Michael's Notes on Saussure

Dear Folks, 
  As my first contribution to the blog, I'm posting my notes on Saussure. 
This is one of the hardest texts we'll read all year, so I thought these notes might be helpful.

Cheers,

Michael

Saussure NOTES

Intro Chapter III §1

- What linguistics studies is not self-evident, because each and every word does not just mean different things, but is different things: an idea, a sound, an element of history

- At first glance, the question “what is a word?” must be answered: it depends

- Speech sounds are not independent of thoughts; in that sense, they are not “things”

- Language is always both individual and social; these two aspects are inseparable from each other

- Language always involves both a present and a past; language does not have a history “and” a present usage; these two are also inseparable; linguistic history is always being made; it is made every time someone speaks the language

- Solution to dilemma is to study linguistic structure: a “social product of our language faculty”; a body of conventions adopted by society to use the language faculty; the principle of order to all the different aspects of language;

- It is not clear whether language is a natural function of the vocal apparatus; it is clear that no one language is more natural than another

- [Key term:] Articulation, the division of sound into discrete syllables, words, sentences; essential to the process of making meaning; we make sense of the whole (whatever idea is expressed) by making sense of the parts, and understanding their relation to each other; one essential definition, though not the only one: language is articulated sound

§2

- in order to express concepts (or ideas), an individual speech act requires a circuit between two people, involving both (articulated) speaking and (comprehending) listening

- the physiological and psychological facts are also part of a social phenomenon: the words used to express concepts are the same between the members of the language-speaking group [“wonderful!” is used in all kinds of ways—but not to describe a toothache, except sarcastically; no one uses the expression “dirt path” to describe Highway 401, again unless they’re kidding]; the shared words are symptoms of a shared concept, which in turn becomes a shared word, used to express the shared concept; words and language are where we express our agreement and shared experience; none of us call Highway 401 a “dirt road” because that isn’t the way any of us experience it; hence we use “the same signs linked to the same concepts”

- read FdS p 30, right hand column: the totality of stored impressions is the totality of (and called) language

- language is the totality of shared impressions and concepts, independent of (or beyond) the individual utterances and speech acts of individuals, which Saussure calls speech [which includes written speech acts]

[more on language structure:]

1. It is external to the individual, who is powerless to control it; if you want to say ‘sheep’ and mean ‘car,’ no one will understand you; more importantly, no one will follow your example; it will be even worse if you start to say “the” three or four times before every word; the convention is to say “the” just once, and it will be impossible for you to change it

2. Language struucure can be studied independently, both of individual speech acts, and of specific historical conditions; in other words, no one individual or situation defines a language, and its structure can be studied independent of them all, even if it is no longer spoken

3./4. Structure is sufficiently consistent and tangible that it can be studied, because even though the patterns formed by all the speech acts are very diverse, they are coherent enough that they can be studied like objects; a linguist can study words, just as an astronomer studies stars and constellations, or a geologist studies mountains and rocks

§3



- A [particular] language has a key role in social life; “language” (in general) does not; the language capacity of human beings is an abstraction; we cannot point out or explain exactly what it is, but only look to the way it is used in particular cases

- There are two kinds of particular case: individual speech acts, and the social totality of these acts, the structure of them all, which is English as opposed to French, as opposed to German

- Language is an abstraction; what I am saying right now is concrete, and so is the English language



Part ONE Chapter I §1 – how linguistic signs actually work

- if we assume that words (simply) represent things, then we assume that concepts are independent of words, because ideas already exist, and language simply comes along and provides names or labels for what we already understand

- linguistic signs link concepts and sound patterns – not brain waves and objects, but experiences (sound pattern and concepts are both ‘experiences’)

- sound pattern, because the actual sound isn’t required, or essential; many distinct sounds can have the same sound pattern, such as child’s voice, a non-native speaker, a TV star, a drunk; recognition of the pattern is what creates meaning, not (just) recognition of the sound

- A sign is the conjunction of sound pattern and concept; a stop sign automatically tells us, signals ‘stop’ to us; if we see drivers ahead of us stop at an intersection (and don’t see a traffic light), we automatically assume there’s a stop sign, we make the association; even a crude drawing of a tree has the same effect, because the association works the same way, that is, the same combination of sound pattern and concept

- “But ‘stop’ means I do something, such as stop my car or bicycle; ‘tree’ doesn’t do that” – well, then ‘tree’ is a different kind of concept, one that does not involve a specific instruction; “kinds of words” are kinds of concepts, different ways to use signs in our social lives

§2

- the sign is arbitrary; it could be any sound pattern that, through the history of usage, a society/culture/language-user group agrees to use as a concept

- Is the stuff you grill to make a sandwich “cheese,” “fromage,” or “Käse”? It depends on where you are and which language you’re speaking, and only on that; none of these words is any closer to “the truth” than the others

- As Saussure says, there is no internal connection of signal to signification; the ‘external’ connection is linguistic structure, the history of the (particular) language; it is external precisely because it already existed before you and I were born; we learned it; and is there anything more important that we did in our lives to become who we are?

- Even signals which appear to be natural, such as ‘tick-tock’ for a ticking clock (an imitative sound), or bowing low to a superior authority, like an act of physiological submission, is only meaningful because it is a learned convention; unless someone understands that convention, that language, it isn’t meaningful

- Semiology means that all meaningful sounds behave like linguistic signs, or are a part of language

- “Arbitrary” does not mean that the sign can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean; it means that signs are chosen through the process linguistic history, and have no natural or absolute basis; cheese, fromage, and Käse are characteristic sounds of their languages, i.e., they “sound like” English, French, German words, and are consistent with the sound patterns of other words in those languages; beyond that, they have no special relation to what we put on sandwiches, in particular no natural or automatic relation; had the history of the language been different, so would the words

- [famous] example: in English, when the animal is walking around, we call it a cow [from German Kuh] or swine [from German Schwein]; when it’s on the table, as food, we call it beef or pork [from French boeuf and pork]; the change happened after the French invasion of England in 1066, after which all the ruling nobility were French, and so could afford to eat the meat; the English peasants who tended the animals could not, and so used the (older) words for the animals in the living form, which was how they knew them

- The fact that some words have sound patterns that resemble what they describe as a concept (such as “gurgle” or “screech” in English) doesn’t change the arbitrary nature of the sign, because other languages may not use a related sound for that concept; it’s never universal, and meaning always depends on the history of adopted conventions

- Exclamations, too, vary from language to language, and over time; it is not natural or inevitable that someone says “Ow!” or “Ouch!” when they bang their thumb with a hammer, any more than it’s natural they say—as I would, in that case--@!#$$#, %%$%#@&^!! *&*^%+$#@ !#@ %^$#@$!!

§3

- Signs are temporal; they take place in linear time, unfold one part at a time; we understand them by [Key term:] synthesis, by mentally combining the parts into wholes, and the wholes into larger wholes; as we hear or read them, syllables combine into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences, paragraphs, stories, essays; articulation is the process of generating these parts in time; whether audibly (in speech) or visually (in writing), the temporal aspect of the process is equally essential

Chapter I §1 – Variability & Change

- Once a signal is chosen by a linguistic community, it cannot be changed, except by the community; since it is community (or communally) based, the process is a not a matter of free choice or contract (“hey, fellers! Why don’t we call them dumb birds “pigeons,” eh?); a language is always an inheritance from the past

- No society ever knows (its) language otherwise; hence, the origin of language is a fairly minor question; for practical purposes, it has “always been like this”

- What we inherit is above all linguistic structure: even if through speech acts we add words and expressions to “English” [with a capital ‘E’], the rules of its grammar (and spelling) change very slowly, over centuries—if at all

1. Language cannot be changed by conscious choice of the community (or individuals within the community), because it isn’t based on rational consensus in the first place; “the sign is arbitrary” also means that changing the system is difficult, because it is elusive

2. The working variables of a language are very small—27 letters in English, and about 90 different vocal sounds in total—but the combinations of them as signs are virtually limitless; again, that makes fundamental change difficult

3. The system is extremely complex; just to list all of the rules of spoken and written English would be a huge undertaking; it is hard to change for that reason, too

4. Collective inertia resists all innovations – everyone uses language constantly; even in a small community, the number of speech acts in a day is in the hundreds of thousands; changing a system so heavily used “on the fly” is difficult; hence “continuity with the past restricts freedom of choice”

- the sign is arbitrary, but fixed by tradition—and there is nothing else that “fixes” signs, gives them stability, except tradition

§2

- While the system of linguistic structure, anchored in the past of custom and tradition, is extremely slow to change, the language itself is not, in fact can change rapidly, because the relation between signal and signification is relatively unstable

- Changes in social customs can bring changes in such relations; the industrial revolution brought new words, and new senses for old ones (such as “work,” “job,” “task”); so did the computer revolution

- The sheer number of times that words are spoken every day tends, as we saw, to make changes to the system difficult; but, through usage, it makes changes to the signs probable, or at least very flexible; the ceaseless evolution of slang is a good illustration

- Hence “a language” and a linguistic community are inseparable; they define themselves and each other through (historical) time