E33D WEEK 1 SEMINAR QUESTIONS:
SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS / STRUCTURALIST MODEL OF CULTURAL IDENTITY

1. What do linguists refer to as a ‘referential’ (or ‘reflectionist’ or ‘mimetic’ or ‘correspondence’) model of language? To what degree has this become a widely shared view of language?
2. What do linguists refer to as an ‘instrumental’ or ‘expressivist’ model of language.? To what degree has this also become a widely shared view of language?
3. How exactly, according to Saussure, do signs ‘signify’ (i.e. how is meaning produced)? Would you agree that this represents a radical departure from and critique of the conventional linguistic models discussed above? If so, how exactly?
4. Define the following key Saussurean terms: sign, referent, signifier, signified, signification, sign system, structure, différence, binary oppositions, diachrony, synchrony, langue, parole, the paradigmatic axis, the syntagmatic axis.
5. Explain, in the light of Saussure’s essay, the following statement: "The meaning of any utterance occurs at the intersection of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes."
6. What do you understand by what philosophers term the ‘Cartesian subject’ or the ‘Cogito’? In what ways does Saussure’s model of language contribute to the ‘decentering’ of the Cartesian subject?
7. Discuss the implications of Saussure’s model of the sign for realist models of language and literature.
8. Does Saussure’s model of the sign explain why human beings have a tendency to ‘comprehend’ reality (i.e. to think) in terms of binary oppositions? If so, how?

1. What analogy does Lévi-Strauss perceive between language and social phenomena in general?
2. Why does Lévi-Strauss prefer to apply the methodology offered by Linguistics? The views of which linguist in particular does he wish to apply?
3. What, according to Lévi-Strauss, is the fundamental feature of all human societies, something even more basic than what Marxists term the ‘economic base’ of society (i.e. the necessity of ensuring one’s physical survival)?
4. What sexual prohibition is common to all human culture? How did Freud explain it? How does Lévi-Strauss, drawing on the earlier work of Marcel Mauss, explain it?
5. To what does Lévi-Strauss compare the kinship system? How does this clarify the role played therein by, for example, daughters?
6. Do humans choose their identity, according to Lévi-Strauss, or are they assigned a ‘subject-position’? What role does gender play therein?