Summary of Saussure’s Concept of Language.
1. The Sign
A sign is something that can
be interpreted as having a meaning,
which is something other than itself, and which is therefore able to
communicate information to the one interpreting or decoding the sign. Signs can
work through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory or taste,
and their meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific
meaning, or unintentional such as a symptom
being a sign of a particular medical condition.
Signifier and Signified
"Signifier" and
"signified" are terms used in one branch of linguistics
and literary criticism to describe the components of a sign: the
signifier, to put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or
idea it represents. Signifiers needn't be confined to words; they can include
any system of representation, including drawings, traffic lights, body
language, and so on.
2. Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic relations
Syntagmatic (concerning positioning) relations
are relations on an horizontal axis between elements, in a sentence for
instance. You then look at the possibilities of combination between the
elements. For instance: "John loves Mary" => John+loves+Mary.
Paradigmatic (concerning substitution) relations are
relations on an vertical level and look at all the possible elements that could
come at the place of a certain element. In my example, "John" could
be replaced by an endless set of possibilities, for instance "Edward/my
brother/He/..", "loves" could be replaced by
"bites/hates/...". What matters is that the sentence should still
make sense with the possibilities.
3. Diachronic and
Synchronic
A diachronic approach is one
that analyzes the evolution of something over time, allowing one to assess how
that something changes throughout history. You would use this approach to
analyze the effects of variable change on something, thus allowing you to
postulate WHY a certain state was borne of a prior state or WHY a certain state
progressed to some future state. An example: you could use a diachronic
approach to determine why the USA government has come to develop a system of
political parties despite the fact that the founders mistrusted political
parties and did not create them.
A synchronic approach analyzes a
particular something at a given, fixed point in time. It does not attempt to
make deductions about the progression of events that contributed to the current
state, but only analyzes the structure of that state, as it is. Example: one
might use a synchronic approach to describe the state of political parties in
the USA at some specific time, analyzing their structure and functions only as
they relate to the specific state that they were in at that time.
4. Langue and Parole
Langue and parole are more than just 'language and speech' (although this is
a useful quick way of remembering them).
La
langue is the whole system of language that precedes and
makes speech possible. A sign is a basic unit of langue. Learning a language,
we master the system of grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation. These are
all elements of langue. Langue is a system in that it has a large number of
elements whereby meaning is created in the arrangements of its elements and the
consequent relationships between these arranged elements.
Parole is the
concrete use of the language, the actual utterances. It is an external
manifestation of langue. It is the usage of the system, but not the system.
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