STRUCTURALISM AS A MODE OF THOUGHT AND ITS LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY

Scholars like Tom Battomore and Robert Nisbet argue that the origins of structuralism can be traced back to the Plato and Aristotle. According to them, any intellectual approach that tries to find some grounding structures for human actions, thoughts and social experiences, contains structural elements. In this sense, structuralism has been in the western philosophy since its beginnings. But, initiatives that put these founding structures at the centre of human thought and use this approach in various areas of social sciences began mostly in the 19th century; and continued to increase in the 20th century. As a matter of fact, it is impossible in an article to address structuralism in this historical unity. Rather, we will try to briefly summarise its main arguments, history and discussions around it and then handle structuralist language philosophy with its basic characteristics. It has been tried to reveal that structuralism is a mode of thought rather than a specific methodology. In addition to this, it is aimed to show that structuralism as a mode of thought and an approach to language is still an important and unique school of thought with new possibilities, especially in the postmodern era that we live in