The distinction between the French words, langue (language or tongue)

and parole(speech), enters the vocabulary of theoretical linguistics with

Ferdinand de Saussures Course in General Linguistics, which was
published posthumously in 1915 after having been collocated from
student notes. La langue denotes the abstract systematic principles of a
language, without which no meaningful utterance (parole) would be
possible. The Course manifests a shift from the search for origins and
ideals, typical of nineteenth century science, to the establishment of
systems. The modern notion of system is reflected in the title of the
course: General Linguistics. Saussure in this way indicates that the
course will be about language in general: not this or that particular
language (Chinese or French) and not this or that aspect (phonetics or
semantics). A general linguistics would be impossible by empirical
means because there exists innumerable objects that can be considered
linguistic. Instead Saussures methodology allows him to establish a
coherent object for linguistics in the distinction between langue and
parole.

Langue represents the work of a collective intelligence, which is both

internal to each individual and collective, in so far as it is beyond the will
of any individual to change. Parole, on the other hand, designates
individual acts, statements and utterances, events of language use
manifesting each time a speakers ephemeral individual will through his
combination of concepts and his phonationthe formal aspects of the
utterance. Saussure points out that the single word linguistics therefore
covers two very different kinds of study. The study of parole would be
entirely focused on individual utterances, using all the available
resources of formal and empirical study to analyze actual statements,
usually within a specific language. The study of langue would be focused
instead on generally applicable conditions of possibility. The Course thus
follows the second route in this inevitable bifurcation, setting out the
groundwork for all attempts to grasp the basic conditions of possibility for
language and language use generally. There would be no coherent and
meaningful utterance without the institution of norms that Saussure calls
langue. So it is this that forms the object of study for modern linguistics.
Such an object could not ever be made visible (as a stretch of text can)

but one can in principle establish the rules and conditions that make it
possible to speak and write in meaningful ways.
Langue and parole has been translated by alternative semiotic
categories like system and process (A J Greimas) or code and message
(Roman Jakobson), which interpret Saussures distinction in specific
ways. The main assumptions of structuralism and semiology (or
semiotics) would be that for every process (an utterance for instance)
there is a system of underlying laws that govern it; and that the system
arises contingently (there are no natural or necessary reasons for the
relations within it to be as they are).