Signifiers are related to their Objects of Referents [Signified=objects of referents] in three
modes. They are:
1.Symbol/Symbolic,
2.Icon/Iconic, and,
3.Index/Indexical.
Symbol/Symbolic
Where there
is no relation between the signifier and the object or referent, and where the
relation has to be learnt. All language
is symbolic, since there is no real connection between the word c-a-t andthe animal.
Icon/Iconic
The signifier here resembles the object it seeks to
represent. It mimics the signified or
the concept, takes on some of the object’s qualities. The iconic sign is imitative. For instance the signifier ‘hiss’ seems
to capture the actual sound made by the snake.
Index/Indexical
The signifier here is directly connected to the signified in
some way. A good example of the
indexical sign would be the knock on the door.
We infer that the signifier (the knock) is produced by or is connected
to the presence of somebody who wishes to come in.
Structuralism is primarily concerned with the study of
structures. Here we study how things get
their meaning. It is also a
philosophical approach. The whole world
has a set up. Similarly the solar system
has a structure with the sun at the centre.
Even an atom has its own structure which resembles our solar
system. Coming to the political set up,
a democratic structure is the basis of our govt. [Indian govt.]. Communism has its own set up or
structure. Coming to an individual’s
life a person has different names according to the nature of the
structure. A boy in a class room is a
student. At home he is a son. In the cricket ground he is a player, and
when he gets a job, he gets another name.
Another point Saussure discovered is that the meaning
of a sign is arbitrary. The same flower,
say rose, has different names in different languages, but its qualities remain
the same. Saussure points out that a
word assumes different meanings according to the particular structure in which
it is a part. When Yeats sings “Whenever
green is found,” it means the Irish flag which is green in colour. So the word ‘’green” represents
patriotism. In the phrase ‘green
revolution’ the word green stands for agriculture.
Further Reading:
Structuralist
Criticism= Almost all literary theorists since Aristotle have
emphasized
the importance of structure, conceived in diverse ways, in analyzing
a
work of literature. "Structuralist criticism," however, now
designates the
practice
of critics who analyze literature on the explicit model of structuralist
linguistics.
The class includes a number of Russian formalists, especially
Roman
Jakobson, but consists most prominently of a group of writers, with
their
headquarters in Paris, who applied to literature the concepts and analytic
distinctions
developed by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General
Linguistics
(1915).
This mode of criticism is part of a larger movement, French
structuralism,
inaugurated
in the 1950s by the cultural anthropologist
Claude
Lévi-Strauss, who analyzed, on Saussure's linguistic model, such cultural
phenomena
as mythology, kinship relations, and modes of preparing
food.
In
its early form, as manifested by Lévi-Strauss and other writers in the
1950s
and 1960s, structuralism cuts across the traditional disciplinary areas of
the
humanities and social sciences by undertaking to provide an objective account
of
all social and cultural practices, in a range that includes mythical
narratives,
literary texts, advertisements, fashions in clothes, and patterns of
social
decorum. It views these practices as combinations of signs that have a
set
significance for the members of a particular culture, and undertakes to
make
explicit the rules and procedures by which the practices have achieved
their
cultural significance, and to specify what that significance is, by reference
to
an underlying system (analogous to Saussure's langue, the implicit
system
of
a particular language) of the relationships among signifying elements
and
their rules of combination. The elementary cultural phenomena, like the
linguistic
elements in Saussure's exposition, are not objective facts identifiable
by
their inherent properties, but purely "relational" entities; that is,
their
identity
as signs are given to them by their relations of differences from, and
binary
oppositions to, other elements within the cultural system. This system
of
internal relationships, and of "codes" that determine significant
combinations,
have
been mastered by each person competent within a given culture,
although
he or she remains largely unaware of its nature and operations. The
primary
interest of the structuralist, like that of Saussure, is not in the cultural
parole
but
in the langue; that is, not in any particular cultural phenomenon or
event
except as it provides access to the structure, features, and rules of the
general
system that engenders its significance.
As
applied in literary studies, structuralist criticism views literature as
a
second-order
signifying system that uses the first-order structural system of
language
as its medium, and is itself to be analyzed primarily on the model of
linguistic
theory. Structuralist critics often apply a variety of linguistic concepts
to
the analysis of a literary text, such as the distinction between phonemic
and
morphemic levels of organization, or between paradigmatic and
syntagmatic
relationships;
and some critics analyze the structure of a literary
text
on the model of the syntax in a well-formed sentence. The undertaking of
a
thoroughgoing literary structuralism, however, is to explain how it is that a
competent
reader is able to make sense of a particular literary text by specifying
the
underlying system of literary conventions and rules of combination
that
has been unconsciously mastered by such a reader. The aim of classic literary
structuralism,
accordingly, is not (as in New Criticism) to provide interpretations
of
an individual text, but to make explicit, in a quasi-scientific way,
the
tacit grammar (the system of rules and codes) that governs the forms and
meanings
of all literary productions. As Jonathan Culler put it in his lucid exposition,
the
aim of structuralist criticism is "to construct a poetics which
stands to
literature as linguistics stands to language".
Ferdinand de Saussure laid
the foundation for many developments in linguistics in the 20th
century. He argues that linguistics is a
science of signs. He called it
Semiology. His famous work is called “A
Course in General Linguistics”. It was
published three years after his death.
He emphasized a synchronic study of language [How language behaves at a
particular point of time].
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics. Principles of structural-functional linguisticswere based on the lecture notes of Swiss linguist FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE. His major work is Course de Linguistique Generale [Course on General Linguistics]. The following are the linguistic binaries that constitute the basic principles of structural linguistics. This structural linguistics is relevant in literary criticism because this can be used for interpreting a text in other words structuralist interpretation of a text.
1. Langue and Parole [language structure vs. speaking in a language],
2. Signifier and Signified,
3. Synchronic and Diachronic, and,
4. Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic.
1. Langue and Parole [language structure vs. speaking in a language]
While making distinctions between the linguistic system and its actual manifestations we arrive at the crucial opposition between LANGUE and PAROLE.
Langage = as the general capacity that distinguishes man from the animal.
Langue = as language structure which consists of vocabulary, principles of construction, idioms, rules of pronunciation, etc.
Parole= as language, both speech and writing used in a context. Audio Books
Langue is the property of the society while Parole is an individual’s property. Langue is fixed while Parole is free from restrictions like grammar or rules of pronunciation. Langue –Parole distinction has formed a basis for all later structuralist model of linguistics.
2. The arbitrariness of the sign
SIGN
The linguistic sign is an arbitrary linkage between a signifier and a signified.
Signifier=sound-image
Signified=concept
According to Saussure there is no natural connection between sound-image and concepts. There is nothing cat-like in the word cat.
Here is a linguistic example:
Sign: the written word tree
Signifier: the letters t-r-e-e
Signified: the category tree 3. The Diachronic and the Synchronic Study of Language [history vs. structure] Saussure argued that there is a need for a radical distinction between the two branches of linguistics; synchronic and diachronic linguistics.
Synchronic linguistics studies 'Langue'. Synchronic linguistics is a system that is psychologically real. It is the study of language in a particular state at a point of time. It is the study of fixed language. Diachronic linguistics is concerned with 'Parole" and the relations of succession between individual items. Diachronic linguistics is not systematic and it is the study of language of its evolution in time. 4. The Oppositional Structure of Language [Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic] Audio Books Language is a set of oppositions without positive terms. The arbitrariness of the sign is limited by the systematic nature of sign systems. The signs that make up a language stand in opposition to each other. There are two structural relations between signs: 1. the Syntagmatic, and, 2. the Paradigmatic. SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONSHIP IS LINEAR. PARADIGMATIC RELATIONSHIP IS ASSOCIATIVE. Syntagmatic Relationship In the syntagmatic relationship, units as sounds, phrases, clauses, sentences and discourses are chained together in a fixed sequence and combination, and they get their force by standing in opposition to what precedes or follows them. This relationship holds at various levels of language. The following example shows it at the sound level. take a simple word like 'cat'. The word consists of three units: the phonemes /k/, /ӕ/, /t/. The relationship that exists between these three units is Syntagmatic. PARADIGMATIC RELATIONSHIP Paradigmatic relationship on the otherhand, refers to the relationship that holds between units that are there and the units that are not there but potentially could have been there. The first unit of the word cat is /k/. There are many other sounds which could have come at this place, for instance /p/ or /b/ or /m/ giving words like pat, bat and mat. These probable candidates are paradigmatic. Audio BooksSyntagmatc relationship is the relationship in PRESENTIA . The Paradigmatic relationship is the relationship in ABSENTIA. The Two Relationships-- a diagramatical presentation.
A movement or theory is radical when it is capable of favouring fundamental or extreme change in scientific, social or cultural spheres. Structuralists argue that the entities that constitute the world we perceive (human beings, meanings, social positions, texts, rituals....) are not the works of God or the mysteries of nature. It is an effect of the principles that structure us. The world without structures is meaningless. It will then be a random and Chaotic continuum. Structures order that continuum and organise it according to certain set of principles. And thus we make sense of it. In this way structures make this world meaningful and real. Many of the proportions put forward by Saussurian linguistics was radical in substance and result. The foundational argument about the arbitrariness of the sign is a radical concept because it proposes the autonomy of language in relation to reality. The Saussurian model, with its emphasis on internal structures within a sign system, can be seen as supporting the notion that language does not 'reflect' reality but rather constructs it. We can use the language 'to say what isn't the world, as well as what is. And since we come to know the world through whatever language we have been born into the midst of, it is legitimate to argue that our language determines reality, rather than reality our language' some later critics have criticised Saussure for 'neglecting entirely the things for which signs stand'. They have lamented his model's detachment from social context. Robert Stam argues that by 'bracketing the referent', the Saussurean model 'severs text from history'. More over, it was the Saussurian concepts that led to the most radical assumptions of Deconstruction.
Language is the whole system of language that precedes and makes speech possible. A sign is a basic unit of langue.
Learning a language, we master the system of grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation. These are all elements of langue.
Langue is a system in that it has a large number of elements whereby meaning is created in the arrangements of its elements and the consequent relationships between there arranged elements.
Parole is the concrete use of the language, the actual utterances. It is an external manifestation of langue. It is the usage of the system, but not the system.
By defining Langue and Parole, Saussure differentiates between the language and how it is used, and therefore enabling these two very different things to be studied as separate entities.
As a structuralist, Saussure was interested more in langue than in parole. It was the system by which meaning could be created that was of interest rather than individual instances of its use.
This is a major conclusion from Saussure. At the very beginning of the essay he writes: "Some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only-a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names....This conception is open to criticism at several points. It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before wards".
Structuralism notes that much of our imaginative world is structured of an structured by, binary oppositions and these oppositions structure meaning.
Saussure noted that "if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. But this is not the case". Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided hp very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorise reality in the same way. As JohnPass more puts it, 'Languages differ by differentiating differently'. Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no 'natural' concepts or categories which are simply 'reflected' in language. Language plays a crucial role in 'constructing reality'.
Saussure's relational conception of meaning was specifically differential. He emphasized the differences between signs. Language for him was a system of functional differences and oppositions. 'In a language, as in every other semiological system, what distinguishes a sign is what constitutes it'. What gives the letter 'C' its meaning is its difference from other letters. The concept of difference turns very clear once we think it in terms of dress code. What makes a costume meaningful, fashionable, or respectable is its difference from other clothes. Advertising furnishes another good example of this notion, since what matters in 'positioning' a product is not the relationship of advertising signifiers to real-world referents, but the differentiation of each sign from the others to which it is related. In other words relation/difference is a pair of binary opposites. Saussure's concept of the relational identify of signs is at the heart of structuralist theory. Structuralist analysis focuses on the structural relations which are functional in the signifying system at a particular moment in history. 'Relations are important for what they can explain: meaningful contrasts and permitted or forbidden combinations'. We can safely conclude that 'in a language there are only differences'.
In simple terms, binary opposites are pairs of signs with opposite meanings. Many examples are there in English. Hot/cold, good/bad, black/white and son. Saussure thinks beyond this. He emphasized the negative, oppositional differences between signs, and the key relationships in structuralist analysis are binary oppositions (such as nature/culture, life/death). Saussure argued that 'concepts ....are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not'. We understand day as what is not night. A population which hasn't ever experienced the pains of war will not fully understand the sense of the term peace. The notion may initially seem mystifying. The concept of negative differentiation becomes clearer if we consider how we might teach someone who did not share our language what we mean by the term "thick". It is impossible to show them a range of different objects which are think. Because an object is neither think nor thin until it is differentiated from another one. Se we could place two books. One has 100 pages the other 50-0. The second one is thick. The listener understands very clearly. The word 'thick' derives from its meanings from its opposition to the term 'thin'. As far his 'emphasis on negative differences, Saussure remarks that although both the signified ad the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, the sign in which they are combined is a positive term.
Saussure argued that signs only make sense as part of a formal, generalized and abstract system. His conception of meaning was purely structural and relational rather than referential: primacy is given to relationships rather than to things (the meaning of signs was seen as lying in their systematic relation to each other rather than deriving from any inherent features of signifiers or any reference to material things). Saussure did not define signs in terms of some 'essential' or intrinsic nature. For Saussure, signs refer primarily to each other. Within the language system, 'every thing depends on relations'.
No sign makes sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. Both signifier and signified are purely relational entities. This notion can be hard to understand since we may feel that an individual word such as 'tree' does have some meaning for us, but its meaning depends on its context in relation to the other words with which it is used.
The 'value' of a sign depends on its relations with other signs within the system-a sign has no 'absolute' value independent of this context. Saussure uses an analogy with the game of chess, noting that the value of each piece depends on its position on the chessboard. The sign is more than the sum of its parts. Whilst signification - what is signified - clearly depends on the relationship between the two parts of the sign, the value of a sign is determined by the relationships between the sign and other signs within the system as whole.
The meaning of any word depends upon its relation with other words, which are adjoining with it in meaning. This notion is explained by using the phonemic theory of difference. We cannot arrive at a definition of the phoneme, 'K' except by means of distinguishing it from other phonemes like 'p, d, b, t' etc. For example, the meaning of the word house is related with its position in the 'syntagmatic chain'.
Shed, Hut, Hovel, House, Flat, Mansion, Bungalow, Place....The meaning of anyone of these will be altered if any one of the word is deleted from the chain. Saussure even pronounced that in language there are only differences without positive terms.
Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of a 'signifier' (the form which the sign takes) and the 'signified' (the concept it represents).
The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified. The relationship between the signifies and the signified is referred to as 'signification', and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. The horizontal line marking the two elements of the sign is referred to as 'the bar'.
If we take a linguistic example, the word 'Open' (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop door way) is a sign consisting of:
- a signifier : the word open;
- a signified concept: that the shop is open for business
A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified. A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier could stand for different signifies. Similarly, many signifiers could stand for the same signified. (As in the case of the words, water, vellam, thanni, paani)
Saussure noted that his choice of the terms signifier and signified helped to indicate 'the distinction which separates each from the other'. Saussure stressed that sound and though (or the signifier and the signified) were as in separable as the two sides of a piece of paper. They were 'intimately linked' in the mind 'by an associative link' 0 'each triggers the other'. Saussure presented these elements as wholly interdependent, neither pre-existing the other. Within the context of spoken language a sign could not consist of should without sense or of sense without sound.
The concept of the arbitrariness of the sign is foundational in Saussurian linguistics. In the first part of the essay Saussure writes "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Since I mean by the sign the whole that results from the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary". Although the signifier is treated by its users as 'standing for' the signified, Saussurean semioticians emphasize that there is no necessary, intrinsic, direct or inevitable relationship between the signifier and the signified. Saussure stressed the arbitrariness of the sign - more specifically the arbitrariness of the link between the signifier and the signified. He was focusing on linguistic signs, seeing language as the most important sign system; for Saussure, the arbitrary nature of the sign was the first principle of language. In the context of natural language, Saussure stressed that there is no inherent, essential, 'transparent', self-evident or 'natural' connection between the signifier and the signified'-between the sound or shape of a word and the concept to which it refers. Not that Saussure himself avoids directly relating the principle of arbitrariness to the relationship between language and an external world, but that subsequent commentators often do, and indeed, lurking behind the purely conceptual 'signified' one can often detect Saussure's allusion to real-world referents.
In language at least, the form of the signifier is not determined by what it signifies: there is nothing 'treeish' about the word 'tree'.Language differ, of course, in how they refer to the same referent.No specific signifier is 'naturally' more suited to a signified than any other signifier; in principle any signifier could represent any signified.Saussure observed that 'there is nothing at all to prevent the association of any idea whatsoever with any sequence of sounds whatsoever', 'the process which selects one particular sound-sequence to correspond to one particular idea is completely arbitrary'.
