© 2010 Steve Campsall
 

BINARY

OPPOSITION

These thinkers wanted to know how a word like, for example, 'hero' comes to have the meanings it does. They were intrigued by the realisation that the meaning from such a word is intimately tied up with the meanings of another word, 'coward'. They realised that the two words were, in effect, cultural opposites - they were in 'binary opposition' to each other with each relying on the other to help out or provide some of its core meaning.

It soon became clear that words in themselves had no inherent meaning. Any meaning a word created must, the theory suggested, be a product - a construct - of the societies and cultures that used it. If this seems overly obvious, it's definitely not; and if it seems overly complex - don't worry, stay with it as 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 shaped by the existence of the word's binary opposite. Our attitude towards youth, for example, is shaped massively by the idea of old age. These ideas also, as so often is the case, ingrained attitudes properly called dominant ideologies. It seems as if ideology itself operates through this same system of binary opposition.

• When you think of the word 'poverty', for example, and all that that the word fully means, the sense you gain from it is probably 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, some 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  also 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.

• Can you see how the stereotype of poverty is maintained 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' cultural counterpart.

• Consider the binary opposites of 'masculinity' and 'femininity', 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 - despite the feminist revolution of the 1960s - given a more positive valuation in many (far too many...) cultural areas.
   
• Of course, this will depend on the context, but it does show that we still have some way to go before these terms can be said merely to suggest different concepts - as they surely should - not ideas against which powerful cultural judgments are drawn.
  
• This judgmental effect occurs because binary opposites act in ways that reinforce society's dominant ideologies.

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

• The nearest we can get to knowing about reality is through ideas about that reality.
  
• We can only interpret ideas through a system of differences between opposing ideas.
  
• We tend to 'privilege' - judge in a more favourable light - one side of each opposing pair of cultural ideas (and far more meanings and ideas than you ever imagined are cultural in origin).

Hopefully things are becoming clearer but if not, don't worry, both enlightenment and higher marks are but a few web pages away!