Structuralism is an approach that grew to become one of the most widely used methods of analyzing language, culture, philosophy of mathematics, and society in the second half of the 20th century. 'Structuralism', however, does not refer to a clearly defined 'school' of authors, although the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered a starting point. Structuralism is best seen as a general approach with many different variations. As with any cultural movement, the influences and developments are complex. Broadly, structuralism seeks to explore the inter-relationships (the "structures") through which meaning is produced within a culture. A secondary use of structuralism has recently been seen in the philosophy of mathematics. According to structural theory, meaning within a culture is produced and reproduced through various practices, phenomena and activities which serve as systems of signification. A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early and prominent practitioner of structuralism, anthropologist and ethnographer Claude Lévi-Strauss, analyzed cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship, and food preparation. Lévi-Strauss explained that opposites are at the basis of social structure and culture. In his early work he demonstrated that tribal kin groups were usually found in pairs, or in paired groups that both oppose one another and need one another. For example, in the Amazon basin, two different expanded families would build their houses in two facing semi-circles that together make up a big circle. He showed too that the congnitive maps, the ways early folk categorized animals, trees, and so on, were based on a series of oppositions. Later in his most popular work The Raw and the Cooked he described the widely dispersed folk tales of tribal South America as all related to one another through a series of transformations--as one opposite in tales here changed into another opposite in tales there. For example, as the title implies, Raw becomes its opposite Cooked. These particular opposites (Raw/Cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which by means of thought and labor, raw materials become clothes, food, weapons, art, ideas. Culture, explained Lévi-Strauss, is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. When used to examine literature, a structuralist critic will examine the underlying relation of elements (the 'structure') in, say, a story, rather than focusing on its content. A basic example are the similarities between West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Even though the two plays occur in different times and places, a structuralist would argue that they are the same story because they have a similar structure - in both cases, a girl and a boy fall in love (or, as we might say, are +LOVE) despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other, a conflict that is resolved by their death. Consider now the story of two friendly families (+LOVE) that make an arranged marriage between their children despite the fact that they hate each other (-LOVE), and that the children resolve this conflict by committing suicide to escape the marriage. A structuralist would argue this second story is an 'inversion' of the first, because the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. In sum, a structuralist would thus argue that the 'meaning' of a story lies in uncovering this structure rather than, say, discovering the intention of the author who wrote it. Some feel that a structuralist analysis helps pierce through the confusing veil of life to reveal the hidden, underlying, logically complete structure. Others would argue that structuralism simply reads too much into 'texts' (in the widest sense) and allows clever professors to invent meanings that aren't actually there. There is a variety of positions in between these two extremes, and many of the debates around structuralism focus on trying to clarify issues of this sort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

The short and sweet version: struc|tur|al|ism «STRUHK chuhr uh LIHZ uhm», noun. 1 Psychology. the study of the structure of consciousness, or what it consists of, as opposed to its function, or what it does. 2 structural linguistics. study of linguistic structure to determine and describe patterns and their interrelationships of language 3 any study or theory which regards structure as more important than function. From Merriam-Webster

An affliction architects have when they have too much to drink.