Systems of Discourse

?The most readable and informative work on structuralism to date. Zito begins with a clever, abstract discussion of various kinds of systems and then leads the reader gently into the particular tenets of structuralism as a theory and a method. He covers all of the major theorists ... illuminating differences among them and from other social-scientific paradigms. Zito has a knack for anticipating everything scholars always wanted to know about the usefulness of structuralism in social science. A major portion of the text deals with understanding strcuturalism's emphasis on language as well as its provocative notion of causality. This book ... will be immensely helpful to advanced students who are interested in understanding the role this paradigm plays in broadening our interpretation of social phenomena. University-level collections.?-Choice