French structuralism is a late school of formalism aesthetics and literary theory. Structuralist aesthetics and literary theory are based on structuralist philosophy and linguistics. Structuralism originated in the early 20th century, formed in Russia, the Soviet Union and the Czech Republic in the 1920s and 1930s, and reached its peak in France in the 1950s and 1960s.

Structuralists try to apply the methods and viewpoints of modern linguistics (Saussure) to aesthetic research, so as to reveal the stable system structure behind aesthetic phenomena and the possible forms and significance of these phenomena.

In the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, it has become one of the most commonly used research methods to analyze language, culture and society. Structuralism can be regarded as a generalized research method with many different changes.

Broadly speaking, structuralism tries to explore how a cultural meaning is expressed through what kind of relationship (that is, structure). According to the structural theory, the generation and re-creation of a cultural meaning is to find out the deep structure of how meaning is made and re-made in a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities as an ideographic system.

Structuralism is not a simple philosophical theory in the traditional sense, but a research method used by some humanities and social scientists in their respective professional fields. Its purpose is to try to make humanities and social sciences reach the same accurate and scientific level as natural sciences.