00172—Signifier-Signified Relationship—Ferdinand de Saussure

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  and the 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.               

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00167-- “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” by Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure laid the foundation for many developments in linguistics in the 20^th 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].

00108--Explain the terms 'langue' and 'parole'.

            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.

            Subject + present from of the verb .......Langue.

            Prime Minister goes to UN tomorrow....Parole.

00102--Explain Saussure's concept of the arbitrariness of the sign.

            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'.