RHETOR 103B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Ethnology
Document Summary
A series of oppositions that make up a system. Response to liberal and humanist tendencies of modernism. Linguist: end of 19th c and early 20th c. Concerned with laws and logic by which structures work. Argue; study synchronically - opposed to diachronically (historically- Swiss: used lang as a system of signs (lang = set of signs) movement in time) by looking at the entire system. Sign: signifier (sound image, s1) + signified (idea/ meaning/ concept, s2) Cat: sound image of cat and registered image of a cat in its meaning. **** relationship between s1 and s2 is arbitrary. Questions of power - need power to reaffirm or propose meanings. Break between the thing and its representation in language. No natural relationship between s1 and s2. Cat not stems from representing the image of the cat (the reality) but by the differentiation from other word such as bat, sat > meaning derived from differences from other words.
