ملخص الدراسة:

AbstractBinary oppositions are fundamental to structuralist thought which enjoyed a wide application in different fields of life. One of the most important fields is literary language since this language is the most intricate means of conveying meanings (literary meanings). Within a single text, meaning is expressed only rationally, and structuralists and semioticians look for certain internal structures asking what the categories are within which meaning is expressed and how they are organized. Moving beyond the level of sentences to larger units of speech and writing, structuralism identifies the underlying structures shared by the individual surface manifestations of a system. The reader, due to this structuralist orientation, can detect certain binary pairs in order to unravel the possible meaning of literary texts. This discovery of the binary oppositions is one of the central strategies of reading and interpretation. Thus binary oppositions are signs (codes) to be unraveled (decoded). This strategy of discovering binary oppositions in texts is crucial to detect the symbolic quality of certain texts. Symbols can be organized into pairs and sets. Thus, as applied to literature, structuralism is the study of underlying patterns and directions implied by the way language is used in a given literary text. It provides not only a theory but also a mode of practical criticism.The above challenging meaning-finding strategy can be followed in the process of reading Earnest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, for this Nobel-winning piece evinces so many hidden meanings that can be fathomed scrutinizing the surface structure.