ABSTRACT
Jakobson’s structuralism also suffers from a certain monism of the sign, arising out of his purely semiotic form of linguistics which by-passes any notion of distinction between semiotics and semantics, signs and sentences. This version of structural linguistics also imposes limits on its own horizons, by not recognising that the metaphorical and metonymie processes can exist at levels within discourse other than that of the purely semiological or syntactical. Barthes remarks that, within metaphor, each of the terms is indeed similar, but also, importantly, dissimilar. The difference between terms is a crucial aspect of metaphorical process. The success of a metaphor depends on the construction of similarity between the terms; therefore the dissimilarities become lost or repressed. Femininity, or, more specifically, the dominant ideological and patriarchal definitions of femininity, pass between womanhood and motherhood as commonality which collapses one into the other, elevating the victor onto a pedestal as the Mother, the chosen term of the metaphorical representation of women.
