Structural linguistics

A usually synchronic approach to language study in which a language is analyzed as an independent network of formal systems, each of which is composed of elements that are defined in terms of their contrasts with other elements in the system.

“Methodologically, it analyzes large-scale systems by examining the relations and functions of the smallest constituent elements of such systems, which range from human languages and cultural practices to folktales and literary texts”Structuralism is a theory of humankind in which all elements of human culture, including literature, are thought to be parts of a system of signs. Critic Robert Scholes has described structuralism as a reaction to "’modernist’ alienation and despair."

(pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/structuralism.html)

Structuralism was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Particularly useful to structuralists was Saussure’s concept of the phoneme (the smallest basic speech sound or unit of pronunciation) and his idea that phonemes exist in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic. A phoneme has a diachronic, or "horizontal," relationship with those other phonemes that precede and follow it (as the words appear, left to right, on this page) in a particular usage, utterance, or narrative—what Saussure, a linguist, called parole (French for "word"). A phoneme has a synchronic, or "vertical," relationship with the entire system of language within which individual usages, utterances, or narratives have meaning—what Saussure called langue (French for "tongue," as in "native tongue," meaning language). An means what it means in English because those of us who speak the language are plugged into the same system (think of it as a computer network where different individuals can access the same information in the same way at a given time).Empirisism in american structuralism is An approach to acquiring knowledge that emphasizes repeatable observations through the  physical senses
Noam Chomsky, for instance, who powerfully influenced structuralism through works such as Reflections on Language (1975), identified and distinguished between "surface structures" and "deep structures" in language and linguistic literatures, including texts. Characterizations of American Structuralism: Corpus-based, Examples from observation, not from introspection, Taxonomic: no universals, Bottom-Up: phonetics, phonology, etc…, Each level is autonomous, Based on early 1900s ideas: behaviorism, tabula rasa, empiricism.

Structuralism in United States, can be defined positively. In the United  States itself a line of development can be traced that is not only geographical, but that has a certain social and intellectual unity.

Leonard Bloomfield

Leonard Bloomfield founded American structuralism, based on structural linguistics developed by Saussure. Bloomfield is known for applying the principles of behaviorist psychology to linguistics, defining "the meaning of a linguistic form as the situation in which the speaker utters it, and the response it calls forth in the hearer."

His 1933 book Language is the classical structuralist text, setting out Bloomfield's rigorously empiricist approach to language study.

In his 1942 guide for second language learners, he advocated a blank slate approach:

The sounds, constructions, and meanings of different languages are not the same: to get an easy command of a foreign language one must learn to ignore the features of any and all other languages, especially of one's own.

The unity of American Structuralism would be associated in the minds of most linguists today with the approach variously called “post-Bloomfieldian”, “neo-Bloomfieldian”, or simply “Bloomfieldian”.

Structural linguistics and Leonard Bloomfield hangman game » hangman puzzle