Course in General Linguistics Analysis

When Ferdinand de Saussure delivered a series of lectures on linguistics in Geneva in 1907-1911, he prompted an entirely new direction in philosophy, one that came to be known as the philosophy of language. Before Saussure’s time, philosophers saw their task as trying to solve classical philosophic problems by carefully considering how certain words were used. For example, is it more exact to say “entrance” and “exit” or to say “entrance” and “not an entrance”? The philosophy of language does not concern itself with these issues, but rather aims to provide philosophically illuminating descriptions of certain general or universal features of language such as structure, reference, truth, meaning, and necessity.

Saussure considered himself a linguist rather than a philosopher, and his ideas about language as a sign system had been proposed by others such as philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. At the turn of the century, philosophy was crossing new frontiers, spinning off new disciplines such as sociology and anthropology and new approaches such as that followed by the ordinary language school at Oxford University, which sought to solve perennial philosophic problems by appealing to linguistic theory. However, it remained for Saussure to lead twentieth century philosophers to seek answers in a new philosophy of language.

Because the Course in General Linguistics was not published by Saussure but compiled from lectures and notes after his death, there is some controversy about whether the 1916 French edition accurately reflects Saussure’s intentions, and a revised edition was published in 1922. Although the editions differ on the details, certain concepts and lines of thought are clear in both versions. Saussure argues that a theory of language is part of a larger theory, not a theory of actions but a theory of signs, and therefore it is part of a theory of society or culture. Before discussing his theory of signs, Saussure presents two fundamental concepts: langue and parole.

Parole is our experience of language in everyday life. Whenever we attempt to communicate through speech or through writing, we are engaging in parole. Parole is as various as the number of people sharing a speech community and the number of attempts each of them makes to communicate. Nothing in the way of universal principles can be formed from parole, nor can any general idea be inferred from studying its multitudinous instances. All that can be asserted is that parole is infinitely diverse.

Underlying parole is langue, the general structure of a language, which Saussure defines as the sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each member of the speech community. Every speaker and listener can draw on this sum of impressions in the construction or reception of particular speech acts or instances of parole. In our daily lives, we give little conscious thought to langue. Instead we employ parole, the multitudinous varieties of langue, as a communication tool.

Langue underlies—and makes possible—every instance of parole. Langue is a universal structure that is innate in all functional human brains. It may have certain grand variations—such as French, Japanese, and English—but the tendency to overarching linguistic structure is common to each of these speech communities.

The fundamental structure of langue is not sentences but signs. Each sign, Saussure argues, has a twin aspect. Each sign signifies a concept and is also signified by an auditory unit, a sound pattern. In writing, the auditory unit is represented by visual symbols substituting for the sound pattern. However, the auditory unit is fundamental, for there are some speech communities that have no written system. These two aspects, the sign and its signification by an auditory unit or pattern, are as inseparable as the two sides of a coin. Where there is no signifying, there is not a sign but only noise. Hence, if some one shouts “run” to a tree, that person is only “making noise.” Conversely, where there is nothing being signified, there is no sound, only a shapeless intellectual blur. Consequently, if a non-French speaker overhears a conversation in French, he or she knows something is being signified but is powerless to make any connections.

Individual sounds, or phons, in the total pattern are used to distinguish one sign from another. Hence, the initial sound in the signs “cat” and “rat” differentiate the feline from the rodent. Sometimes the differentiation requires a full sound pattern, as in the phonic distinction between “cat” and “dog.” Signs so distinguished may be called signifiers, for they signify an external reality or another sign, which may be called the signified. Saussure, in disagreement with his predecessors, argues that the relationship between the signifier and that which is signified is completely arbitrary. Hence, in English, we may signify a particular color by the sign “red.” In French, the same color is signified by the sign “rouge.” One sign has no particular advantage over another, nor does its use in any way alter the phenomenon signified. In a particular speech act, we may speak of a color as “red” when others choose to signify it with the sign “scarlet.” The color will not change simply because the sign changed.

Saussure borrows a metaphor from chess to develop his idea of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and concept signified. It matters not at all whether the chess piece is made of wood or ivory. The game may be played with either. What is not arbitrary, and therefore absolutely necessary to the construction of a linguistic theory, is the relationship between the signs. Such relationships resemble the “grammar” or rules of the chess game. These “grammatical structures” are what determine the value of a chess piece in a rule-governed universe.

Of course, the value of the piece varies with the state of the game at a given moment, and we can describe that state without knowing any previous moves. It is this argument that Saussure uses against the long tradition of philology, which assumes that the basic understanding of a language is discovered in its developmental history. Saussure claims that this approach is unnecessary. A linguist can develop a synchronic theory of language; that is, the linguist may learn just as much or more by analyzing a language as it exists at any given moment, just as the current state of a chess game may be described. The linguist may disregard diachronic, or historical, issues. Saussure, of course, admits that there are fundamental differences between chess and language. The chess player may alter the conditions of the game at will, just as the parole may be manipulated by the individual, but langue, language’s underlying structure, always eludes the individual and the social will.