Saussure — Understanding the Linguistic Value of Language Signs
Author: Lesley Lanir
In his Course in General Linguistics, a book complied from notes by his students, linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure investigated language as a structured system of linguistic signs or linguistic units that organise the mass of confused thoughts that fill our minds.
He explained the idea grounding his theory of language being made up of linguistic units that are composed of two parts — a concept or meaning and a sound-image — respectively, ‘the signified’ and ‘signifier.’
Saussure also explains that the combination of ‘the signifier’ and ‘the signified’ is arbitrary; i.e., any ‘signifier’ or ‘sound-image’ — any string of language sounds — can be created to signify a particular concept.
The choice is usually dependent on the community that uses that language. A concrete example would be ‘chair.’
The concept of a ‘chair’ is similar across Western thinking, yet the sound images created to label this object are different across European languages; ‘chaise,’ ‘silla,’ ‘stuhl,’ and ‘sedia’ for example.
Saussure made the point that you cannot divide thought from sound, nor sound from thought, “… an idea becomes fixed in a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea.” That language is not just an…
