© 2008 Steve Campsall
 

BINARY

OPPOSITION

The way that we interpret a text, that is, the way we gain meanings from it, intrigued these thinkers. They wanted to know, for example, how we came to 'know' what, say, the word 'hero' meant. They were intrigued by the realisation that the meaning from such a word was intimately tied up with another word, 'coward'. It was as if the two words were somehow in 'binary opposition' to each other, each relying on the other to help out or provide its own meaning.

They also recognised that words in themselves had no inherent meaning at all - that what meaning they did contain was the product of the societies and cultures that used them. The idea that words rely on their 'opposites' and that their meaning is a product of culture or society is at the heart of binary opposition. If this seems complex, all will become clear.

Many of our society's most enduring ideas are maintained and reinforced by the fact that their meanings are created by the workings of binary opposition. For example, if you reflect on what the three pairs of terms in the above images mean to you, wealth and poverty, youth and age, body and soul, you should begin to see how the meaning of each term is created, and - very importantly - shaped, by the existence of not of the word itself but by the existence of the binary pair. Our attitude towards youth, for example, is shaped massively by our attitude towards age: and these are ingrained attitudes properly called ideologies. It seems as if, in all cultures, that people are brought up to need a term or thing's opposite to understand what that thing fully means.

• When you think of the word 'poverty', for example, and all that that word fully means, the sense you gain from it is intimately bound up with all that the word 'wealthy' means. The existence of poverty implies a lack of wealth, obviously - but think also of all the associations and attitudes towards these terms that come along with that.

All rather obvious you might say. Is that all there is to it? No... there is much more; and the implications of this understanding are extraordinary and vast. What will not be so immediately obvious at this stage is what this understanding means at a deeper level, for not just meaning but feeling - emotion - that becomes involved in the generation of meaning. In the case of poverty and wealth, you will recognise that we tend to judge a poor person negatively simply because they are not wealthy; we might well feel sympathy for that person, but in very real ways, we will hold to our deeply conditioned negative response to the idea of poverty and transfer this negativity to the poor person.

• The stereotype of poverty is created and reinforced each time we hear the word 'wealth'. We might not want to be all that rich... but like heck we don't want to be poor.
   
• This is more important than you are probably yet realising. Read on...

Think of any other two binary opposites and you will see the same effect occurs. Somehow, one term - one half of each binary pair - creates a more positive feeling (a kind of positive 'spin') than does its opposite counterpart.

• Consider the binary opposites of 'masculine' and 'feminine', for example, and you might see some surprising connections and judgments that are often made in society in which the term 'masculine' is often still given a more positive 'feel' to its meaning.
   
• Of course, this will depend on context, but it does demonstrate that we still have some way to go before these terms can be said to suggest truly equal concepts. This occurs because binary opposites act in ways that reinforce society's dominant ideologies - and we still live, to some extent, in what is called a patriarchal society.

There are three stages to this theory that you need to grasp:

• The nearest we can get to knowing anything about reality is through ideas about that reality
• We are able to interpret ideas only through a system of difference between opposing ideas
• We always privilege - judge more positively - one side of each opposing pair of ideas

Confused? Don't worry, enlightenment - and higher marks - are merely a few web pages away!