本文說明結構主義依賴詞再現物過程中間的人為制約與符號差異作用，使二元運作模式成為目前學術界批判思考的主要方式。運用在文學理論作品詮釋三大要素（作者、文本、讀者）中，通常談的是各方牽涉的社會行為，以及如何透過符號的差異性，指涉出某些意義層面的可能性。第一段介紹結構主義之父索緒爾和他的二元運作系統，第二段導入索緒爾的語言學系統概要，第三段關照索緒爾其他的二元運作模式，如共時性與歷時性的議題，第四段看結構主義最重要的四個特性，就是差異性，系統性，相關性，和約定俗成，第五段介紹受到索緒爾和李維史托的二元運作模式影響的幾位二十世紀重要理論家，第六段談雅克慎的語言溝通圖與文學理論各學派之間的關係，第七段談敘事的科學運用結構主義的情形，第八段談及結構主義思考方式對非學院派一般人的啟示，到最後一段的結論時，則指出傅柯和威廉斯的符號學中的政治經濟學特性，以及在類似的後結構主義影響下，經過蓬勃發展中的後現代主義的洗禮，今日的結構主義，非但不能說是過時的昨日黃花，而應該說是方興未艾的明日之星。

This essay explains how Structuralism relies on signs to represent things and material life and how its process, one that characterized by human arbitrariness and sign differences, forms binary models which become the major thought paradigms of the current critical thinking. Applied to literary cheories, Structuralism often works on three aspects of interpretation (author, text, reader) to point out how differences of the signs signify social behaviors as referent. The first section introduces the person Saussure and his binary models. The second section discusses his linguistic system. The third section talks about his other ideas of the binary models, such as synchrony and diachrony. The fourth section explains the four ostensible characteristics of Structuralism: those of the differential, systematic, relational, and conventional. The fifth section introduces a few major twentieth-century theoreticians influenced by Saussurian binary models and Lévi-Strauss's anthropological studies. The sixth section discusses Roman Jacobson's diagram of linguistic communication and its complex relationship with literary theories. The seventh section introduces how narratologists apply structuralism. The eighth section considers the implications of Structuralism on modern social life. The last section, serving as a conclusion, points out the bearings of the economics of Foucauldian and Raymond Williams' semiotics on how we should view Structuralism. Under the influence of Poststructualism and at the moment when Postmodernism is having its prime, structuralism, far from declining, is still developing its influences onto the thought of the foresseable future.