Structuralism, in linguistics, any one of several schools of 20th-century

linguistics committed to the structuralist principle that a language is a self-

contained relational structure, the elements of which derive their existence
and their value from their distribution and oppositions in texts or
discourse. Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure

Poststructuralism, Movement in literary criticism and philosophy begun

in France in the late 1960s.
Drawing upon the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, the
anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss (see structuralism), and the
deconstructionist theories of Jacques Derrida (seedeconstruction), it held that
language is not a transparent medium that connects one directly with a “truth”
or “reality” outside it but rather a structure or code, whose parts derive their
meaning from their contrast with one another and not from any connection
with an outside world.
Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault.