Structuralist Database for The West Wing (1999–2006): Scene-Level Mytheme Tagging for Lévi-Straussian Structural Analysis

The following dataset has been transferred and transcribed from a spreadsheet into document form. 

This dataset consists of 354 scene-level units (here termed “mythemes”) from selected episodes of The West Wing. Each unit includes a short summary and a set of interpretive tags.

The interpretive data was collected by a single researcher between October 2025 and February 2026, in partial fulfilment of a final-year dissertation.

Tags are descriptive associations rather than mutually exclusive variables. Multiple tags may apply to a single scene, and similar or overlapping terms are retained deliberately, as they contribute to later thematic bundling.

Scene boundaries are defined pragmatically based on shifts in location, narrative focus, or interaction.

Binary oppositions (e.g. Individuality/Collective, Order/Chaos) are not treated as rigid classifications, but as analytical groupings that emerge from the tagging process.

The dataset is intended as an interpretive research tool rather than an objective or exhaustive coding schema.

This database is evidentiary and archival, providing the raw interpretive substrate from which accompanying analytical diagrams and thematic groupings were developed, according to the methodology outlined in Chapter 1.

Two separate documents detail: the bundles of mythemes constructed (under the themes Certainty, Uncertainty, Individuality, Collective) and an iteration of the greedy algorithm used to construct the bundles.

The full dissertation on which this dataset is based is not currently publicly available. For further information, please contact the author.