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The cataloguer of folk tales [[Vladimir Propp]] considered that the unit of analysis was the individual tale: the unitary mytheme by contrast is the equivalent in myth of the [[wp:phoneme]]s, [[wp:morpheme]]s and [[wp:sememe]]s into which [[Linguistics|structural linguistics]] divides language: the smallest possible units of meaning within a language system.
In the 1950s [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] first adapted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the term ''mythème'', with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterances parallels closely that of a language system [http://www.ditl.info/art/definition.php?term=3034].This idea is somewhat disputed by [[Roman Jakobson]], who takes the mytheme to be a [[wp:concept]] or phoneme which is without significance in itself but whose significance might be shown by [[wp:sociology|sociological]] analysis.<ref>*Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955. "The Structural study of myth" in ''Journal of American Folklore'', '''68''' pp 428-444</ref>
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<ref>*[http://www.ditl.info/art/definition.php?term=3034 Pamela A. Genova, in ''Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires''] "Mythème/mytheme" (in English) A succinct view of Lévi-Strauss's use of ''mytheme''.</ref>
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==See Also==
* [[Matheme]]
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[[Category:Anthropology]]
[[Category:Linguistics]]
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