KEY CONCEPTS GLOSSARY

Key Concepts Glossary



KEY CONCEPTS

1. Cultural studies

The concept of cultural studies deals with the study of the process of how a community produces and share meaning of different things. Cultural studies usually combines the social theory, feminist theory, history of the particular place, political theory, philosophical system of the society, the formal theories in the society, the theory of media, studies on communication, the economy, and history to analyze the cultural developments in a community. Therefore, we can say that the cultural studies attempts to comprehend the ways in which a society generates meanings for things, the process through which these meanings are circulated, and developed through several exercises, feelings, creations, and economic, political or the social structure in a community.

Jean-Claude Passeron was one of the first to introduce the work of cultural studies, and he has contributed to the translation and wrote the preface to the book culture of the poor (The Uses of Literacy) by Richard Hoggart. (Chris 2008, Pp. 12) The concept of cultural studies had a lot of importance in the field of media.

2. Structuralism

During the decades of 40 and 50, the French philosophical scene was characterized by existentialism, mainly through Sartre , phenomenology also appear, return to Hegel and the philosophy of science, Gaston Bachelard. But something changed in the 60's when Sartre is oriented toward Marxism, there is a new fashion, structuralism. Claude Levi Strauss begins this new moviemiento in ethnology that then will follow Lacan in psychoanalysis, Luis Altuhusser in the study of Marxism and finally, Michael Foucault. It should be He notes that Althusser and Foucault rejected the classification of his thought within and structuralism, and in fact, only Levi Strauss made an explicit reflection on structuralism as a method. In any case, it is a retreat from historicist perspective subjectivist low trying to find a new direction for research. (John 2003, Pp. 25)

Structuralism is an intellectual movement, which is characterized by the desire to reveal patterns that underlie the social and cultural phenomena. Methodological model for structuralism is structural linguistics - the most influential in the 20. A linguist tries to explicitly describe the latent opposition, the structure and rules that make possible the linguistic expression, whereas the structuralism views clothing, literature, etiquette, myths, gestures as multiple "languages", which communicate with the representatives of a culture, he tries to allocate hidden system of oppositions, in each case to determine the structure of specific activities or objects. (John 2003, Pp. 25)

3. Semiotics

The current term "semiotics" refers to a very long history of searches and explorations around the complex phenomenon of significance or significant situations that have led to current practices as removal of the most diverse nature, applied to different configurations cultural interest in the systems and mechanisms of signification. 

Indeed, circulating today are several definitions of semiotics, in fact, relate to many other projects, different from each other. Pierre (Collected Papers) semiotics is "the doctrine of the essential nature of basic varieties of all possible semiosis" to ...