Deep structure

Early writers in linguistic theory believed that relationships between signifier and signified are arbitrary:

“In the end, the principle it comes down to is the fundamental principle of the arbitrariness of the sign.
It is only through the differences between signs that it will be possible to give them a function, a value.
If the sign were not arbitrary, one would not be able to say that in the language there are only differences.” -- Saussure

Hence 'rose' and 'rosa' are different signifiers for the same signified flower – a change of signifier has no effect on the relational meaning. Saussure's subsequent work became known as semiology – the idea that the meaning of an action or object is always dependent upon a ground of shared convention. Saussure was an early structuralist. Structuralism seeks to understand the interrelationships between abstract irreducible units in a system (known as surface phenomena) and the rules that govern both their function and the flow of data and meaning between them. Linguistics is primarily though not entirely therefore a structuralist discipline, in that it studies relationships between language segments such as phones, rules, grammar, which govern assemblage into meaning. And so Saussure and his followers were interested primarily in the decomposition of language, looking to understand its rules. But only in synchronistic (i.e. language in the present moment) events. Subsequent linguists however, notably Levi-Strauss were more interested in the diachronic (i.e. language which changes over time) rules and structures. Diachronic linguistics is also sometimes called historical linguistics).

Levi-Strauss had whole-heartedly adopted Freud's posited (and IMHO, silly) consciouses-unconscious distinction. He sought to extend it by adding the qualifier of depth. That is,  he wished to indicate linguistic differences between obvious or surface structure with the less clear semantic meaning in what he termed the deep structure of hidden meanings and a-priori assumptions. He believed these to be inherit in all languages. He was also of the opinion that Saussure's linguistic concepts, particularly that of synchronistic events were appropriate mainly for studying binary oppositions (such as antonyms). The longer view however - diachronic study - was more appropriate for anthropological language research. This because the rules for binary oppositions were of the moment; the rules for overall structure were malleable with time. Deep hidden structures in language portrayed  hidden concepts. Study of the structures would he felt, elucidate the hidden concepts behind them.

Deep structure can also be divulged by an investigation of the difference in synchronistic and asychronistic events peculiar to oral versus symbolic language. David Abram has suggested that all oral cultures recite stories – for example the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Epics, the Chaldean myths, the Christian myths, and so on. Recitation of these myths he suggested, not only tell of the world but in essence re-create the world  with in each retelling. Revisionism which becomes reaility.

As a result time and space in these cultures (the deep structure), is part of an integrated whole maintained by shared, repeated, narratives rather than the disparate discrete concepts inherent in the transient ephemera of most North American culture. As an interesting aside to this Jaynes in his research on the origins of consciousness, has  gone so far as to hypothesis  that the development of oral epic narratives may also have led to an altered evolution in the right temporal cortex. A change which allowed for the creation of the 'I' concept. Some recent fMRI work lends this credence, (or even J.B. Taylor's N-of-1 narrative).

At any rate Abram goes on to argue that the impact of the development of writing was in addition to the gradual dissolution of oral tradition,  a dissociation of from nature. This occurred slowly. Early writing was primarily (though not exclusively) pictographic – symbols in both meaning an image representation related directly and recognizably to natural phenomena. Similar in a way to the Bliss symbols using with the autistic. However as written language became phonetic, the representation of pictographs became the symbolism of abstraction. That is, symbols came to represent ideas rather than objects. One may say as a gross but none the less meaningful generality, that the deep structure changed from the tangible to the intangible. Symbol groupings began to represent complex concepts unrelated to actual objects. A situational rationality (in Rappaport's sense) of dissociation.

If this is even somewhat correct, then perhaps a corollary exists to the effect that dissociation - a special type of cognitive dissonance perhaps - is necessary for written language and literacy to permeate a culture.

Such dissociation may adumbrate a belief system of separation. One wherein symbol is taken as equivalent to object.  An example of this is intuitionism which is a system of mathematical philosophy which takes the validity of a mathematical statement to be equivalent to its having been proved) which is commonly found in certain abstractionist proofs in the sciences (and possibly in Kansas creationism, ha ha!). It seems to me that deep structure changes as language and the narratives implicit therein become more and more deeply enmeshed in symbology and dissociation from surface structure and tangible object. This applies as much to apparently separate approaches as the choice systems of transformational grammars through  lexical limitations of subjective value expression.

That is to say, a dissociative metanarrative pervading much of science. This is the reality of science, particularly Big Science and the science of militarism and profit.  It is not a metanarrative of Kuhn's paradigms; not the evolutionary steps Jaspers discussed; not a meritocracy/ not creative reframing (the Joy of Sects, haha!)... but rather a self-referential recursive cognitive dissonance, writ large. And the associated dysfunctions and distortions which result.