Agenda

• To track, via Saussure’s theory, the modernization of language study so as to appreciate the Linguistic Turn and its many epistemological consequences for the human sciences and for communication studies

• To introduce and examine the specific terminology, methods, and axioms of Saussurean structuralism esp. in terms of their production of radical concepts of human subjectivity, communication & community, media, thought, and language

Source Text

Ferdinand de SaussureSwiss linguist, University of Geneva

Course in General Linguistics (1916)

Saussure: A Man of Science

• Found many problems with the older and previous forms of language study and sought to make an exact (or at least, precise) science of “linguistics.”

• Later: He himself became a Sign for the very theory that both professionalized linguistics & became the basis for semiotics/semiology [Structuralism]

As a Man of Science

• Sought to supersede and systematize, refine the study of lingusitic phenomena by staging a critique of previous forms of language study

• On the basis of this critique, broached the radical, fundamental Q: What is the “true & unique object” [p. 1] of a modern linguistics that could be envisioned?

As a Man of Science

• Believed that the founding objective of the new science should be “to seek out the nature of its object of study, [as] obviously, without this elementary step, no science can develop a method.” [p. 3]

• “What is both the integral and concrete object of linguistics?” [p. 7]

As a Man of Science

• Of the three objectives that should constitute the “subject matter & scope of linguistics” [see p. 6], b) & c) are the most telling in this regard

• Like colleagues in the natural and physical sciences, Saussure sought to isolate and study the structure, the constitutive/constituent units of his object of study [“linguistic phenomenon” –p. 4]

Structural or “nuclear” unit of the Object

• Cell: Cellular Biology

• Molecule: Molecular Chemistry

• Atom: Particle or Atomic Physics

• *the idea is isolate this basic structure & unit of the “linguistic phenomenon” so as to be able to explain its self-reproductive power, its elevation to a principle or law governing its reality [see b)]

Problems with Previous Schools of Language Study

1. Grammarians [Ancient Greeks to the Modern French]: normative approach to Language2. Classical Philologists: slavish attention to written texts, “to the neglect of the living language”3. Comparative Philologists: naturalist approach to Language; method exclusively comparative, not historical [Whitney & Bopp however introduce the necessity to historicize language development]

*all are unable to train their focus on the real object of study

Basic Difficulties of Language Study*range of linguistic phenomena is enormous

**object of Language Study is not given in advance***”linguistic phenomenon always has two related

sides:” [p. 8]1. acoustic—vocal

2. acoustic-vocal unit + idea [‘complex physiological-psychological unit’]

3. individual & social side of speech4. implies an ‘established system’ & an ‘evolution’

[Kristeva: synchrony/diachrony]

Langue/LangageLanguage “not to be confused with human speech, of

which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one”

*both “a product of the faculty of speech” & “a collection of necessary conventions….adopted by a social body to

permit individuals to exercise that faculty.”Speech [by contrast] is “many-sided, and

heterogeneous….we cannot discover its unity.” [p. 9]

Langue/LANGUAGE• ‘A self-contained whole’ [its structure can be

isolated and self-sonservative, systematic in nature]

• ‘A principle of classification’ [given ‘first place among the facts of speech,’ it can ‘introduce a natural order into a mass that lends itself to no other classificaion’]

• But if ‘speech is based on a natural faculty & language something acquired or conventional,’ shouldn’t speech take precedence? [pp. 9-10]

• This objection “is easily refuted”

Is Langue/Language Natural, Organismic?

• Cites the American linguist Whitney on the natural, organismic basis for Language (has implications for human signification: there can be other means)

• “language is a convention and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter” [p. 10]

• “WHAT IS NATURAL TO MANKIND IS NOT ORAL SPEECH BUT THE FACULTY OF CONSTRUCTING A LANGUAGE, ie, a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.” [p. 11: linguistic faculty proper]

Language in Speech

Further Divisions of the Circuit*outer-inner

*psychological & non-psychological*active-receptive

Associative & Coordinating Faculty*”this faculty plays the dominant role in the organization of language as a

system” [p. 12]*”to understand this….leave the

individual act….approach the social fact”

AVERAGE: COMMON BOND

The Social Crystallization of Language

*nonpsychological part OUTpyschological part OUT:

execution is individual (executive side to be called speaking [parole])

SO:toward “the social bond that constitutes

language”

“Language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only

within a collectivity.”[p. 14]

*to separate language FROM speaking: social from individual;

essential from what is accessory or accidental!

‘Language is not a function of the speaker.’ [On the contrary, the

speaker is a function in/of Language’] p. 14

*implications or consequences of an axiom like this?

SUMMARY• L a well-defined object within heterogeneous

mass of speech facts [can be ‘localized’—p. 14]• L, unlike speaking, can be studied separately• L 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” [p. 15]

• Language is CONCRETE, representable in graphic form whereas actes de parole [individual speech acts] cannot be ‘photographed’ or similarly imaged.

‘SEMIOLOGY’“We must call a new type of facts in order to

illuminate the special nature [and structure] of L”*’L is a system of signs that express ideas, and is THEREFORE COMPARABLE TO A SYSTEM OF WRITING, THE ALPHABET OF DEAF-MUTES,

SYMBOLIC RITES, POLITE FORMULAS, MILITARY SIGNALS, etc. But it is the most

important of all these systems. [LT;L Analogy; Linguistic Model] p. 16

FORESEEING SEMIOLOGY“A science that studies the life of

signs within society is conceivable….I shall call it semiology (from the Greek

s*em*ion ‘sign’). Semiology would show what would constitute signs [no longer exclusively ‘linguistic’], what laws govern them….” p. 16;

also pp. 16-17 remarks

Nature of the Linguistic Sign

Language not a naming process or system

“The linguistic unit is a double entity: one formed by the

associating of two terms” [pp. 65-66]

TERMINOLOGY (p. 67)

• ‘Our definition of the linguistic sign poses an important question of terminology’ [problem of ambiguity; demand for precision’

• “The thing that constitutes language….is unrelated to the phonic character of the linguistic sign.”

Sign [signe]=Signified [Signifie] + Signifier [Signifiant]

• Sd to replace concept; Sfr to replace sound-image