Struktūralistinio metodo galimybės ir ribos

ENThe ground-breaking works of Ferdinand de Saussure enabled scholars to formulate an abstract object of linguistic research, that is, language as a sign system. As a result, linguistics became the first area among other fields of the humanities where structuralist analysis was initiated and applied systematically. The recognition of sign aspect in various cultural phenomena treating them as sign systems made possible the application of fundamental principles of structural linguistics in other fields of the humanities and social sciences. The potential of structuralist method most vividly revealed itself in the multifaceted scientific activity of Claude Lévi-Strauss: the structuralist method was applied not only to structural analysis of myths, but also to the research of kinship, marriage relationships, and social organization of primitive peoples. The relevant mathematical tools were used in the analysis of totemism, primitive thought, and primitive graphic art. The boundaries of the research area wherein the structuralist method can be productively applied and the limits of this method are demarcated by one of its fundamental principles demanding to strictly distinguish between the research of an object in terms of synchronicity which is linked to structural analysis, and the diachronic research of that object related to historical analysis.While distancing themselves from diachronic perspective, the structuralists do not reject its relevance and think of it as a complementary way of broader and more complete understanding. Discussing the potential and limits of structuralist method and comparing it to hermeneutic approach, Paul Ricoeur shows that structural-semiotic analysis is well-grounded and one of the necessary modes of interpreting, but limited and insufficient, for it is bracketing the relation of an analysed object, which is treated as a closed sign system, to reality, and therefore has to be complemented by hermeneutic perspective. The structuralist method, to the extent that it implies the use of mathematical tools and formal procedures in general, is subject to the criteria defining the possibility and limits of application of mathematical and other formal procedures.