Lecture 8 - Semiotics and Structuralism

In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry explores the semiotics movement through the work of its founding theorist, Ferdinand de Saussure. The relationship of semiotics to hermeneutics, New Criticism, and Russian formalism is considered. Key semiotic binaries--such as langue and parole, signifier and signified, and synchrony and diachrony--are explored. Considerable time is spent applying semiotics theory to the example of a "red light" in a variety of semiotic contexts. **Reading assignment:** Levi-Strauss, Claude. "The Structural Study of Myth." In The Critical Tradition, pp. 860-68 Suggested: Barthes, Roland. "The Structuralist Activity." In The Critical Tradition, pp. 775-84 **Resources:** ;[[http://oyc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/saussure_0.pdf|Handout: More Saussure [PDF]]]