Binary Opposition - Levi Strauss
Binary opposition is the way a word has meaning, and how these meaning are associated with them, the positive and negative connotations evoke how a word is understood. It is used in the media and in literature and is often used in poems to demonstrate controversy and conflict in ideas, a theory introduced by Claude Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes. In filming, it is a common dramatic technique used to bring 2 ideas together and using the difference to suggest possibility or conflict. The meaning assigned to a word is ‘culturally constructed’ and so a word has more meaning when you consider its opposite, and the connotations of the word, brings more meaning than the word itself. For example ‘hero’ and ‘coward’ these words are binary opposites and using one with the other provides some of the core meaning, and each meaning is ‘shaped’ by the opposite lexis, for example the way the youth is viewed and represented in a film, changes dramatically through how the idea of old age. A poor person might be judged and looked down upon and the negative stereotypes associated with the poor are reinforced and maintained through the ideas associated with being wealthy, and how everyone would rather be wealthy than poor. Masculinity is often more valued than femininity. And this is an example of how 1 side of the opposition tends to be viewed slightly higher than the other. Jacques Derride recognized why we judge one side of the opposition more than the other, finding that one of the words is more culturally ‘marked’ as being positive and one can be ‘unmarked’ so has less positivity or can be ‘marked’ negatively. For example, one word can be more privileged, shown in the table.
This shows how they represent reality but labels represent the directors version of reality, and what they want to portray, showing they’re ideological, they act to reinforce judgments.
