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Difference Between Structuralism And Semiotics

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Structuralism and Semiotics

Structuralism & semiotics, the general study of signs which developed from the structuralist program, have a complex theory of the way signs work but, in essence, we may say that the categories of meaning (words) are comprised in a system of binary oppositions: white & black, body & mind, the sacred & the profane, individual & collectivity. We are engaged, then, in the study of signs & sign systems.
Structuralism analyzes society & elements of society via binary oppositions that it sees as essential to the way the brain works. Post structuralism, on the other hand, sees this binary dualism as an aspect of Western thought & not universal. For postmodernism, meaning & the categories of thought are shifting & unstable. While using many of the fundamental ideas in structuralism, I follow the American anthropologist Roy Wagner in using the notion of trope or metaphor in the context of a phenomenology in order to map the unfolding structure of social forms.
Using linguistic sociological tools in an analysis of mysticism & some other relevant subject matter such as magic, sacrifice, ritual initiation, and so on, is difficult for several reasons. One of these is that language & the structure of society were in their origins and development completely entangled in religion and the sacred. It seems that language originally was, by its very nature & power, sacred. In addition, it is pretty clear that secular society developed out of religious society &

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