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The Importance Of Language-Based Communication

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The categorisation of humans into various gender related groups is something spanning across time and cultures. Possible causes of such divisions include grammatical forms of communication, a prospect investigated by structuralism. A variety of approaches concerned with the classification of language in the mind (Jenkins, 1992), it demonstrates just how the power of spoken and written word creates detachments between men and women. Key thinkers including Claude Lévi-Strauss and Ferdinand de Saussure are credited with introducing and popularising the movement and evidence provided by Bourdieu, Louie & Low and Abu-Lughod shows the utilisation of verbal communication in contrasting areas. These ethnographies display structuralism via the linguistic communications they detail, with their contexts holding great importance as they inform meaning (Schirato & Yell, 2000). Interpretations of the organisation of a Kabyle house, the significance of ‘wen-wu’ in Eastern Asia and hushed conversations between Bedouin women all relate to the divisive nature of language in societies. The intention of this report is to determine the degree to which language-based communication establishes the gender-based groups individuals belong to, using structuralism to explain my reasoning.

A popular topic in anthropological circles since Giambattista Vico published ‘The New Science’ in 1725, in which structuralism is described as a key mental component of the “instinctively poetic” human race (Hawkes,

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