Ferdinand De Saussure: The Sign as Signifier and Signified.

Fundamental Facts Can be called Father of Semiotics or maybe Modern Linguistics. Introduced Signifier and Signified to form Sign. Arbitrary nature of the sign. Diachronic and Synchronic. Opposition between langue (language as a system) and parole (language in use) Course in General Linguistics (1916) Based on notes taken by students between 1907 and 1911 Reconstructed by colleagues after his death.

Fundamentals Continued Linguistics as a “science of language” is a misnomer. Determine “essential nature of language” Text is only relevant to oral manifestations of language.

Definitions Les Langues- The languages ( each particular case of a language) La langue- the language ( common features to all languages) La faculte el l’exercice du langage chez les individus-the capacity for, and use of, language among individuals. We learn language through social interaction but we posses organs capable of speech System of language is essential and the means of implementation depend depends on resources of the individual. Link between acoustic images and concepts is what constitutes La Langue

Visual Depiction

Phonetic Imprints Acoustic image is not a physical sound but its psychological imprint Acoustic image and the concept are located in the subject. Linguistic signs are defined as arbitrary and we inherent their relations through tradition. Onomatopoeias are rare and interjections vary across cultures. Observe this limerick by Edward Lear: There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, “It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!”

Summary Info. “Linguistic signs are unfolding along one dimension only. They are linear in the sense that they come one after the other along the axis of time. This why we can cut out each sound as they are uttered in sequence. Many other characteristics will derive from this determining feature.” -Bouissac (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/csulb/reader.action?docID=10427605&pp g=8) Units of langue are separate from units of speech, and they can be found, indirectly, by comparing speech sequences.

Abstract/Concrete & Motivation “The term ‘concrete’ is reserved to the cases in which ideas are directly supported by sound units. The term ‘abstract’ applies to cases in which ideas are indirectly supported by an operation performed by the speakers.” “unmotivated” – no salient reason for calling some fruits “pears” and others “apples,” but twenty three is more ‘motivated’ than other numerical values in its particular representation. Motivation can deteriorate over time. Words can lose their relation to certain grammatical functions and negative versions of a word can seem disconnected from their positive counterparts.

Speech (Parole) All aspects of language are introduced through speech Speech acts are made possible by an overarching language system Changes come from individuals but a community at large must adopt them for the change to have a longer lasting impact. Language and speech interact and provide precedent for each other but they must be studied separately in abstracted forms. The link between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, but we are bound by rules that forbid spontaneous creation of viable signs. Language is not necessarily amended like legal laws. Vast connections make changing hard to accomplish with language.

Time Time sets language and allows for its mutation. When studying langue or a language system we have to abstract it from the flow of time. The Parole (speech) must be seen in respect to its constant permutation in time. Diachronic – Changing over time Synchronic – In a more static state, where contemporaneous things are acting in equilibrium.

Synchronic and Diachronic “Synchronically speaking, diachronic identities are a distortion, for the earlier and later signs which they relate have no common properties. Each sign has no properties other than specific relational properties which define it within its own synchronic system.” –Culler. Once a moment is captured in history it becomes synchronic. To explain seemingly Diachronic changes one must pull from Synchronic events. Diachronic- “A machine that keeps going regardless of the damages inflicted upon it.” -Bouissac A chess game where players do not make “deliberate choices.”

Grid-Like Chess Board

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic “Syntagmatic relations define combinatory possibilities: the relations between elements that might combine in a sequence.” - Culler Paradigmatic relations are the oppositions between elements that can replace one another.” – Culler Saussure called the paradigmatic associative.

Questions posed by Saussure Limits of the boundary between synchronic and diachronic aspects of language are fuzzy. Are synchronic laws possible? How do the two types of laws interact? How do we reconcile relations of successive words when someone speaks? How do we deal with “the type differential relations that determine the value of each word within a system of language” -Bouissac

Value Value- Meaning sense or signification that requires comparisons among many levels. “We cannot determine the value of a single word- say ‘sun’ – without considering all the neighboring words that delimit its meaning. The determination of a sense is dependent on the system formed by the other words.” - Bouissac “The ‘signified’ is not determined independently from the signifying” - Bouissac

Diachronic and Synchronic “Synchronically speaking, diachronic identities are a distortion, for the earlier and later signs which they relate have no common properties. Each sign has no properties other than specific relational properties which define it within its own synchronic system.” –Culler. Once a moment is captured in history it becomes synchronic. To explain seemingly Diachronic changes one must pull from Synchronic events.

Influences Saussure contended that linguistics could be used as a model for a more generalized study of semiotics. Semiotics can be defined as the study of signs and symbols, and their interpretation. “The virtue in taking linguistics as a model for semiotic analysis lies in the presumption it establishes: that signs will be arbitrary and conventional” –Culler Signs become more powerful when culture increases.

Different Types of Signs Icon – Actual resemblance between signified and signifier. Example: a portrait Index- Causal relations are present between the signified and signifier. Example: Smoke indicating fire Sign Proper- Arbitrary and conventional relations constitute the sign. This is the most important in semiotics Example: Shaking hands

The Status Symbol correlates to wealth but may appear more “imperious” than its actual value.

Different System of Analysis Explicit Code Systems: Examples include natural languages like English. The signs can be looked up in an index. Open Ended and Complex Systems: Examples include systems like literature. It is harder to discover what you look up to interpret a sign. Social Practices: Examples include social networking. The objective is to make explicit the implicit and to reconstruct systems of connotation. Involving Indices: Examples include astrology, or medical systems. These systems are studied as languages that are somewhat abstracted from their cause/effect relationships.

Semiotics in Literature Art tends to move beyond Aesthetic Codes. The study of Literature is “second order,” it rests on the system of language. Literature violates codes unlike traffic signs. Literature combines and reformulates signs.

Virno Verno’s thesis: “That is to say, it seems possible to deducefrom Saussure’s description of language as a ‘complex of eternally negative differences; [Writings 153] the prerogatives of that fundamental logical operator which is negation.” “is non-being,which already has its own reality, manifested thereafter in our discourses as a consequence of the word ‘non’?” Or, conversely, is non-being inoculated in the experience of the human animal only because it is said by the ‘non’?” –Verno. Signs are nothing in themselves. Values depend on reciprical interactions and words draw their meaning from their place in a phrase

Video (If Needed) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5vhq3aRNjE

Work Cited Bouissac, Paul. Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed. London ; New York: Continuum, 2010. Bouissac, PaulSaussure: A Guide for the Perplexed. London ; New York: Continuum, 2010. Culler, Jonathan. Ferdinand De Saussure. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. De Saussure, Ferdinand. “Ferdinand De Saussure.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 845-855. Print. “Ferdinand de Saussure and Structural Linguistics.” YouTube. Ross, Bella. 21. Mar. 2014. Web. 09. Oct. 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5vhq3aRNjE. Paolo Virno and Timothy Campbell. The Money of Language: Hypotheses on the Role of Negation In Saussure. Diacritics, Vol. 39, No. 4, Contemporary Italian Thought (2) (winter 2009), pp. 149-161. Web. Rolls Royce picture taken from the following url: http://allcarznews.com/rolls-royce- phantom.html