English 393, Teaching Notes
Professor Hughes
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and Structural Linguistics
Saussure is generally regarded as the founder of modern linguistics.
As a study of signs, semiotics refers to an analysis of cultural and social referents or culturally inscribed codes of human interaction. Saussure’s theory of signs recognizes the systemic codes and socialized conventions that characterize languages and the manner in which they are internalized by members of a given culture. Understanding that signs both implicitly and explicitly convey information between members of that culture. Thus, he identifies human discourse communities and the social dynamics of language.
The uniqueness of all aspects of language emerges via the differences inherent in that language’s network of linguistic relationships, rather than the through a languages objective features.
For Saussure, the sign consists of two inseparable aspects, the signifier and the signified.
Saussure’s conceptualization of language recognizes the arbitrariness of speech acts and their invariable historical and cultural contingency. That is, Saussure says in our text: “language is a form and not a substance” (849).
According to Jonathan Culler, Saussure’s postulation of the “phoneme” provides us with a means for comprehending the social significance of objects and actions and for registering the judgments and perceptions that a given speaker evinces, often unconsciously, when using a given language in a given historical instance (1981, 81).
Synchronic and diachronic structure—relationships that exist in language—prompts literary studies to anticipate a number of theoretical advances in literary criticism, particularly in terms of the advent of new historicism.
Voluntarism—one of the central terms in linguistic thought, which involves the voluntary reduction of language to a kind of social institution that depends, in Saussure’s words, more or less on our own will. In short, we use language as a transparent and often non-semiotic naming mechanism that affords us the means for reflecting the extra linguistic realities in which we live. The concept of voluntarism underscores the ways in which we both consciously and unconsciously exploit language as a system for constructing our own social realities.
Culler, J. The Pursuit of Signs, Ithaca, NY, 1981.
Womack, Kenneth. “Ferdinand de Saussure” in The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory, Ed. Julian Wolfreys. New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2002. 70-73.
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20: And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. . . (Genesis, 2, 19-20).
1. Read Saussure’s opening paragraph in Nature of Linguistic Sign in our text. “Some people regard . . . “ (842). According to Saussure’s meta-theory of language, why would the Old Testament story of Adam and this conception of language be open to criticism? Ask yourself why Saussure is unwilling to accept this common sense ( and Genesis) view of language. Figure out how he demonstrates the misconceptions we may share about langauge. What alternative does he suggest?
What is meant by Saussure's claim of the "arbitrary nature of the sign"? What biblical view of language might be more consistent with Saussure's thinking?
What is meant by the notion that the signifier is linear?
Differentiation is necessary: a complex equilibrium of terms that mutually condition each other, emanating from a system, i.e. discourse communities.
Saussure also identifies what he calls “associative relations” (Voluntarism), which are in the brain and not of discourse.
A word can evoke everything that can be associated with it in one way or another” (851). Two ideas that are no longer distinct in the mind tend to merge into the same signifier.
The Paradox of language
Saussure uses this “associative relations” to identify a problem or to explain co-ordinations formed outside discourse (850). How do we verify meaning when “language is a form and not a substance” (849)?
2. Can you think of a word that exemplifies “our incorrect ways of naming things that pertain to language”? (849). In other words, in a small group, identify a word that depends on “associate relations” or derives significance from “indeterminable proportions” (851). What might we have to do in order to differentiate?
3. Do Saussure's ideas have application to the study of literature? Which schools of criticism might have found his ideas especially intriguing?
4. What might Saussure say about Sir Philip Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry”?
that of all writers under the Sunne, the Poet is the least lyer: and though he wold, as a Poet can scarecely be a lyer. The Astronomer with his cousin the Geometrician, can hardly escape, when they take upon them to measure the height of the starres. How often thinke you do the Phisitians lie, when they averre things good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of soules drowned in a potion, before they come to his Ferrie? And no lesse of the rest, which take upon them to affirme. Now for the Poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth: for as I take it, to lie, is to affirme that to bee true, which is false. So as the other Artistes, and especially the Historian, affirming manie things, can in the clowdie knowledge of mankinde, hardly escape from manie lies. (The Critical Tradition, translation differs, 150)