The Principle of Duality: Synchrony and Diachrony

Abstract

According to the official view of Saussure’s linguistics later enshrined in structuralism, the proper object of study is language viewed as a system (la langue). This view is established in the Course in General Linguistics in part by overstating the separation between la langue and la parole to create an impression of a quasi-natural, steep hierarchy that elevated the former above the latter. A similar argument can be made regarding synchrony and diachrony. While the editorial presentation partially agrees with the source materials in that it ties synchrony and diachrony to the two available perspectives on language (langage), it overstates the separation between synchronic and diachronic study. It construes their relation as a hierarchical dualism rather than as an essential duality, and it problematically attributes a properly scientific status to synchrony alone. As a result, the conceptual complexity of Saussure’s reflections on linguistic methodology is sacrificed for the sake of a more manageable, yet ultimately reductive, scientific program. The interrelation between synchrony and diachrony is cast as an essential horizontal duality in the linguist’s Nachlass; language study is here characterized by self-reflexivity and conceptual complexity.