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Key elements of Saussure’s approach to Language, and its relevance to postmodern cultural analysis
Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is considered the founder of modern linguistic and cultural studies. He has influenced several fields such as philosophy, anthropology and semiology. He is the linguist who revolutionized the study of Linguistics, as he outlined his theory of language, in which he suggested the need to study language in a scientific way, rather than studying it in a cultural and historic context. Saussure’s theory has helped to promote contemporary post-modern cultural studies as those who were influenced by his theory adopted his new and different approach to language study. This essay is going to explain the key elements of Saussure’s approach to language specifically represented in his theory of language, and consider his influence on postmodern cultural and linguistic studies, (Audi, 1995).
Saussure’s theory of language started to take shape when he first argued that one could study how human sounds are produced, one could study what the speaker means by saying particular words, and one could analyse how the speaker and listener understand each other. He introduced a new definition of language by stating that language is a “system of signs” that are there to express ideas and enable people to communicate. The sign ‘word’ or ‘term’ in language indicates to ideas and concepts which speakers understand and agree on: “The sign is the union of a form which signifies, which Saussure calls the significant or signifier, and an idea signified, the signifie or signified”,(Culler, 1976: 19).
For Saussure, the sign is the main component of language, and he pays it much attention by analysing its nature and how it functions. The nature of the sign in language, Saussure argued is arbitrary as there is not a natural relationship between the signifier and signified. For example, the word ‘car’ does not naturally indicate to that thing which we use to transport ourselves or something from one place to another, but we give the word that meaning by agreement within the system of language. His argument seems to make sense as one analyses the relationship between words and their meanings in language. This is how Saussure started to raise questions which were not tackled by his predecessors influencing linguistics and cultural studies as will be considered in following paragraphs.
Another key aspect of Saussure’s theory of language is the relationships and differences between the signifiers and signifieds within the language system, which are arbitrary as well. Signifiers, ‘words’, gain their meaning and indications to certain concepts because of their relationship and difference from other signifiers, which might carry a similar meaning: “both signifier and signified are purely relational and differential entities. Because they are arbitrary, they are relational”, (Culler, 1976: p23). A simple example of this principle is the colour white for instance, it is defined as it is the colour which is not black, the colour which is different from black. Here, the meaning or signified of the word ‘white’ depends on the difference from the signified of the word black. That is how the signifier and signified are differential. Meanings are produced in the language system because of differences between its signs, the signifiers and signifieds. This indicates to that Saussure’s new approach to language was fundamentally different from previous linguists, influencing cultural studies as will be discussed later.
Saussure’s new approach to language gave considerable concern to the relationships between signs in the language system which are essential in terms of producing particular meanings. A signifier could belong to a group of similar signifiers to apply its meaning or indication to a particular concept. Again, a colour example can be the appropriate example to explain this point: if we suppose that we have a group of three colours white, black, and grey, and we would like to explain the colour grey. Grey in this case cannot be defined in isolation from the other colours (white and black). It is that colour which may be dark white, or that colour which is between white and black. Therefore, the sign in a language system is not an independent entity, but a component from a language system that consists of group of components. Tackling this point is significant as it is a key element in Saussure’s theory of language.
It is worth highlighting a principle which Saussure considered when he created his theory of language. It is that when studying language, one is studying ‘social facts’ tackling society’s use of language signs: ‘in analysing language, we are analysing social facts, dealing with the social use of material objects’, (Culler, 1976: p51). This means that the system of language with its signs, which are relational and differential as previously explained, is based on the social agreement made by speakers in society. These speakers agree on meanings produced by their language system, and they give values to the signs in their language. Therefore, one can say that meanings which are given to signs of language are socially produced and constructed.
Saussure influenced modern linguistics by providing a new ‘general orientation’ which can be represented in the importance of studying and analysing linguistics and its tasks. For Saussure, a linguist must analyse linguistics as a system of signs and relations between these signs, and not to study it in a descriptive and historic context: ‘to do linguistics was to attempt to define the units of a language, the relations between them, and their rules of combination’, (Culler, 1976:79). This analytical approach Saussure suggested was significantly influential on modern linguistics and cultural studies. He was called the father of modern linguistics for his contribution: ‘Indeed, an account of structural linguistics, as inaugurated by Saussure, can include the major schools of modern linguistics. Thus, Giulio Lepschy’s A Survey of Structural Linguistics covers the Prague School (Roman Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and others), the Copenhagen School (Louis Hjelmslev and other ‘Glossematicians’), the ‘Functionalists’ ( Jakobson, Emile Benveniste, Andre Martinet, and some contemporary British Linguists), American Structuralism (Leonard Bloomfield and his followers) and even Noam Chomsky and other transformational grammarians. It is only this last group who, as we shall see, have altered in a fundamental way the concept of linguistics as bequeathed by Saussure(Culler, 1976:80).
Structuralism was largely influenced by Saussure’s approach to language, but before explaining how, it is worth defining structuralism briefly, so that the influence of Saussure on it becomes clear. Structuralism is an ‘intellectual movement’ that started in France in the 1950s and first appeared in the work of Claude Levi-Strauss (1908) and Roland Barthes. It is ‘the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation- they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of’, (Barry, 2002: 39). This concept in structuralism that things in order to be understood, they have to be in a larger structure, is obviously the same concept of the sign in language system. The sign in language system (discussed fully in the beginning of essay) needs to belong to a structure to give a meaning. Therefore, one can see that the influence of Saussure’s approach to language on modern cultural studies as significant. Barry, in his book Beginning Theory which is an introduction to literary and cultural theory, says that ‘though structuralism proper began, as we said, in the 1950s and 1960s, it has its roots in the thinking of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’.
Saussure also gave structuralists a way of thinking about ‘the larger structures’ that are related to literature, as he used the term langue (language) and Parole (speech). He used the term to ‘signify, respectively, language as a system or structure on the one hand, and any given utterance in that language on the other’. This means that a particular part of speech only makes sense when one is aware of the whole entity of rules and conventions that ‘govern verbal behaviour’ which is called language. This is to emphasise that Saussure’s distinction between language and speech influenced and benefited structuralists ‘by seeing the individual literary work (the novel Middlemarch, let’s say) as an example of a literary parole’ (Barry, 2002:44). Hawkes in his book Structuralism and Semiotics (1977) says that ‘the nature of the langue lies, beyond, and determines, the nature of each manifestation of parole, yet it has no concrete existence of its own, except in the piecemeal manifestations that speech affords’. This analogy of Saussure in its nature can be seen as a firm groundbase of structural studies today. However, one can argue that Saussure’s influence was somehow indirect on those who came after him, but his thoughts and concepts were greatly influential on cultural studies and modern linguistics.
One of Saussure’s ideas which had its influence on modern cultural studies is when he insisted on that it is important to consider the distinction between the synchronic and diachronic study of language because it ‘involved recognition of language’s current structural properties as well as it is historic dimensions. This distinction gave cultural thinkers the ability to approach cultural and linguistic studies in a critical way.
In conclusion, Saussure was a key figure in the development of modern linguistics and cultural studies. His theory of language, ideas and way of thinking inspired linguists and cultural theorists to think differently and analytically. Moreover, his concepts of language and sense of analysis lead to the emergence of structuralism. Modern linguistics, semiotics, structuralism and cultural studies that have their roots in Saussure’s thinking, which was revolutionary in his time, would have been, may be, lacking much of significance that they have today.
By Walid Abudhair
29.08.2009. 03:48