ABSTRACT
Language, as Levi-Strauss claims, in some sense lays the foundations for culture as it is made of the same material: structural relations, systems of difference, signs, relations of exchange. Structuralist thought bases its analysis of the social process upon this analogy between society and language as it is conceived in structural linguistics. For Levi-Strauss, linguistics presents itself as a systematic science, whose methods are exemplary for the 'human sciences'. The discipline of anthropology, along with the other human sciences, can exploit the fundamental discoveries of modern linguistics. These reveal that signification, which appears to be a natural relation, is in reality an arbitrary system of differences in which elements gain their meanings only from their relation with all other elements. This conception of language, with its concomitant modes of study, was originated by Ferdinand de Saussure in his lectures from 1907 to 1911, published after his death as the C ()ursc ill (;cllcral Ullguistics.
