LINGUISTICS AND ANTHROPOLOGY
From Structuralism and Semiotics by Terence
Hawkes
The Traditional World View
Ferdinand de Saussure, was a Swiss linguist whose work forms the ground base on which most contemporary structuralist thinking now rests.
Saussure inherited the traditional view that the world consists of independently existing objects, capable of precise objective observation and classification.
The Cours presents the argument that language should be studied, not only in terms of its individual parts, but also in terms of the relationship between those parts. In short, he proposed that a language should be studied as a unified ‘field’, a self-sufficient system, as we actually experience it now!
Langue and Parole: Language and Speech
Saussure begins with a consideration of the whole phenomenon of language in terms of two fundamental dimensions which it exhibits: that of langue and that of parole. The distinction between langue and parole is more or less that which pertains between the abstract language-system which in English we call simply ‘language’, and the individual utterances made by speakers of the language in concrete everyday situations which we call ‘speech’. Saussure’s own analogy is the distinction between the abstract set of rules and conventions called ‘chess’, and the actual concrete games of chess played by people in the real world. Man can be described as the animal who characteristically devises and invests in language.
Sign = Concept & Sound-Image [Signified & Signifier]
The linguistic sign can be characterized in terms of the relationship which pertains between its dual aspects of ‘concept’ and of ‘sound-image’ – or, to use the terms which Saussure’s work has made famous – signified and signifier. The structural relationship between the concept of a tree (i.e. the signified) and the sound-image made by the word ‘tree’ (i.e. the signifier) thus constitutes a linguistic sign, and a language is made up of these: it is ‘a system of signs that express ideas’. The relationship between Concept & Sound-Image [Signified & Signifier] is arbitrary.
Language as a Product of Its Total Environment
Thus, the value of any linguistic ‘item’ is finally and wholly determined by its total environment: ‘it is impossible to fix even the value of the word signifying “sun” without first considering its surroundings: in some languages it is not possible to say “sit in the sun”. Ultimately, it seems that the very concepts a language expresses are also defined and determined by its structure, its total environment.
The Way of Life of a Community Structured by that Culture’s Language
And indeed, when Sapir, and later the influential B. L. Whorf, made their initial extensions of linguistic structuring into other fields of social behaviour, they quickly reached the conclusion that the ‘shape’ of a culture, or total way of life of a community, was in fact determined by – or at any rate clearly ‘structured’ in the same way as – that culture’s language. There is therefore, concluded Sapir in a classic statement, no such thing as an objective, unchanging ‘real world’.
The Real World built up on the Language Habits of the Group: ‘Mercy of Language’
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group.
A Member of a Society Grasps Reality Only through the Given Code
As Dorothy Lee, noted American anthropologist expresses it, . . . a member of a given society – who, of course, codifies experienced reality through the use of the specific language and other patterned behaviour characteristic of his (sic) culture – can actually grasp reality only as it is presented to him (sic) in this code. In short, a culture comes to terms with nature by means of ‘encoding’, through language.
Structuralist Analysis of Culture by Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralist analysis of culture, influenced by structural linguistics, posits that all human societies share universal, unconscious mental structures. All societies have ‘kinship’ systems: that is, sets of ‘rules’ concerning who may – and more often who may not – marry whom and prescribing the nature of familial relationships at large. (A good example is the ‘Table of Kindred and Affinity’ in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer.)
Levi-Strauss Challenges the Prevailing View of Kinship: Women as “Messages”
In his seminal work, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, (1949), Lévi-Strauss challenged the prevailing view that kinship was primarily based on blood ties. He introduced alliance theory, arguing that the fundamental purpose of kinship is the creation of alliances between different groups through the reciprocal exchange of women in marriage. The incest taboo is central to this theory, as it forces families to seek marriage partners outside of their own group, thereby creating social bonds and alliances. Lévi-Strauss saw kinship as a system of communication where "women" are the "messages" exchanged between "men," creating a network of social relationships.
The ‘Totemic Illusion’ Argument by Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss's views on totemism, as articulated in his book Totemism Today, (1962) radically depart from earlier anthropological theories. He argues that totemism is not a primitive religion, a form of ancestor worship, or a crude attempt to understand nature. Instead, he views it as a logical, intellectual and cognitive process that reflects the universal, underlying structures of the human mind. Calling it the ‘totemic illusion’, he says that, practices previously labelled as totemic are just one way that human societies, driven by the structural logic of the mind, create a bridge between the natural and social worlds.
Totemism as a Sophisticated Cognitive Tool
In this way, Lévi-Strauss saw totemism not as a primitive religious belief, but as a sophisticated cognitive tool and a form of symbolic language. A group might identify with a particular animal or plant because the difference between that species and another species in nature is analogous to the difference between their own social group and another social group. This process of using distinctions in nature to organise and understand society is a fundamental way the human mind structures reality.
Anthropology is traditionally distinguished from history as the study of societies which have no written documents.
As Edmund Leach, British social anthropologist and academic points out, “It is a fact of empirical observation that human beings everywhere adopt ritual attitudes towards the animals and plants in their vicinity. Consider, for example, the separate, and often bizarre, rules which govern the behaviour of Englishmen (sic) towards the creatures which they classify as -
(i) wild animals, (ii) foxes, (iii) game, (iv) farm animals, (v) pets, (vi) vermin.
Notice further that if we take the sequence of
words;
(ia) strangers, (iia) enemies, (iiia) friends,
(iva) neighbours, (va) companions, (via) criminals, the two sets of terms are
in some degree homologous!
Myths – “Machines for the Suppression of Time”
In short, it confirms that totemism, or ‘savage’ ways of thinking, far from being the preserve, or the burden, of ‘primitive’ man, in fact lie dormant in all men. The definitive shape of that universal ‘human mind’ which locates itself in ‘savage’ as well as in ‘civilized’ carriers, and is borne indiscriminately by all of us, regardless of time, place or history, emerges clearly in its fictive acts, in its stories, its myths and, it follows, in their ‘civilized’ counterparts: novels, plays and poems. In his structuralist analysis, Claude Lévi-Strauss famously described myths as “machines for the suppression of time”, by creating a timeless, synchronic structure.
Myths as Timeless Structures
For Lévi-Strauss, myths resolve contradictions that are too difficult for a society to confront directly. By organizing these contradictions into a structured narrative, myths "suppress" the irreversible flow of time. They don't simply describe events that happened in the past; they establish a permanent, repeatable, and universal logic that transcends a specific historical moment.
An analogy would be a piece of music. While a musical performance takes place over time (diachrony), the underlying structure of the composition, with its harmonies, motifs, and rhythms, exists as a unified whole (synchrony). As a result, both music and mythology, as aural/oral, ‘nonliterate’ modes of art have the status, in Lévi-Strauss’s later work, of highly efficient ‘machines for the suppression of time’, and as ‘timeless structures’.
Conclusion
Terence Hawkes concludes by foregrounding its implications for literary art. Any view of novels, poems, and to a lesser extent plays, which wishes to respond to them as ‘machines for the suppression of time’ will ultimately have to concern itself with those aspects of a work which, although rooted in time, have another, prior, ‘timeless’ level of existence, he observes.
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