Structuralism In Europe and America, Main Differences

To begin, in looking at the origin of the term ''structure'' one finds that the term initially had an architectural meaning. It referred to ''the action, practice, or process of building or constructio'' and ''the way in which an edifice, machine, implement is made or put together.'' The application of the notion of structure to language and the social sciences in general came from developments in the field of linguistics through the seminal Course in General Linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of structural linguistics. (1)

In order to understand the nature of Structuralism we must look at some key notions in Course in General Linguistics. For Saussure language studies should be done synchronically, that is absence of time in language studies. And he thought that language is composed of arbitrary signs. And in the General Linguistics he developed a scientific model for language.

Saussure distinguished between language and speech. For language he said 'Langue' and for human speech he said 'parole.' In regard of this he proposed following:

''Taken as a whole, speech, is many-sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously - physical, physiological, and psychological- it belongs to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts for we cannot discover its unity.'' (2)

His syntagmatic&paradigmatic, synchrony&diachrony, langue&parole dichotomies and his thoughts on signs were very challenging and revolutionary in linguistics. Also his phoneme studies paved the way for future phonetic studies.After him many schools continued his synchronic and structural view and developed his theories.

After his death we see many diversifications in Europe. So here we can talk about the main structural characteristics in Europe.

After his death his students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye founded Geneva  School. This school maybe the most close ecole to the Saussure's views because Bally and Sechehaye are followers of their mentor.

In 1926 Linguistic Circle of Prague was founded by Vilem Mathesius. This school involves Roman Jacobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy. Their method was again structural method but this time they gave attention to folkloric texts and poems. Also they studied phoneme. They slighlty changed Saussure's previous views and adjust it to their studies. But main characteristic was synchronic studies.

Then we see a structural movement in Scandinavia. Here Copenhagen School was founded by Louis Hjelmslev along with Hans Urdall. Here structuralism took a different shape. They produced an algebraic theory. Theory's name is Glossematics. So  Copenhagen School's theories were far more abstract than other school's. They see the minimum structure of a word as glosseme.

Else where Daniel Jones and J.R. Firth established British Structuralism. British Structuralism's main focus was meaning. They cared for meaning very much. The most famous one who deals with meaning was Bronislaw Malinowski and Halliday. This school also extended the notion phoneme.

Now we can summarize the situation in Europe;

At the beginning of 20th century language studies shifted from diachrony to synchrony with the great contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure. Linguistic value and signs were important novelties. Language was begun to study in itself for itself. Outer influences on texts were disregarded. After Saussure there emerged many schools and these schools contributed synchronic language studies greatly. Textuality, literary aspect of language, communication models, phonemes were studied by these schools.

Now we have come to America. Language studies in America also shifted to structuralism approximately at the same time. In America Structuralism can be started with Franz Boas (1858-1942) Other important names are Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) Generally Structuralism in America can be divided into two movement one is rationalism led by Boas and the other one behaviorism led by Bloomfield.

There are some differences between American Structuralism and European Structuralism. But why? First of all languages spoken in Europe had been studied throughout the history. These languages' grammar rules and structures had been determined. Also these languages had written documents. So it was needless to analyze them again. So besides languages' structures, some theories regarding the nature of language was put forward. But in America linguists and ethnologists faced different communities that is Indic People. So before comparing these language with English they had to determine their rules and grammar structures first. So as to do this they had to describe these languages patterns. That is the most important difference between European and American Structuralism.

In European Structuralism language studies were carried on abstract level. For instance Langue-Parole distinction syntacmatic-paradigmatic distinction, concepts seen as abstract units and so forth. But in America linguists didn't have time to deal with these abstract notions because they needed to describe Indic languages. 

So we can say in American Structuralism language studied applicatively. But in Europe mainly theoretically.

Another distinction is that in America linguist had to study language hand in hand with culture. We cannot separate language from culture. And in America new cultures appeared so linguist and anthropologists tried to examine the relationship between language and culture. From there the great theory of Linguistic Relativism appeared because of this approach. In Europe there were no very different cultures and language was studied on its own.

In European Structuralism paradigmatic and contrastive relationships were highly regarded. But in America Syntagmatic relations were deemed.

Lastly in Europe one language theory or one model was tried to apply every European Languages but in America for every Indic language different schemas was tried to apply in order to get more accurate analysis.

REFERENCE(S)

1) Radford, P. Gary. Radford, L. Marie. 2004. Structuralism, Post-structuralism, and The Library: de Saussure and Foucault

2) Saussure, de Ferdinand. 1966. Course in General Linguistics. McGraw-Hill Paperbacks.

3)Harle, Peter. 1999. Structuralism. Folklore Forum. 30: 1/2

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