structuralism

n. 1. The scientific study of experience through a systematic examination of introspection. This began in the late 1800s under the leadership of Edward Titchener and Wilhelm Wundt and was the method employed in the first psychology laboratory. 2. A multidisciplinary approach to linguistics, textual analysis, social anthropology, human psychology, and culture which is based on the analysis of linguistic signs and their functional relationships to each other, which was popularized by Ferdinand de Saussure in the 1960s.