Talk:Mytheme

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Mytheme is NOT analogous to meme. Not even close. Please don't put it back without *seriously* explaining it, because from my reading of Strauss, we're not even in the same ball park. What a confusing assertion to make. 59.167.111.154 (talk) 03:58, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps there should be some explanation of how this differs in concept from Jung's theories about archetypes in mythology 216.165.122.26 (talk) 20:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'v never heard of this and I'm not a big fan of memes in general. Mytheme sounds like a ridiculous and pointless word with no inherent descriptive value, especially as it is found used in other Wikipedia articles. How would using this word serve to help the reader understand the topic more than if a discussion occured using commonly known, less controversial, and more descriptive words? Serialized 21:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is a valid word in the academic studies. Needs to be sourced and explained though. Goldenrowley

Memetics is like the handicapped little brother structuralism keeps locked up in the back room out of embarrassment: there is little connection between the two intellectually or conceptually, and structuralism winces at its brother's inherit evolutionary-functionalism and use of buzz words, like "virus". --Le vin blanc (talk) 17:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC

Yes, the relationship between meme and mytheme should not be resolved simply by the "popularity" of meme. I've added some Lévi-Strauss quotes and refs. --Wetman (talk) 13:35, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to add that mytheme could be related to an "atomic fact" with a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico_Philosophicus — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.11.233.101 (talk) 06:52, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thats not what a mytheme is. Has anyone here actually read Strauss, and not just cribbed googled quotes out of google searches? This is a structuralist concept. Structuralists don't do "atomic" facts, in fact its one of the bones of contention between analytic philosophy and continental. Signs gain meaning by relations to other signs. A mytheme is about the *function* of groups of ideas within a myth. Strauss posited a sort of "deep structure" (to crib an phrase from chomsky) between myths that relate them at a deep level, emergent to the contradictions in abstract forces that the myths seek to resolve. Mythemes are more analaogous to morphemes in grammar. In the case of Strauss' analysis of Oedipus, Strauss identifies three different items, 1) Cadmos seeking his sister , getting ravaged by Zeus, 2) Oedipus marrying his mother, 3) Antigone buries his brother despite it being prohibited, and detects across these a common theme of overloading kin relationships. Together this forms a mytheme as identified by Strauss. This isn't an "Atomic fact", and its certainly not a "meme". This article seriously needs to be worked over by someone with at least some sort of background in structuralist anthropology , or heck any postgrad with an eng-lit background could do it.

Whatever the case is "meme" doesn't belong in this article (And if "meme" is being used in academia, then all I can say is the humanities have taken an amazing nose dive in its rigour since I was in academia. The term for what Dawkins calles memetics has been called "diffusion" in sociology since forever). I mean how COULD it mean the same thing. The structural atoms of myth Strauss posits are in cultures so diffuse how could it possibly work that way. Its such a strange comparison. A far better analogy would be to a morpheme in grammar. Strauss was posing something like a 'deep grammar' of myth that is somewhat diffusion invariant. He sure as heck wasn't suggesting that cross cultural similarities in oral myth are because of "viral" spreading of ideas! 59.167.111.154 (talk) 04:11, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"...aspects of culture that computer images enter into dialog with"

Given that computer images lack the articulatory apparatus with which to engage in any sort of dialog, I must assume that the terms used (specifically culture, computer, image and dialog) have a specialized, technical meaning that lifts this phrase above the level of nonsense. It would be a great help to everyone if this technical meaning were provided. Or, perhaps, the author of this text could just note the name of the language in which this phrase is not nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.5.32.87 (talk) 07:56, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The expression, appearing in the lede, "like a molecule in a compound", was removed as approaching being scientifically inaccurate. Superficially, these two chemical terms are near to interchangeable, and therefore will appear as an incongruous description to readers that are scientifically informed (see associated wikipedia article for each). The original editor is speculated either to be quoting from a referenced anthropologist, in which case this expression can be returned, with quotation marks and reference, or is offering an original analogy to expand upon a sourced description of the title term. An expression such as "atom in molecule" or "molecule in chemical mixture" may be closer to the intended analogy, but if nothing like this appears in the sources, it should be avoided here. [LeProf] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.179.245.225 (talk) 14:14, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]