This chapter highlights the contributions of formalism and structuralism research that brought about the Greimassian binary model―a structuralist model deployed for the new model to achieve analysis of academic writing structures without crystallising discourse. This chapter explicates the differences between formalism and structuralism, which tend to be used interchangeably in today's academic discourse research. It is pointed out that one of the main reasons why academic writing research traditions have remained formalistic and prescriptive relates to the confusion between formalism and structuralism. The chapter also points out that the major generic structure analytical traditions in academic discourse studies consist of formalism, not structuralism. The chapter introduces Lévi-Strauss's structuralist analysis in anthropology, in which non-European, peripheral elements are not considered a sign of inferiority.