ABSTRACT
Semiotics is a form of structuralism, for it argues that we cannot know the world on its own terms, but only through the conceptual and linguistic structures of our culture. Empiricism (see chapter 8) argues exactly the opposite. For the empiricist the work of the researcher is to discover the meanings and patterns that already exist in the world; for the structuralist the task is to uncover the conceptual structures by which various cultures organize their perception and understanding of the world. While structuralism does not deny the existence of an external, universal reality, it does deny the possibility of human beings having access to this reality in an objective, universal, non-culturally-determined manner. Structuralism’s enterprise is to discover how people make sense of the world, not what the world is. Structuralism, therefore, denies any final or absolute scientific truth-if universal unchanging reality is not accessible to human beings, then we cannot evaluate the truth of statements or beliefs by measuring how closely they approximate to this reality.
