Structuralists believe that there’re codes hidden behind
language. So when an author writes a story that we
think it reflects the reality or truth of humanity, it, in
fact, doesn’t represent any universal truth of humanity
at all. It rather deals with social value and bias in which
the readers have to crack the codes. The author might
not even realize that he’s in a trap of language.
They also believe that language is constructed with the
concept of opposition.
“Dog” is not a “cat”.
“Man” is not a “woman”.
Therefore, when they analyze a text structurally, they
always look for any underlying paired opposites and see
which side the text is on.