Duality of structure is one of

Anthony Giddens Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is ...

' coined phrases and main propositions in his explanation of

structuration theory The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that is based on the analysis of both ''Social structure, structure'' and ''Agency (sociology), agents'' (see structure and agency), without giving p ...

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The basis of the duality lies in the relationship the

agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that s ...

has with the

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

. In the duality, the agency has much more influence on its lived environment than past structuralist theory had granted. The key to Giddens' explanation is his focus on the knowledgeability of the agent and the fact that the agency cannot exist or be analysed separately from its structure. They can only exist as a duality. The structural properties which he calls modalities help illustrate the dimensions of the duality. "By the duality of structure I mean that the structural properties of social systems are both the medium and the outcome of the practices that constitute those systems." The structure has both

rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pertaining to the structure or behavior internal to a business * School rule, a rule tha ...

and resources or constraints and enabling qualities. Language is often used to exemplify these modalities. The

system of interaction A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

includes in itself "rules" of the language such as syntax but also leaves room for interpretations or the creation of completely new words. The system of interaction is responsible for maintaining a certain standard of consistency in order for the language to make sense to both the speaker and the interpreter. At the same time, the completeness of the language can always be manipulated and changed through interaction by the agent. The phrase is used in

Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

by John Lyons to illustrate the differences between human and animal communication. It is described there as "two levels of grammatical structure." The first being

syntactic In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...

and the second being

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

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