A structuralist study of [All My Children] might begin by trying to reconstruct and describe one feature or phase of the relationship between the writer and the audience. Such a relationship we can call a model or paradigm. The analysis can then go on to describe various transformations of this model into other aspects of the writer's relationship to the reader. For example, let us say that the "principal" relationship obtaining between writer and audience is an exchange whereby the writer preserves his identity and/or his job by manipulating the viewer's sense of time. A transformation of this might be the familiar technique of granting the character total and exact recall of a scene that may have occurred days or months before.

The example I have used may suggest that there is a mechanical or cause and effect connection existing between the model and its various transformations...