De Saussure The Nature of the Linguistic Sign summary

When discussing the nature of the linguist sign de Saussure criticizes the notion that things precede
words. When relating to the lingual sign what de Saussure essentially does is to replace actual
referential reality with the signified. What the signifier points to is not something which exists outside of
language, but rather to a meaning which is contained within human consciousness. The division
between signifier and signified, which together compose Saussure's lingual sign, is the basis for his
subsequent proposition that everything gains it meaning out of being in structural oppositional relations
with other components.
When discussing the nature of the linguist sign de Saussure makes his famous statement about to lingual
sign being arbitrary. The arbitrariness of the lingual sing is easily demonstrated by pointing to the fact
that different languages have different signs for the same denotations. But this points to another
matter. Were words representations of preexisting concepts all languages will have parallel words. But
we do know that different languages cover the world of meaning with differently divided semantic
networks. This means that language does not simply describe reality, but is in fact something separate
and autonomous from it. When de Saussure says that the lingual sign is arbitrary he means it not it the
sense that anyone can make up words, quite the opposite, signs according to Saussure are all
conventions that are socially constructed. The linguistic sign, in other words, is arbitrary but is not open
for free choice; its meaning is imposed on us by our linguistic surrounding.
De Saussure's ideas regarding the nature of the linguistic signs were of huge influence in the 20th
century and were the corner stone of both structuralism and semiotics. Saussure's revolution is in
making language relational into itself, it is not fixed nor predetermined, and it was now up to
philosophy, sociology, linguistics and other adjacent fields to examine the manner in which a signifier is
tied to a signified.
Due to his theories on the structure of language, the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
is often known as the founder of modern linguistics.
In order to understand Saussures linguistic theories, you have to be able to grasp the basics of his
psycho-linguistic terminology and his explanation of the nature of language units.
Understanding the basic concepts of his linguistic theory is not only essential for linguistic students, but
for anyone studying semiotics, or the use of various types of signs to communicate. Semiotics is also a
basic element in film theory studies.
In Saussures Course in General Linguistics, a book summarising his lectures at the University of Geneva
from 1906 to 1911, he explained the relationship between speech and the evolution of language,
investigating language as a structured system of signs.
It is important to note that Saussure perceived a linguistic unit to be a double entity, meaning that it is
composed of two parts. He viewed the linguistic unit as a combination of:
1. a concept or meaning
2. a sound-image
Linguistic Units and Sound Images are Mental Impressions

The first point to understand is when Saussure mentioned linguistic units, sound-images and
concepts, he was referring to the mental processes that create these entities. He was not referring to
spoken or written words, but to the mental impressions made on our senses by a certain thing. It is
our perception, or how we view this thing, together with the sound system of our language that
creates the two-part mental linguistic unit he referred to as a sign.
Lets take for example the fairly new concept of Google. The sound image, or impression in our minds
is of the logo representing Google, and through our language system we know how that image sounds
mentally. We know the concept or meaning associated with this sound impression that Google is a
large search engine on the Internet. The connections between the two elements are made mentally
without uttering or writing the word Google, and the two parts formed are joined and become united
as a mental linguistic unit. Saussure calls this two-part linguistic unit a sign.
Understanding the Terms Sign, Signified and Signifier
The part of the sign Saussure calls the concept or meaning (mental impression/association of the
thing) he named, signified. The idea of what Google is, for example, is signified. The part he calls the
sound-image (the mental linguistic sign given to the thing) he named the signifier this is the sound
Googles logo creates in our minds.
As Saussure explains, the connection between all signifiers which are sound images or linguistic signs
and what they are signifying their signified object or concept is arbitrary. In other words, there is not
necessarily any logical connection between the two. Again, the word Google exemplifies this well.
There is nothing in the word Google that would suggest that it is a digital means of searching for
information on the Internet. It is a random invented word. With the arrival of the Internet, in the waning
years of Yahoo! a name, or sound image/linguistic sign had to be created to describe a new search
engine. However, now, when you see the linguistic unit Google (the sign), you automatically connect
it to its sound image, the signifier Google a linguistic sign which signifies a large search engine on
the internet.
Saussure on Linguistic Signs and Structures
The Big Move: a linguistic "sign" is composed of the "signified" and the "signifier" (67): "I propose to
retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole [conception of a linguist sign] and to replace concept
and sound-image respectively by signified [signifre] and signifier [signifant]; the last two terms have the
advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of
which they are parts" (67).
Arbitrariness and Universality: The science of "semiology" will concern itself with "the whole group of
systems grounded on the arbitrariness of the sign. In fact, every means of expression used in society is
based, in principle, on collective behavior or--what amounts to the same thing--on convention. Polite
formulas . . . are none the less fixed by rule; it is this rule and not the intrinsic value of the gestures that
obliges one to use them. Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better than others the ideal of the
semiological process; that is why language, the most complex and universal of all systems of expression,
is also the most characteristic; in this sense linguistics can become the master-pattern for all branches of
semiology although language is only one particular semiological system" (68).

Linearity: "The signifier, being auditory, is unfolded solely in time . . . it represents a span, and . . . the
span is measurable in a single dimension; it is a line. [ . . . ] [The elements of auditory signifiers] are
presented in succession; they form a chain" (70).
Immutability: "The signifier, though to all appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it
represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it. The masses have no
voice in the matter, and the signifier chosen by the language could be replaced by no other. [ . . . ] No
society, in fact, knows or has ever known language other than as a product inherited from preceding
generations, and one to be accepted as such" (71)
Unconscious Use: " . . . reflection does not enter into the active use of an idiom--speakers are largely
unconscious of the laws of language; and if they are unaware of them, how can they modify them? . . .
people are generally satisfied with the language they have received" (72).
Conservative Forces in the Linguistic Sign System:
"The arbitrary nature of the sign . . . is really what protects language from any attempt to modify it.
Even if people were more conscious of language than they are, they would still not know how to discuss
it. [ . . . ] One could also argue about a system of symbols, for the symbol has a traditional relationship
with the thing symbolized; but language is a system of arbitrary signs and lacks the necessary basis, the
solid ground for discussion. There is no reason for preferring soeur to sister, Ochs to boeuf, etc." (73).
"The multiplicity of signs necessary to form any language . . . [is] another important deterrent to
linguistic change . . . linguistic signs are numberless" (73).
"The over-complexity of the system . . . is a complex mechanism that can be grasped only through
reflection; the very ones who use it daily are ignorant of it. We can conceive of a change only through
the intervention of specialists, grammarians, logicians, etc.; but experience shows us that all such
meddlings have failed" (73).
"Collective inertia towards innovation . . . [arises from the fact that] language. . . is at every moment
everybody's concern; spread throughout society and manipulated by it. .. everyone participates at all
times, and that is why it is constantly being influenced by all. This capital fact suffices to show the
impossibility of revolution" (73-4).
Radical Forces in the Linguistic Sign System:
Mutability: "Time, which insures the continuity of language [insures] the more or less rapid change of
linguistic signs. [But] the sign is exposed to alteration because it perpetuates itself. [ . . . ] Regardless of
what the forces of change are . . . they always result in a shift in the relationship between the signified
and the signifier." [ . . . ] Language is radically powerless to defend itself against the forces which from
one moment to the next are shifting the relationship between the signified and the signifier. This is one
of the consequences of the arbitrary nature of the sign" (75-6).
Basic Terms:
Langue vs. Parole, Langue as Social Structure, and synchrony vs. diachrony:

"Language (langue) is speech less speaking (parole). It is the whole set of linguistic habits which allow an
individual to understand and to be understood" (77).
"[F]or the realization of language, a community of speakers [masse parlante] is necessary. Contrary to
all appearances, language never exists apart from the social fact, for it is a semiological phenomenon.
Its social nature is one of its inner characteristics" (77).
"synchrony and diachrony designate respectively a language-state and an evolutionary phase."
Want to test Saussure's assertion that the linguistic signifier-signified relationships is arbitrary? Let's
look at "onomatopoeia" words, which supposedly are sounded and spelled as they are because they
make the "sound" of the thing described.
THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS: LANGUE VERSUS PAROLE
August 17, 2012 by wauconda in Ferdinand de Saussure in Linguistics
Another Saussures dichotomy that strongly influenced the Linguistics of this century is represented by
his theory of the opposition langue/parole. Apart from these terms Saussure distinguishes a third term
language, which is a general human ability. It is only language that features universal ability as
opposed, for instance, to animals to create in language a system of signs that is not inherited. Owing
to the multiplicity of languages serving necessarily the same purpose of communication, and
denominating basically the same reality, it is obvious that each of these languages is in this sense
arbitrary; it is a result of a complex and long historical development in space and time.
Langue is then a system of all rules that must be observed by all speakers of the community; it is an
abstract system of conventional rules that are generally recognized by all speakers of the community
speaking a particular language. It is only this system that enables individuals to communicate and
understand one another. Langue as a social phenomenon is, thus, the property of the society.
Saussurean characterization of langue as a system of arbitrary relations between spoken sighifiers
(i.e. sound patterns) and mental signifieds (i.e. concepts) relations that are of pure form, where
elements may in effect have any substance so long as they differ from one another -moved linguistics
away from its nineteenth-century connections with biology and in the direction of mechanical physics.
For F. de Saussure writing is not language, but a separate entity whose only mission is to represent
real (spoken) language. The danger of writing is that it creates the illusion of being more real and more
stable than speech, and therefore gains ascendancy over speech in the popular mind. Over 10 years
passed before linguists began to admit that the marginalization of writing had been carried to an
irrational extreme; and despite some tentative steps toward a Linguistics of writing in various quarters,
this tradition of privileging spoken language shared though not founded by Saussure is in no danger
of passing away.
On the other hand, parole is an individual phenomenon. It is a concrete manifestation of langue uttered
by an individual in a given moment. A concrete utterance can be however, based only on the
comprehension and observance of the rules of the system of language.

F. de Saussure points out that langue and parole arc completely different things. Individual spontaneous
acts of speech arc fugitive and tied to particular contexts of utterance. They may contain errors, like
slops of tongue, and will almost certainly contain hesitations, false starts, sentences broken off
halfway through, and other familiar characteristics of informal speech. F. de Saussure claims that data of
this sort do not constitute an appropriate object of study since they are inherently idiosyncratic and
influenced by too many extraneous factors: psychological, social and individual.
It is not homogeneous enough to constitute the data for a systematic study of the language system,
since the accidental features associated with speech production must be characteristic of the use of
language parole, and cannot be attributed to the system langue, itself. Hence, linguists are supposed
to ignore such features, and seek to identify the system behind them. This system is the proper object of
a linguistic study since, unlike parole, it is a well defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech
acts, an object which is relatively stable.
Thus, Saussurean contribution was to dissect the total phenomenon of language (langage) into:
e) actual speech production (parole), including the role of the individual will, and
f) the socially shared system of signs (langue) that makes production and comprehension possible.
Although he spoke of a linguistics of parole that would cover the phonetic side of language and the
product of individual will, Saussure made it clear that the Linguistics of langue is the essential, real
Linguistics. Langue is beyond the direct reach of the individual will.