Context
Ferdinand de Saussure's (1857–1913) was trained in comparative philology when Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were studied in order to establish the links between the language families, all descendants of Old Indo-Aryan Sanskrit, discovered in 1786 in the Indian subcontinent.
Saussure broke with this comparative approach through a structuralist vision of linguistics. His aim was to reset linguistics as a scientific discipline using clear methods and definitions. His methodology has influenced the study of linguistics since the publication in 1916 of his Cours de linguistique générale by his students.
In the book Saussure sets linguistics within the study of sign systems: semiotics, whose originator is said to be Charles Peirce. Saussure calls his subdiscipline semiology, which is a subdivision of social psychology.
The basis for Saussure's linguistic approach was the analysis of the underlying language structure, which corresponds to a system of related signs. He identified structure as the principal characteristic of languages, instead of the traditional etymological and single language analysis approaches.
Although his course in linguistics was published in 1916 its ideas went unnoticed until Jakobson the linguist and Levi-Strauss the anthropologist applied Saussure's structuralist insights to their disciplines. Lacan applied this theory of a unified organising principle to the mechanisms of the human unconscious.
Althusser built up a theory of scientific Marxism using structuralism. He argued in his essay Marxisme et humanisme (1964) against humanism in Marxist theory. He contended that while humanistic Marxists, like Gramsci, thought that human action was shaped by social movements, Marxist research should actually focus on structures, not individuals.
Structuralism rejected the contemporary emphasis on human experience and it was later replaced by post-structuralism through philosophers such as Derrida and Foucault. Their deconstruction of texts was aimed at revealing that due to internal contradictions there could be no overall meaning.
Chomsky used the semiotic approach in his Syntactic Structures (1957), an exploration of the links between mind and language within his generative conception of linguistics. Roland Barthes extended the application of structuralism to myth, art and culture in his Elements in Semiology (1964) and Image, Music, Text (1977).
Summary
Preface
Saussure's students prefaced the editions of his Cours explaining that in 1913, after his death, they had published his University of Geneva lectures of the three academic years 1906-7, 1908–09, and 1910–11. They relied on student notes to recall the lectures.
Introduction,
The Cours introduction describes the evolution of linguistics through three stages.
The first stage started with the Ancient Greeks who studied grammar, the classification of how words function in sentences. Grammar follows logical thought and is prescriptive.
The second stage came in the late 18th. century with philology which compared texts, interpreted them and placed them in a literary context. Comparative philology dealt with synchronic comparisons between languages and was aided by the discovery of Sanskrit and the Indo-European linguistic theory. However this approach was not diachronic and did not situate languages in their historical context.
In 1870 a third stage began when linguists placed comparative philology diachronically in its historical context. This approach accounted for the community in the rise of language.
Saussure argues that the science of linguistics has three aims:
- the creation of a family tree of all languages, their historical evolution and their interconnections.
- the discovery of universal principles that govern all manifestations of language.
- the definition of linguistics as a science and its relationships to other sciences, for example ethnography, anthropology, sociology, psychology, physiology, and philology.
The object of linguistic study has several approaches, each one with two binary aspects: phonetic duality (vocal and auditory), duality of sound and thought, social and individual duality and the duality of the established system in evolution. The basic object of linguistic study is the structure of language. Language is characterised by the sign, the union of sense and sound patterns. It is psychological and social. The author proposed that linguistics be a branch of semiology which dealt with signs. Signs are both psychological and social, but as sound patterns and their meanings they are not under the control of individuals.
The introduction closes with a discussion of the inconsistency in writing systems and how they confuse our understanding of what language is. Language constantly evolves, but writing and thus spelling are more fixed. The spelling of sounds in writing fails to change with the pace of the language itself. He states that language is a system that is produced by the collective mind of its users.
Appendix to the Introduction
Saussure investigates physiological phonetics which classifies the limited number of speech sounds. It is a binary study: physical articulation and auditory impression. He classifies sound production in the vocal apparatus using the parameters of abduction (act of spreading apart vocal chords to bring in air to the lungs), adduction (act of closing vocal chords to produce sound), vocalic peak (vowel sound), and syllabic boundaries (beginning and end of a syllable).
Part 1: General Principles
The sound (signifier) and concept (signified) are linked arbitrarily. Saussure states that languages are stable due to tradition and the system's intrinsic conservatism. At the same time the author describes the variability of language and its continual change. He distinguishes between the binary approaches to linguistic study: synchronicity, units that co-exist in time; diachronicity, changes in units over time.
Part 2: Synchronic Linguistics
Signs are studied synchronically by comparing their differences within the general language structure, which is the mediator between phonetic and conceptual differences. Linguistic signs can be grouped in syntagmas formed by a speech event or through psychological clusters of words of similarity and difference. Saussure rejects prescriptive grammar and proposes descriptive grammar based on acceptable word combinations (syntagmas) and linguistic sign associations.
Part 3: Diachronic Linguistics
This is the study of phonetics in evolution, examining the sound changes and ignoring the meaning.
Appendices to Parts 2 and 3
The study of linguistic units is analysed subjectively while they are spoken. There also exists an objective analysis based on history. Both compare linguistic forms which have a common element.
Part 4: Geographical Linguistics
Language diversity has a complex relationship with geographical distribution. Languages have boundaries, but dialects, as subbranches of different languages, have no natural boundaries.
It is social intercourse that pushes the evolution of language. Schmidt's wave theory (1871) was adopted by Saussure to explain how languages moved in waves of evolution, individually and through time. This emphasised that one language can diversify in one location, so human migrations are not necessary to explain language diversification.
Part 5: Questions of Retrospective Linguistics: Conclusion
Diachronic linguistics compares language backwards in order to reconstruct older forms of speech. This helps in making predictions about later linguistic developments. Language is unstable and cannot be classed through form, thus the scientific method for language inquiry is the study of its structure.
Themes
The linguistic modes: diachronic and synchronic
"Synchrony and diachrony will designate respectively a linguistic state and a phase of evolution."
Diachrony is the evolutionary changes over time that do not change the linguistic structure. These changes are unintentional and random because the sign is arbitrary; it is the synchronicity facts that are significant.
The synchronicity state is like the pieces on a chessboard at one moment in the game. With each move a new relationship develops among the pieces. Diachronic processes are the equivalent of each movement of a single piece, though in language these changes are unintentional and random.
19th. century linguists used a historical, philological approach to language so that they could only make unfounded hypotheses about linguistic evolution. Saussure contended that language was a structured system of different values and emphasised the synchronic study of language:
"It is clear that the synchronic point of view takes precedence over the diachronic, since for the community of language users that is the one and only reality."
Language as a System
Before Saussure linguists had dealt with the context of language. They compared their own language with others of different regions, but they drew no conclusions about the nature of language itself. Other approaches to language study were anthropological, grammatical, literary, sociological and physiological, with no unity to the discipline. Without methodology their conclusions were partial.
Saussure's Cours established a scientific foundation for linguistics by studying language in itself and setting three aims:
- describing and recording the history of all languages
- drawing the boundaries between linguistic and external inquiries
- discovering the permanent laws operating in all languages and their structure.
Binary analysis
It was Jacques Derrida who pointed out that Saussure based his theory on binary oppositions (dyads). This philosophical approach defined units in terms of oppositional pairs in which one is superior to another.
The basic binary pair in Saussure is the signifier (sound image) and the signified (concept). The author emphasised that this relationship was conventional and arbitrary and both terms were psychological.
Langue and Parole is another example of binary opposition. Langue refers to the structure of language; parole is individual expression. These terms are parallels to Chomsky's competence and performance.
Synchronic and diachronic refer to the study at one period of time or over time.
Saussure privileged speech over writing. Derrida criticised this as phonocentrism, a manifestation of logocentrism, synonymous with power. He considers speech a form of writing and introduces a term of synthesis: écriture to cancel any superiority between speech and writing.
Saussure’s structural analysis of language in Cours influenced thinking in various fields: anthropology (Levi-Strauss), semiology (Roland Barthes), the philosophy of Derrida, Althusser's Marxist analysis, Lacan's psychoanalytical theories and the language analysis of feminists like Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray.
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