Page 36 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes Saussure’s Theory of Linguistic Sign
Saussure mentions, “Some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-
process only—a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names”. This conception
assumes that “ready-made ideas exist before words..., it does not tell us whether a name is vocal
or psychological in nature..., finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a
very simple operation—an assumption that is anything but true.” It is this assumption that makes
him regard language as “a system of sign in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings
and sound images and in which both parts of the sign are psychological”.
Saussure’s sign is a two-sided psychological entity whose components are concept and sound
image. In other words a ‘sign’ is a union of signified (concept) and signifier (sound-image). To
speak more neatly, a sign is a wedding union of content and expression. The linguistic sign to
Saussure is the basic unit of communication; a unit within the langue of the community. Being a
relationship, and part of langue, it is thus a mental construct, a ‘concrete entity’. Concepts, according
to him, could not exist prior to words.
The linguistic sign has two primordial characteristics—arbitrariness and immunity. For example,
the signified (the concept of a dog) has different signifiers (sound-images) in different languages—
’dog’ in English, ‘kutta’ in Hindi, ‘swan’ in Sanskrit ‘nai’ in Kannada, ‘kukka’ in Telugu, ‘kukkar’
in Bengali, etc.
This signifier is handed over to us by convention or custom. Hence it is unchangeable or immutable.
The signs are multiple in numbers; their system is quite complex and can be grasped only through
reflection.
It is on the basis of the linguistic sign that Saussure recalls the study of language ‘semiology’ (from
Greek Semeion ‘sign’). He says, “A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable;
it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology...Linguistics is
only a part of the general science of seminology...”
Though the signs are the concrete entities of linguistics, yet they exist “only through the associating
of the signifier with the signified...considered independently. Concepts like “house”, “white”,
“see”, etc. belong to psychology. They became linguistic entities only when associated with sound
images; in language, a concept is a quality of its phonic substance just as a particular slice of sound
is a quality of the concept’. Linguistics then works in the borderline where the elements of sound
and thought combine; their combination produces a form, not a substance.
Saussure’s Theory of Associative Value

Saussure attributed to each linguistic sign a ‘value’ which is determined by its relationship within
the total vocabulary in a language. For example, in French only one word mouton signifies two
concepts—one that of the four legged animal sheep and the other that of the cooked meat. But
English has two different signs for these two: sheep and mutton. Hence the French word, mouton,
though having the same signification as English sheep, has a different value. It can signify two
concepts, whereas the English word signifies only one concept.
The value of each word, according to Saussure, is determined by its opposition to other words.
Values in writing function only through reciprocal opposition within a fixed system which consists
of a set number of letters. It is this interdependence among the values of words which transform
them all into a uniform language system, and that which pertains to the content of words, pertains
to their form as well. “It is not sound in themselves which give words their meaning, but phonetic
differences enabling us to distinguish a given word from all others—for it is with these phonetic
differences that meaning is connected.”
Saussure applied his principle of values not only to the conceptual but also the material aspects of
language. Just as the conceptual value of the sign is determined by its relation to all the other signs
in the language, that is, by its environment, so are the sounds characterized, not, as one might
think, by their own positive quality but simply by the fact that they are distinct. Language, according
to Saussure, is simply the functioning of linguistic oppositions; these oppositions yield a pattern
of relationships the study of which constitutes linguistics.

30 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY