Flores's notes:

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory, Chapter 2: Structuralism

39        "things cannot be understood in isolation—they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of"

            meaning does not inhere in things—meanings are attributed through relational, positioning activity via a structured/structuring perspective , and this condition in turn prompts critics to relate texts to larger cultural contexts/narrative traditions/genres, and to attend to primary premises about what constitutes literary language/structure

41        Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure: (1) meanings are conventional—hence, there is no inherent or natural component or content of the signifying aspect of the sign that connects a particular word to what it supposedly designates—instead, this relation is cultural/conventional, and therefore arbitrary (though the practice of meaning in communication is arguably not arbitrary but systematic, or somewhat "rule-governed"); moreover, the systemic/structural nature of language suggests that there is no mediating, one-to-one or direct reflecting connection/relation between language and the world (e.g., to what does an "apple" refer?)

42        (2) meanings are determined/identified/structured by relations among words, both those present in a signifying chain (words in a sentence, for example) and in relation to absent possibilities (other words that might be substituted in terms of similarity but also in terms of difference or opposition—these differences also are at work at the level of distinctions between words, "pin" vs "pen" vs "pan" vs "pun"—Saussure: "In a language there are only differences, without fixed terms" (a network of differences without positive terms—e.g., the 8:25 Geneva to Paris train).

43        (3) our life in language structures meanings that constitute (are constitutive of) our relation to the world, to reality, without access to some objective understanding or knowledge—for us, "truth" is thereby an effect of linguistic performance, not a mediating conduit to something outside of the discourse of language

44        la langue refers to the abstract system or structure of language that permits, is the condition of possibility for, specific, signifying utterances (parole) that are subject to the conventional speech practices that both produce and are made possible by la langue

45        counter counter-argument: even if train must be train-like does not the recognition of that quality depend upon meaning in practice established via mutually constitutive differences? Can the meaning of the train possibly exist prior to its recognition/interpretation/practice?

47        anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss interpreted culture by decoding myths as systems of signs whose meanings are generated according to complex grammars, rules that govern the meaning of signs in relation to each other (Oedipus's unwitting breaking of incest taboo, or apparent fashion faux pas of wearing a velvet blazer with sneakers and jeans rather than dressy shoes)

48        Roland Barthes ("Analyzing Narrative Structures"; transitional S/Z; post-structural The Pleasure of the Text) analyzed various aspects of popular culture such as boxing, wrestling, and striptease in his 1957 work Mythologies

52-56   example of analyzing differences and similarities in structural contrasts, parallels, and oppositions in Poe's "The Oval Portrait" as founded upon paired opposites/dyads, such as art/life—do you agree with Barry that the tale values the production and reception of art despite its "pious protest at the sacrifice of a young life"

58        What do you think of the analysis of the semic code (characterization) in Mervyn Jones's novel, through the "cloze procedure" of reconstructing how meaningful gaps are filled according to and in order to produce a particular kind of character for Armitage

fyi in case you are curious/interested in more perspectives on Ferdinand
de Saussure and structuralism:

[Flores's brief notes]
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~sflores/saussure.html

[Mary Klages's extensive notes on Saussure and on Claude Levi-Strauss]

http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/2004saussure.html

http://www.colorado.edu/English/engl2010mk/levistrauss.2001.htm