how to do structural analysis
It seems to me that much of the work after Chandler is to discover the syntagms - the meaningful units.
paradigms - suspect that we can discover these units in sign systems other than natural language, such as film. 81
syntagms - these are meaningful units within a whole, a conceptual unit. will encounter this again in others. What is the whole? what is a unit? become analytically problematic when we look for reliable, reproducible system. Yet this is where the real interest lies, 84. In natural language, we have grammar that addresses these units - which is more problematic than it sounds.
narrative is a typical syntagm, but there are others: narrative is sequential, but there are spatial, conceptual (as exposition), and morphological (Propp) others? causal? taxonomic?
Unit is defined by being functional 92, or by underlying oppositions 93.
Propp and Greimas and others are looking for some kind of grammar. Metz and others developed the syntagmatic categories for (narrative) film. 97
paradigms - defined by absences. analysis proceeds by comparing present signifiers with others (absent ones) that might have been chosen 99
this is the area where theorists discuss The Absence - those signifiers that could have been used but aren't. Considering those that aren't highlights the ones that are, which tends to reveal the ideology, the underlying forces that drive choice.
Determining units: commutation test.
see Anne Berthoff - or consider sorting chaos into some kind of list
Language of opposition. Antonyms let us sort - place things along an axis of difference. 102 the differences do not have to be opposites. they can be contrasts. digital v analogue differences 104
Us/Them, Self/Other - Here is the structuralist/semiotic source for what Lacan and others develop into the the idea that "Subjectivity is dynamically constructed through discourse." 105. As the child exists within the language system, that system influences or determines possible paradigms and syntagms, and eliminates others (possible-allowed / not possible-not allowed) that shapes the subjectivity of the individual. etc
Alignment - some paradigmatic links become socially aligned in some texts and create vertical links: male-mind, female-body. That is, some opposing signifiers operate as key signifiers that organize others. L-S saw these as cultural universals 106. Closer to home, and in a smaller field, aesthetic movements (and probably others, such as political positions) work by alignment of terms with key oppositional terms 107. Cartesian dualism is a key example of alignment 113
markedness 110-112. Paired terms are typically arranged hierarchically, with the unmarked term being more highly valued and the marked term treated as the absent signifier. Derrida works with this manifestation of markedness. The idea is that both terms are necessary as they are defined in opposition to the other - it is both that constitute each member of the pair. Term B tends to be defined relationally rather than substantively - define male then define female as not-male, by negation. 112 The choice of a marked term makes a statement 117. Marked text required the interpreter to do more interpretive work. 117
Chandler makes some analysis of markedness by looking at sequence in pairing 113-4
- unmarked - marked - natural - devient - male - female - mind - body - analogue - digital?
Greimasian square - use it as a heuristic, esp to lay out and generate the 4th term