structuralism
Developed in the 1950s by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the cultural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. It is a study of all social and cultural practices within a particular culture, including language, to uncover the relationships or codes, rules and meaning. In the 1970s post-structuralism replaced structuralism with a variety of approaches that challenge assumptions, identify fault lines in language or cultural systems and assert multiple relationships and meanings. Theorists in this field include Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes. (Conway, 1994)