Discussion Questions on Bressler, Chapters 5 and 6

1. What is the difference between a diachronic and a synchronic analysis of language?

2. What is the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme?

3. Why, according to structuralists, can’t we consider a literary work to be a mystical "relationship between the author and the reader" (99)?

4. What is a transcendental signified?

5. What, according to Derrida, is the relationship between written and spoken language?

6. What might we learn about the meaning of a text from "slips of language"?

7. What is the difference between the id, the ego, and the superego?

8. What is archetypal criticism?