Abstract
According to the structuralist interpretation, Saussure’s linguistics is to be credited chiefly for its influential conception of an arbitrary linguistic sign. However, the thesis of linguistic arbitrariness, according to which signification is an internal property of the language system, offers an initial and provisional understanding of linguistic signification that is, ultimately, revised in the course of Saussure’s lectures. Even though a reader of the Course may glean some of the complications befalling the linguistic sign from the later chapters, the reader is unlikely to perceive them as organic developments of the initial discussion of the linguistic sign from the more influential Chap. 1. The architecture of parts and chapters suggests that each presents an element of a complete doctrine, whereas Saussure presents testable, evolving, and revisable hypotheses in his lectures. The lecture notes demonstrate that, ultimately, Saussure does not support the structuralist view of the sign. While language is arbitrary and unmotivated by natural laws, it is constrained by social conventions as they evolve over time. Language is situated in the sociohistorical world of cultural signification from the start.
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Notes
- 1.
© Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in Lectures on General Linguistics. 2013. Bloomsbury Academic, Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
- 2.
© Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in Lectures on General Linguistics. 2013. Bloomsbury Academic, Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
- 3.
Aristotle’s reflections bear this point out. He wrote: “Spoken sounds are symbols of affection in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of – affections of the soul – are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of – actual things- are also the same” (1995, 25). For Aristotle, there is one and the same order of things in the world represented by a similar order of affections in the mind. The latter are differently rendered in speech (spoken sounds) and writing (written marks). Differences between existing languages at the level of speech and writing do not, therefore, undermine the universal validity of one and the same metaphysical and conceptual order. Different languages simply label the world of things and ideas differently.
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Similarly, Saussure initially distinguishes between chiefly lexicological and grammatical languages, which are founded on absolute and relative arbitrariness, respectively. The former seem to contain a higher number of unmotivated terms (compared to “isolated pigeonholes”), while the latter have a high tendency to deploy grammatical principles affecting most, if not all, linguistic terms. In the end, however, the students are told that “there is something common in the principle [of arbitrariness],” and that “we can discern as it were two opposite poles, or two contrary currents present in all languages” (89).
- 5.
This article was published in Saussure, Ferdinand de. Troisième cours de linguistique générale (1910–1911): d’après les cahiers d’Emile Constantin/Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910–1911): From the Notebooks of Emile Constantin. Edited by Eisuke Komatsu. Translated by Roy Harris. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Copyright Elsevier (1993).
- 6.
This article was published in Saussure, Ferdinand de. Troisième cours de linguistique générale (1910–1911): d’après les cahiers d’Emile Constantin/Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910–1911): From the Notebooks of Emile Constantin. Edited by Eisuke Komatsu. Translated by Roy Harris. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Copyright Elsevier (1993).
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Stawarska, B. (2020). The Linguistic Sign and the Language System. In: Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43097-9_5
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