Language and materialism

Structuralism and semiology are among the most important bodies of thought to emerge in this century, and today they inform an extraordinarily wide range of disciplines. This book examines how the semiological tradition came into being, focusing on the strand that took hold in Britain. It traces the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure, the structuralist work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the important changes Roland Barthes introduced as the field developed.