(mass)think!

[A reconstruction of Saussure's schema of the sign by Wendell Piez]

In contrast to linguistics up to his time (which relegated language as secondary to (i.e. as merely a medium of or a tool for, or, in Saussure’s own words, “a function of [. . .], from other points of view”) some more important object of inquiry), Ferdinand de Saussure, in the Course in General Linguistics, “take[s] the study of linguistic structure as his primary concern,” i.e. takes language itself as the object of linguistic study (16, 9). Linguistic structure, “only one part of language,” albeit essential, is both “a social product of our language faculty” and “a body of necessary conventions adopted by society to enable [its] members [. . .] to use their language faculty” (9-10). It is “language minus speech, [. . .] the whole set of linguistic habits which enables the speaker to understand and to make himself understood” (77). Linguistic structure, in other words, refer to the rules of (a) language.

A language is a “well-defined entity [. . .] locali[zable i.e. “ha[ving] a particular place in the realm of human affairs”] in that particular section of the speech circuit where sound patterns are associated with concepts,” i.e. a particular way of associating signifiers and signified (14, 15). Language, in other words, comprises the whole system of signifiers and signifieds and the rules of their association. It is “the social part of language, external to the individual [. . .] exist[ing] in virtue of a kind of contract agreed between the members of a community” in which the individual needs apprenticeship (if he wants to be able to use it) (14, 15). It is a specific (thus homogeneous) compartment/region of language in general (or “the totality of facts of language”), which is heterogeneous (14). Linguistic signs are therefore “not abstractions. The associations, ratified by collective agreement, which go to make up the language are realities localized in the brain” (15). Moreover, they are “tangible,” fixable by writing in “conventional images” since “there is only the sound pattern, and this can be represented by one constant visual image” (15). A language, while not language in general, is also not simply speech, which “is an individual act of the will and the intelligence,” i.e. the particular application of an individual’s apprenticeship, i.e. a particular speech act (14). A language, in other words, is a social institution.

Rather than a nomenclature (i.e. language as the naming of things/ideas), for Saussure, language is a sign system. Linguistics (Saussurian linguistics = semiotics) is thus but a part of the study of signs (their nature, the laws governing them) in general, semiology (or, inversely, semiology is the application of the techniques of semiotics to other cultural domains, treating them as a system of signs) (15). A linguistic sign, Saussure claims, is a link between the signifier and the signified. The signifier refers to the sound pattern, “not actually a sound [. . . but] the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses” (66). It is the word itself, or, more precisely, the sound one hears, or the sound image that registers in one’s brain, when a word (such as tree) is uttered. The signified, on the other hand, refers to the concept or the idea linked to (not just conveyed by and not that which causes) the sound pattern, i.e. the idea of the tree one forms in his/her head. (These two are different from the referent, i.e. the actual thing linked to the signifier and/or the signified, e.g. the actual tree we can see, touch . . .) The signifier and the signified together make up the sign.

Another groundbreaking assertion that Saussure makes is the arbitrariness of the sign. Saussure claims means that “the link between [signifier] and [signified] is arbitrary,” i.e. there is no internal connection between the two (67). This means, first, that there is no (natural) reason why a particular signifier is related to a particular signified. The signifier, in other words, is unmotivated (69). There is no reason, for example, why we call a tree (or, more precisely: why we refer to the idea of a tree) tree. “This is demonstrated by differences between languages, and even by the existence of different languages” (68). Secondly, this means that signifieds themselves are arbitrary. Certain things, or, more accurately, certain signifieds (colors, e.g., or the signifieds of fleuve/rivière in French, two different things, depending on the direction of the flow) exist in some languages, but not in others (in English, there is only the signified for river). In other words, there is no given universal set of ideas. The linguistic system itself creates the “meaning.”

The only rationale behind a particular language, the only rationale underlying a particular configuration that links particular signifiers to particular signifieds, is social convention. Thus, while “the [signifier], in relation to the idea it [is linked to], may seem to be freely chosen, [. . .] once the language has selected a [signifier to link to a signified], it cannot be freely replaced by any other” (71). “The community, as much as the individual, is bound to its language,” which cannot even be proven as something it has selected at some originary moment (71, 72). In this sense, “language is always an inheritance from the past” (71). At the same time, “the social forces [. . . that make a language the system that it is] act over a period of time” (74). Thus, a language has to be contextualized in a particular linguistic community and as existing (both inherited and changed) through time (77-8).

As with any social institution, a society, when it comes to undergoing changes in a language, “achieves a [. . .] balance between the tradition handed down and society’s freedom of action” (72). Herein lies a third meaning of the arbitrariness of the sign: the particular balance (between tradition and change) struck by a particular society is arbitrary. Moreover, change (which in language pertains to “a shift in the relationship between [signifier] and [signified]”) is harder to come by in language than in other social institutions, since the linguistic sign is arbitrary (in the first and second senses) (75). Thus it is hard to discuss on what basis to change language, i.e. “there is no firm ground for discussion” and the system’s rationality consists precisely on social conventions, which is what is targeted to be changed (Thus while a language is arbitrary, it is rational) (73). Moreover, “a language [. . .] is something in which everyone participates all the time,” thus it is open to the influence of all and changes are hard to impose (on everyone) (74). In other words, a language “is part and parcel of the life of the whole community, and the community’s natural inertia exercises a conservative influence upon it” (74). There is thus a connection between “the arbitrary convention which allows free choice and the passage of time which fixes that choice. It is because the linguistic sign is arbitrary that it knows no other law than that of tradition, and because it is founded upon tradition that it can be arbitrary” (74).

Saussure makes it a point to emphasize that the linguistic object is the sign, i.e. not merely the signifier or the signified, but the signifier and the signified linked together. He warns that “there is a constant risk of taking one part or other of the entity and believing that we are dealing with the totality” (101). If we were to do that, the linguistic object is reduced to either merely a physiological or psychological object (101). Moreover, “a linguistic entity is not ultimately defined until it is delimited,” which is done by linking a particular signifier to a signified (hence, again, we cannot isolate one without the other) (102). A language is in fact, according to Saussure, “an indistinct mass, in which attention and habit alone enable us to distinguish particular elements” (102).

“Thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass [. . .] that, were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way” (110). “No ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure” (110). The same is true for the signifier. “The substance of sound is no more fixed or rigid than that of thought. [. . .] It is a malleable material which can be fashioned into separate parts in order to supply the [signifiers] which thought has need of” (110). In this way, Saussure articulates a differential theory of language in which units in themselves do not have (distinct) meanings. They acquire meaning only in comparison—i.e. in their difference—from other units. Saussure goes further than this, however, in asserting that meaning (technically signification in contrast to value) is only formed when the two indistinct masses of the signifiers and the signifieds are linked to each other, i.e. at the level of the sign. It is only then that the inquiry becomes delimited and concrete.

Language is thus “a series of adjoining subdivisions simultaneously imprinted both on the plane of vague amorphous thought and on the equally featureless plane of sound” (110). “Just as it is impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of paper without at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound” (111). “The process which selects one particular sound-sequence to correspond to one particular idea [clarifies the arbitrariness of the sign since it] is entirely arbitrary” (111). In this way, there is nothing from above imposing linguistic value. “Values remain entirely a matter of internal relations” (111). However, this is still not that concrete since “the contact between [the signifier and the signified] gives rise to a form, not a substance” (111).

Saussure contrasts signification or meaning to value. Signification pertains simply to the correspondence between the signifier and the signified. In this way, signification can be considered synonymous to the particular signified conveyed by a particular signifier (this borders on nomenclature, or in prioritizing the signifier). Value has something to do with the relationship of a sign (i.e. the word, with both the sound image and what it means, the concept linked to it) to other signs in a language. Value has two features: “something dissimilar which can be exchanged for the item whose value is under consideration [and] similar things which can be compared with the item whose value is under consideration” (113).

Saussure asserts that a sign has value (analogous to the indistinct masses of signifiers and signifieds, in which the specific units have meaning only in so far are they are not other units) only by virtue of its difference from other units (comparable to it). In other words, “the content of a word is determined in the final analysis not by what it contains but by what exists outside it” (thus “the word has not only a meaning but also—above all—a value”) (114). Thus, “what we find, instead of ideas given in advance, are values emanating from a linguistic system” (115). “If we say that these values correspond to certain concepts, it must be understood that the concepts in question are purely differential. That is to say they are concepts defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively, by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not” (115). Similarly, “the sound of a word is not in itself important, but the phonetic contrasts which allow us to distinguish that word from any other” (116). The same applies to writing (117).

It thus seems that “in a language there are only differences and no positive terms. [. . .] The language includes neither ideas nor sounds existing prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences arising out of that system” (118). Saussure claims, however (and I do not follow him here), that at the level of the sign, there is “something positive in its own domain” (118). The “matching of a certain number of auditory signals and a similar number of items carved out from the mass of thought gives rise to a system of values,” which (i.e. the combination) is positive (118). Thus, “two signs [. . .] are not different from each other, but only distinct. They are simply in opposition to each other” (119). However, language remains (because it is what it inherently is) “a form, not a substance” (120).