Langue (language): overall system of language, rules of grammar Parole (speech): individual utterance, particular instance of language
Text:
SIGN, SIGNIFIED, SIGNIFIER
Some regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only—a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names. . . . It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words . . . ; it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or psychological in nature (38).
the linguistic unit is a double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms (38).
The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image (38).
The psychological character of our sound-images becomes apparent when we observe [how] . . . we can talk to ourselves or recite mentally a selection of verse (38).
“phonemes” . . . is applicable to the spoken word only, to the realization of the inner image in discourse (38).
The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity . . . concept and sound-image (39).
“The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other (39).
sign [signe] = (concept) signified [signifié] + (sound-image) signifier [signifiant] (39).
PRINCIPLE I: THE ARBITRARY NATURE OF THE SIGN
The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary . . . simply . . . the linguistic sign is arbitrary (39).
every means of expression used in society is based, in principle, on collective behaviour or . . . on convention (40).
a symbol, unlike a sign is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified (40).
the wordy arbitrary . . . should not imply that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker . . . I mean that it is unmotivated (40).
The quality of [onomatopoeic] sounds, or rather the quality that is attributed to them, is a fortuitous result of phonetic evolution (40).
authentic onomatopoeic words . . . are only approximate and more or less conventional imitations of certain sounds (40).
PRINCIPLE II: THE LINEAR NATURE OF THE SIGNIFIER
The signifier, being auditory, is unfolded solely in time . . . (a) it represents a span, and (b) the span is measurable in a single dimension; it is a line (41).
In contrast to visual signifiers . . . which can offer simultaneous groupings in several dimensions, auditory signifiers have at their command only the dimensions of time. Their elements are presented in succession; they form a chain. This feature becomes readily apparent when they are represented in writing and the spatial line of graphic marks is substituted for succession in time (41).
LANGUAGE AS THOUGHT COUPLED WITH SOUND
Language can also be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound . . . . their combination produces a form, not a substance (41).
The community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up (42).
LINGUISTIC VALUE FROM A CONCEPTUAL VIEWPOINT
Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others (43).
all values are apparently governed by the same paradoxical principle. They are always composed: (1) of a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing . . . (2) of similar things that can be compared with the thing (43).
a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea . . . it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word. Its value is therefore not fixed so long as one simply states that it can be “exchanged” for a given concept . . . one must also compare it with similar values, with other words that stand in opposition to it. Its content is really fixed only by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it. Being part of a system, it is endowed not only with a signification but also and especially with a value, and this is something quite different (43).
Within the same language, all words used to express related ideas limit each other reciprocally (43).
Instead of pre-existing ideas . . . we find in all the foregoing examples values emanating from the system (44).
the concepts . . . most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not (44).
LINGUISTIC VALUE FROM A MATERIAL VIEWPOINT
The important thing in the word is not the sound alone but the phonic differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others, for differences carry signification (45).
a segment of language can never in the final analysis be based on anything except its noncoincidence with the rest (45).
Signs function . . . not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position (45).
Every language: • forms its words on the basis of a system of sonorous elements • each element being a clearly delimited unit • and one of a fixed number of units Phonemes are characterized not . . . by their own positive quality but simply by the fact that they are distinct (45).
Phonemes are above all else opposing, relative, and negative entities (45).
language requires only that the sound be different and not, as one might imagine, that is have an invariable quality (45).
writing, another system of signs: 1. The signs used in writing are arbitrary 2. The value of letters is purely negative and differential 3. Values in writing function only through reciprocal opposition within a fixed system that consists of a set number of letters 4. The means by which the sign is produced is completely unimportant
THE SIGN CONSIDERED IN ITS TOTALITY
in language there are only differences . . . without positive terms (46).
language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system (46).
Although both the signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact (47).
language is a form and not a substance (47).
DEFINITIONS
In discourse . . . words acquire relations based on the linear nature of language because they are chained together. . . . Combinations supported by linearity are syntagms. The syntagm is always composed of two or more consecutive units. . . . In the syntagm a term acquires its value only because it stands in opposition to everything that precedes or follows it, or both (47).
Outside discourse . . . words acquire relations of a different kind . . . are associated in the memory . . . are not supported by linearity. . . . They are associative relations (47).
The syntagmatic relation is in praesentia (47).
the associative relations unites terms in absentia in a potential mnemonic series (47).