 Hi people, welcome to my channel, I am Arpita Karwa and in this video I am going to talk about the most frightening literary theory which scares almost every literature student that is Structuralism. Now I know that all of you are afraid of Structuralism because you have not yet understood what the theory is all about. You have not understood the basic assumptions and the basic principles of Structuralism. In this video my effort is to demystify Structuralism in such a way that it becomes really easy and simple for you to digest. And I am pretty sure that by the end of the video you are going to fall in love with Structuralism just like I have. So let's begin. Now first let's understand what is Structuralism. Now in order to understand Structuralism it is important to understand what is a structure. A structure in simple terms means order or arrangement and everything has a structure. If you look at the solar system then solar system follows a structure. There are planets, planets have continents, continents have countries, countries have states and states have cities. So there is a proper structure which is followed. Now you might think that okay this is scientific but what about Structuralism in literature? Do we have structures? If you are aware of Aristotle and his great work Poetics you must have read the structure of tragedy talked about by Aristotle in Poetics. So Structuralism is not a new theory. It existed way before we were even born. It existed during the time of ancient Greece when Aristotle for the first time talked about structure of tragedy. But this movement began somewhere around 1920s. Now in order to understand this movement let's divide history in two parts pre-1920s and post-1920s. Let's understand what was the difference in ideology. When it comes to literature before 1920s people used to look at a literary piece like a poem or a drama or a novel as a work. Now what do you mean by work? Work is something which is a physical object like a book and it was written by somebody. Now it is a closed ended thing. You cannot do anything about it. If a writer like John Dunn has written a poem that's a work. It was considered as a work before 1920s and it was closed ended. There was nothing that can be changed because a poem was written. You need to understand it by using social and cultural context and you need to devise meaning out of it. You cannot change it. On the other hand after 1920 the same literary piece like a poem, novel or a play was looked at from a different angle. It was no longer considered a work. It was now considered a text. Now what is a text? Text is a linguistic construct. Just like work is a physical object similarly text is a linguistic construct. And people believe that it's open ended. It's open to interpretation. If you understand the language that is written on the page you can have various interpretation. And that is what we in structuralism know as hermonotics of interpretation. Hermonotics of interpretation means various interpretation that you can get out by analyzing the linguistic construct. By understanding the language you can know a lot about the text. And it is now open ended. It is open to interpretation. Unlike work which is closed ended. A author has written and we can now understand what John Dunn was saying about his beloved. But now if you look at the same poem in the structuralist light you will find that it is open to interpretation. I might devise a lot of meaning on a very different meaning from what John Dunn intended it to be. John Dunn intended the sonnet to be a love sonnet. Now if I look at the language I might find post colonial references from it. And I might look at it from post structuralist or post colonial point of view. So you can see how I can understand the text even better by using structuralism which says that a text is a linguistic construct. Language is the main base of the text and by understanding language by interpreting language you can develop a lot of meaning from the text. It is independent of the author. Author has no right over the text now. You have the text and you can interpret it in whatever way. Author might have written it from one angle but it is now your text. It is open ended. It is free of interpretation. Now that we have understood what structuralism is all about it's time for me to introduce you to the great master of structuralism who is now known as the father of modern linguistics. So we have with us today Ferdinand Desashore and the next person we are going to talk about in this video is Mr. Ferdinand Desashore who is not only father of modern linguistics but who is also a great scholar of Sanskrit. So you will be surprised to know that Ferdinand Desashore was a great scholar of Sanskrit. He actually did his PhD in Sanskrit. And because of his understanding of Sanskrit and his understanding of works of Patanjali, Vratri Hari, Panini he was able to understand what is language. The first important principle of structuralism which he gave after understanding Sanskrit language is the concept of episteme. Now what is episteme? According to Ferdinand Desashore episteme means unit of knowledge is construct of language. Let me make it a bit simpler. He says that in order to learn anything in order to gain knowledge you need to know language. You cannot gain knowledge in this entire world if you don't have basic understanding of language. In other words he also says that linguistic determinism is the key. Now what is linguistic determinism? Linguistic determinism basically says that language determines thought. Think about it. Whatever you think, use it without language. Can you think anything in your mind without using any language be it Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali? No. Look at it. It is such a beautiful thing. What we discovered in structuralism is that you cannot learn anything or you cannot even think without the use of language. So language is the most essential element. Even if you look at a child he learns new things only by learning language. His concept of father comes by knowing that there is a man who has all these qualities and he is known as father. And that is how he can associate things and he can learn who father is. He can actually not learn about father if he doesn't have a word for it. So episteme says that in order to know something unit of knowledge is a construct of language. The next important principle of structuralism is that language has a structure. Let me give you a very simple example. Think about any word in English literature, English language which begins and is followed by three consecutive consonant sounds. Any word in English language which begins and is followed by three consecutive consonant sounds. Can you think it? I can give you examples. Strive, straight, scream. Look at these words. You would not be able to find any word which doesn't begin with S and still is followed by three consecutive consonant sounds. So you can find a structure. The first letter of any word having three consecutive consonant sound would begin with S. Then second letter would either be L or it can be two other consonants and then the third letter would be L or R. So you can see that there is a structure. First letter would be S. Second can be either of the three. Third can be L or R. And if this structure is followed then you can make n number of words having three consecutive consonant sounds. So you can see language has a structure. This is what structuralism says. The first principle is that language is most important thing. Language is essential for thinking. It is essential for gaining knowledge. Second principle is language has a structure. So this man Ferdinand Sashor made a huge contribution in the field of structuralism. And you will be amazed to know that he did not even write a single book in his lifetime. So then you might wonder that how do we know about his theories and his ideas? It is through the notes of his students. He was a lecturer and he used to teach in college. Now while he used to teach in college his students used to write down here. And those notes were published later in a form of book which was known as course in general linguistics. Now you need to also understand the fact that it is not just Ferdinand Sashor who made a huge contribution in a field of structuralism. There are a lot of other readers like Roland Barth and we have Vladimir Prop. Vladimir Prop has written this amazing work called Morphology of Folktale. Whereas Roland Barth is the one who is behind the concept of death of the author. Now we are going to look at all these texts in detail all these theorists in detail in our online course. Since this is a crash course I would just give you the major ideas. But then there are a lot of other things which are important from that point of view which I cover in detail in my online course. You can go to my website arpitaakarwa.com and check out the list of writers and theorists which I teach in my online course. If you really like the list you can join the course and avail 800 audio lectures, 200 PDFs and 3000 mock test questions. Coming back to Ferdinand Sashor, Ferdinand Sashor gave four major theories in the field of structuralism. The first one is sign and it's signifier and signified. So sign was divided by Ferdinand Sashor in two parts, signifier signified. The second concept was of Lang and Perol. Third concept was of signmatic and paradigmatic. And the fourth concept was of dichotomy and synchrotomy. So these were the four major concepts given by Ferdinand Sashor. And I'm going to discuss the first major concept that is sign and the division of signifier signified in this particular lecture. Ferdinand Sashor gave this beautiful concept of sign. What is sign? Sign is any word that you might see in English language. Any unit of language is known as sign. Now according to Sashor this sign is divided into two parts, signifier and signified. And it is written in a form of denominator and numerator just like we used to write fractions and mathematics. Now according to Ferdinand Sashor any word that you encounter has got two parts. There's a signifier and there's a signified and there's a relation between both of them. For example, let's look at a word dog. Now signifier means the word or sound and signified means the mental concept which is related to the word. So if I say dog, some of you might think of a German shepherd, some of you might think of a pug, some of you might think of a black labrador. Now the sign here is composed of two parts. The word dog rings different kind of mental concepts in all of you. That means there is no fixed meaning attached to the word. Signifier and signified are different. Signifier is the word and signified is the mental concept related to it. Now what is important here to understand is that according to Ferdinand Sashor signifier is more important than signified. That is why it is written at the top. How is signifier more important? If you remember in Aristotle's poetic, Aristotle talks about the term logos. Now according to Aristotle, logos is the ultimate truth. And in Indian philosophy we call it Shabd Brahm Hai. Now what do you mean by Shabd Brahm Hai? Shabd Brahm Hai means that Shabd word is the most important thing, most essential thing. So according to structuralist, signifier is more important than signified. Why? Because signifier doesn't change, but signified keeps on changing. If I look at a word like awful, awful signifier is the spelling of awful. Whereas signified is the concept that comes in our mind when we speak the word awful. Now if you remember in the earlier time, awful did not have the same meaning like it has today. Today awful means something which is really bad. In the earlier time, awful meant something which is full of awe, full of respect. And that is why they used to use the term awful majesty of God. So awful word has remained same. In 1600 in 2019 the word awful is same, signifier is same, but signified has changed. Earlier awful meant something which is beautiful, which is commendable. Now awful means something which is ugly, which is not at all important. So you can see signifier remains constant, signified keeps on changing. Another important thing and concept given by Ferdinand Sashor is the arbitrariness of signifier and signified. According to Sashor, the meaning of the word is culturally constructed. I give you a very simple example. What do you mean by cham-cham? Those of you who know Hindi might say that cham-cham means servant of somebody who keeps on buttering someone. That means you are just a person who keeps on going behind that person, keeps on pacifying that person, keeps on buttering that person. But if you look at the word cham-cha, a person who is not from 21st century and who is from 20th century India might say cham-cha means pawn. So how can you say the word cham-cha and the concept of cham-cha that we have in our mind is fixed, is universal? No. Everything is culturally constructed. My idea of God, the word God might have a different mental concept for me and your idea of God might have a different mental concept of you. In my case, for me, God means the idol of Lord Krishna. For you, if you are a Muslim, Allah might be connected to the word God. If you are a Christian, then Jesus Christ would be connected to the word God. If you are not a believer of God, if you are an atheist, then in that case you might look at God as a word which denotes soul. So you can see how the same word can have different meanings for everybody. And that is what Sashor says to be the arbitrariness of sign, of language. There is no fixed connection between signifier and signified. And finally, the most important concept given by Ferdinand Sashor is the concept where he talks about binary opposite. According to him, we are able to understand a word by looking at the opposite, the binary of the word. If I say what is darkness, you might tell me something. Darkness is where there is no light. So you can see how you define a word. You define a word by talking about what it is not, the exact opposite. So darkness is when there is no light. What is dog according to you? Dog is dog because it is not cat, it is not a mammal, it is not a rat, it is not a rabbit, it is not a lion. If an image is not a rabbit, not a cat, not a lion, not a giraffe, then it is dog. So how do you define dog by contrasting it to the other things which it is not? So according to Ferdinand Sashor, language is arbitrary because it is culturally constructed. Also meaning can be only understood by looking at the binary opposite. You can understand what is fatness when you say that this person is not thin. Then we can say that he is fat. Similarly you can say that a table is stable because it is not a chair, it is not a fan, it is not a tube light, it is not an air conditioner, it is not a refrigerator. That is why it is a chair or it is a table. So that's what is meant by binary opposite in terms of structuralism. There are a lot of other important structuralist thinkers and concepts which you must cover if you are preparing for UGC net English literature. So if you are looking for an in-detail course where you can find each and every concept and also you can find detailed discussions on previous year papers of all the questions on structuralism, then you can join our online course. The details are given on our website arpathakarwa.com. You can also find it linked with this I button out there. If you subscribe to the online course you will be getting somewhere around 15 hours of audio lecture on each of these literary theory wherein we discuss each literary theory in detail and we also analyze each and every question from these literary theories as in the previous year papers. Apart from that you can also follow us on all the social media platforms so that you are updated about the recent net notification and you also avail free go net quiz. 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