Media, Information and Technoculture 2000F/G Final: MIT2200finalexam

• School: Western University
• Department: Media, Information and Technoculture
• Course: Media, Information and Technoculture 2000F/G
• Professor: P

Document Summary

The structure determines the positive of every element. The structure is hidden or obscure, but is the real thing. Structuralism: approach used to analyze diverse social and cultural phenomena as signs that bear meanings and as parts of differential systems, not as having essential meanings in themselves. Ferdinand saussure course in general linguistics . Principle 1: the arbitrary nature of the sign. No reason to call a cat a cat; diff languages have different names for things; society chooses the signifier not the individual. Principle 2: the linear nature of the sign. Language as a differential system 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. (46) Meaning in language is generated by the system, not by the users of that system. Syntagms: words acquire relations based on the linear nature of language because they are chained together.