Ferdinand de Saussure

Died
 Relevant Work
(NATC, 3rd ed.)

 Biography

Saussure, known as the "father of modern linguistics", was born into an intellectual Swiss family in 1857.

He showed signs of considerable intellectual talent and ability early in life. At the age of thirteen, he entered the Institution Martine in Geneva. After graduating at the top of his class at the age of fourteen and a half, Saussure wanted to continue on to study at the Gymnase de Genève. His father, however, felt he was not mature enough and sent him to the Collège de Genève instead. Saussure complained this was a "waste" of a year.

In 1876, aged nineteen, he began graduate work at University of Leipsig. While attending the school, he published his first and only book, *Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages.* He also studied for a year at the University of Berlin. He returned to Leipsig to defend his dissertation, *The Use of the Absolute Genitive in Sanskrit,* and was awarded his doctorate in February 1880.

He taught historical and comparative linguistics in Paris until his return to Geneva in 1892 when he was offered a professorship. He lectured in Sanskrit and Indo-European at the University of Geneva for the remainder of his life.

He died in 1913 in Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland.

Unbeknowst to Saussure, he effectuated the theoretical framework of structuralism through the posthumous publication of a book filled with his students' notes from his course on General Linguistics.

## *Course in General Linguistics*

### **Background and Historical Context**

Working in the wake of the Western discovery of Sanskrit through the British colonization of India, the generation of linguists before Saussure, the Neogrammarians, explored the rules of affinity and transformation of language through a historical lens. Saussure studied historical linguistics with this generation, which greatly influenced his later work.

The *Course in General Linguistics* is not written directly by Ferdinand de Saussure himself but was based on his students notes and then compiled into a book by his colleagues in 1916 (NATC 3rd ed., 820). In this book, that essentially brought forth the field of structural linguistics, de Saussure aims to redefine language as a system of signs.

### **Key Words and Terms**

**Language -** the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way

**Phonemes** *-* The smallest distinctive unit of sound in a spoken language.

**Semiology** - The science that studies the life of signs and the laws that govern them within society.

**Sign** -The "whole" (the two elements [concept and sound-image] are intimately united, and each recalls the other" (853).

**Signified** *- C*oncept, the "psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses" (853).

**Signifier** *- S*ound-image or "word" (853), "the natural representation of the word as a fact of potential language, outside any actual use of it in speaking" (852, footnote 4).

**Structuralism -** a method of interpretation and analysis of aspects of human cognition, behavior, culture, and experience that focuses on relationships of contrast between elements in a conceptual system that reflect patterns underlying a superficial diversity

**Syntagms** - Linguistic unit consisting of a set of forms (phonemes, words, or phrases) that are in a sequential relationship to one another.

### **Key Quotations**

"Language is a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts. It can be localized in the limited segment of the speaking-circuit where an auditory image becomes associated with a concept" (*NATC* 850).

"Language, unlike speaking, is something that we can study separately. Although dead languages are no longer spoken, we can easily assimilate their linguistic organisms" (850).

”Whereas speech is heterogeneous, language, as defined, is homogeneous. It is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images, and in which both parts of the sign are psychological“ (824).

"The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image" (852).

“Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others” (832).

“A word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word” (832).

“Instead of pre-existing ideas then, we find in all the foregoing examples values emanating from the system. When they are said to correspond to concepts, it is understood that the concepts are purely differential and defined not by the positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not” (833-4)

“It is impossible for sound alone, a material element, to belong to language. It is only a secondary thing, substance to be put to use“ (835).

“(1) The signs used in writing are arbitrary: there is no connection, for example, between the letter *t* and the sound that it designates. (2) The value of letters is purely negative and differential. The same person can write *t,* for instance, in different ways. The only requirement is that the sign for *t* not be confused in his script with the signs used for *l, d*, etc. (3) Values in writing function only through reciprocal opposition within a fixed system that consists of a set number of letters. [. . .] Since the graphic sign is arbitrary, its form matters little or rather matters only within the limitations imposed by the system. (4) The means by which the sign is produced is completely unimportant, for it does not affect the system (this also follows from characteristic I). Whether I make the letters in white or black, raised or engraved, with pen or chisel—all this is of no importance with respect to their signification” (835-6).

"For the distinguishing characteristic of the sign...is that in some way it always eludes the individual or social will" (851).

"Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up;,but in language ,there are only differences *without positive terms"* (862).

“Although both the signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact; it is even the sole type of facts that language has, for maintaining the parallelism between the two classes of differences is the distinctive function of the linguistic institution” (836).

### **Discussion**

Because the relationship between the signified and the signifier changes with time, the sign becomes arbitrary in nature, or rather, based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system. Saussure claims that “language is radically powerless to defend itself” against this shift. This shift, however, can only happen through relationships. These relationships are only confirmed through members of a community, or society. To add to that, it is not simply just society, but time as well. Saussure claims that language evolution is a product of “both the social force and time”. The creation of language loses its permanence the moment that it is released into society. As society begins to implement meaning and signs, it shifts and changes. This relates back to the idea of signs being arbitrary. The moment social pressures take hold, it becomes something else, or as Saussure mentions, “Its social nature is one of its inner characteristics”. There is no meaning, no language, without the social agreement upon the signs. Saussure explains that another aspect of the shifting nature of language is the relation with time. Previous generations of language will not be the same as the current, as a meaning often and will change as new generations pick it up and add new meaning. To understand the implications of this theory, Saussure has us consider the language used by an isolated individual. Language will not morph, evolve, or change because there is no social context in which enables it to change. The moment this individual would be introduced back to society, they would be forced to adopt the language of the larger society as that already has been agreed upon by the larger social sphere.

## Related Works

* *Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness* by Jonathan Culler
* *The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism* by Fredric Jameson

## References

de Saussure, Ferdinand. "*From* Course in General Linguistics." *The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism*, edited by Vincent B. Leitch,2nd ed., Norton, 2010, pp. 850-66.

Leitch, Vincent B. "Ferdinand de Saussure." *The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism*. 2nd ed., Norton, 2010, pp. 845-9.