69249454-chandler-semiotics

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SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
universals of the human mind, cutting across cultural distinctions
(Lévi-Strauss 1972, 21). His synchronic studies of cultural practices
identified underlying semantic oppositions in relation to such
phenomena as myths, totemism and kinship rules. Individual myths
and cultural practices defy interpretation, making sense only as a
part of a system of differences and oppositions expressing fundamental
reflections on the relationship of nature and culture. He
argued that binary oppositions form the basis of underlying ‘classificatory
systems’, while myths represented a dreamlike working over
of a fundamental dilemma or contradiction within a culture,
expressed in the form of paired opposites. Apparently fundamental
oppositions such as male–female and left–right become transformed
into ‘the prototype symbols of the good and the bad, the permitted
and the forbidden’ (Leach 1970, 44; cf. Needham 1973).
Lévi-Strauss argued that within a culture ‘analogical thought’
leads to some oppositions (such as edible–inedible) being perceived
as metaphorically resembling the ‘similar differences’ of other oppositions
(such as native–foreign) (Lévi-Strauss 1962/1974).
This yields a series of homologous oppositions, such as raw
is to cooked as nature is to culture (in structuralist shorthand ‘raw :
cooked :: nature : culture’) (Lévi-Strauss 1969), or – in the Cartesian
dualism of the modern Western world – culture : nature :: people :
animals :: male : female :: reason : passion (Tapper 1994, 50). The
classification systems of a culture are a way of encoding differences
within society by analogy with perceived differences in the natural
world (somewhat as in Aesop’s Fables) (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 90–1,
cf. 75–6, 96–7). They transform what are perceived as natural categories
into cultural categories and serve to naturalize cultural
practices. ‘The mythical system and the modes of representation
it employs serve to establish homologies between natural and
social conditions or, more accurately, it makes it possible to equate
significant contrasts found in different planes: the geographical,
meteorological, zoological, botanical, technical, economic, social,
ritual, religious and philosophical’ (ibid., 93). The aggregation of
fourfold distinctions associated with Aristotle’s ‘four elements’ and
sustained in various combinations over two millenia are of this kind
(Chandler 2002, 102–3). The alignments which develop within such