Page 205 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

constituted by the linear combination of signs that, in verbal languages, form
sentences. Paradigmatic refers to the field of signs (that is, synonyms) from which
any given sign is selected. Meaning is accumulated along the syntagmatic axis, while
182 selection from the paradigmatic field alters meaning at any given point in the
sentence. Thus, to read the sequence ‘the cat sat on the mat’ from left to right is to
follow the syntagmatic order. To replace the word cat with tiger or lion would be to
make a paradigmatic alteration.
While Saussure’s contribution was to the study of a narrowly defined field of
linguistics he predicted the possibility of a wider ‘science’ that would study the life
of signs within society. Thus Barthes and others from within the field of
structuralism applied semiotic analysis to the practices of popular culture with an
eye to showing how it generates meaning. Indeed, it was argued that because all
cultural practices depend on meanings generated by signs all cultural practices are
open to semiotic analysis. Hence both the importance of semiotics to cultural
studies and the suggestion that culture works ‘like a language’.
Links Anti-essentialism, culture, language, meaning, signs, structuralism

Sex The concept of sex is commonly taken to refer to natural or essential properties of
an individual as male or female that derive from biological characteristics of the body
such as hormones, genitals and the reproductive system. As such the concept of sex
is often contrasted with the more culturally oriented idea of gender which alludes to
the cultural assumptions that govern the practices of men and women. The so-called
Nature vs Nurture debate frequently centres on the degree to which the behaviour of
men and women can be attributed to the forces of biology and/or culture.
However, there is a strand of cultural theory identified with the work of Judith
Butler and Donna Haraway amongst others that holds the distinction between
biological sex and cultural gender to be untenable. Here the differentiation between
sex as biology and gender as a cultural construction is broken down on the grounds
that there is in principle no access to biological ‘truths’ that lie outside of cultural
discourses and therefore no ‘sex’ which is not already cultural. Thus, sexed bodies are
always already represented as the production of regulatory discourses so that the
category of ‘sex’ is a normative one that functions as a ‘regulatory ideal’ and
produces the bodies it governs. Discourses of sex are ones that, through repetition
of the acts they guide, bring sex into view as a necessary norm. While sex is held to
be a social construction, it is an indispensable one that forms subjects and governs
the materialization of bodies. This does not mean that ‘everything is discourse’, but
rather, as Butler argues, discourse and the materiality of bodies are indissoluble.
The majority of writers within cultural studies have adopted the view that
biology has little of value to say on the subject of sex and gender. The reason why
this view is so popular within cultural studies is not difficult to discern; it leaves the
door open to unlimited changes in gender and the possibility of full equality (as
sameness) of the sexes. However, there is now a good deal of accumulated evidence
that points to the predictability of a range of male and female capabilities and
behaviour that derive from genetics and biochemistry.