To the average speaker of English, terms such as ‘structure’, ‘structural-
ist’ and ‘structuralism’ seem to have an abstract, complex, new-fangled
and possibly French air about them: a condition traditionally o
ff
ering
uncontestable grounds for the profoundest mistrust.
But whatever the attractions of such anglo-saxon prejudices, they do
not, on inspection, turn out to be particularly well-founded. The con-
cept of ‘structure’, the notion of various ‘structuralist’ stances towards
the world which might collectively be called ‘structuralism’, are not
entirely alien to our trusted ways of thinking, nor did they spring, fully
formed with horns and tail, out of the sulphurous Parisian atmosphere
of the last decade.