally
implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in
language there are only differences without positive terms’.61
The implication of this was radical, particularly if a model of the
structure of language is extended to cover all aspects of the social. It

57 Lafont (1999); Rorty (1967).

58 It is also clear how deeply indebted to hermeneutic insights these approaches were.
However, where structuralists were in agreement that there was a deep structure (of
meaning perhaps) to uncover, poststructuralists rejected even this assumption.
59 I concentrate on this aspect of Saussure because it is the most important in terms
of the current discussion. There were, however, five main elements to Saussure’s view
of language: the distinction between langue and parole; the distinction between the
diachronic and synchronic; the arbitrariness of the sign; the oppositional structure; and
the priority of speech over writing. See Jackson (1991).
60 Saussure (1916: 117–118). 61 Saussure (1916: 120).

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