Course in General Linguistics (1916)
Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure casts a huge shadow over much of 20th century theory. His insights about language inspired the structuralist approach to theory which in turn led to poststructuralism. Getting your head around Saussure’s basic ideas is therefore crucial for a more general understanding of theory. This article explains the most important point from Saussure’s thought; that language is a system of differences with no positive terms.

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In the “Course in General Linguistics,” Saussure aims to facilitate the scientific study of language. In order to do this, he must first determine what language is. This task involves abstracting a neat object of study from the chaotic mess of language.

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When people speak, they combine complex muscle movements with the expulsion of air from the lungs in order to make sounds which are perceived and decoded by other language users. Real language use also involves huge amounts of variation; each speaker speaks differently.

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Instead of trying to deal with the complexities of real speech, Saussure focuses on the system which underpins and facilitates real conversation. To use his terms, he wants to study langue (the system of a language) rather than parole (real speech).

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Saussure names his new scientific study of language semiology, which means the study of signs. As he understands it, language is a sign system.

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The basic unit of language is the sign, which is composed of two elements. The sign is a combination of a sound-image and a concept. The sound-image is not an actual sound, but rather the impression that the sound of a word forms in the mind. Think of someone reciting poetry in their head. The sounds of the poem, which are never actually pronounced, are the sound-images that Saussure has in mind. The second element of the sign is the concept. This is the mental idea that corresponds to the sound-image. So, to give Saussure’s well known example, when we think about the sound-image “tree,” it is accompanied with the idea of the large plant which grows in forests.

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The names given to the sound-image and the concept are signifier and signified. Although we can analyze these elements separately, when we speak or think, the two are inseparable. Think the signifier “tree” and you “see” the signified tree in your mind’s eye and vice versa. Signifier and signified are like two sides of the same coin, where the coin itself is the sign.

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Now that we have identified what we are studying (the sign), Saussure begins to examine its nature. His first observation is that the signifier is arbitrarily connected to the signified. In other words, there is no logical connection between the two.

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To prove this, we can see that different languages will use different signifiers for the same signified. Where English uses “tree,” Latin uses “arbor” and German uses “baum.” Since there is no logical connection between the signified and signifier, there must be another force which joins them together in the sign.

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Clearly, social convention is required in order to connect between the signifier and the signified. Everyone needs to agree that the sound “tree” corresponds to the idea of a tree. But taking a step back, Saussure asks where the concept of a tree and the sound “tree” come from in the first place. It is not as though these two entities were just hanging around waiting for language to come along and couple them together as a sign. To understand where signifiers and signifieds come from, we need to look at the system of language as a whole rather than at just individual signs.

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Saussure asserts that language is not a nomenclature. What he means is that language does not just pin labels onto pre-existing concepts. Thought is not composed of neatly divided entities just waiting for language to give them names. Instead, the swirling chaos of thought and the swirling chaos of sounds are organized by the system of language. Language divides sounds into specific words (signifiers) and divides thought into discrete concepts (signifieds). But this can only happen as part of a whole system. When attempting to determine how meaning works, it is necessary to start not on the level of the sign, but of the level of the system of which it is a part.

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Saussure again turns to the differences between languages for evidence that language does not simply name ideas which already exist. If ideas were independent of language, he argues, then all languages would just name the same set of ideas. Yet anyone who has studied a foreign language will have quickly run into untranslatable ideas. For example, French has two words for “to know”: savoir is to know how to do something and connaître is to be familiar with something or someone. So it cannot be that there is an idea – to know – that is simply named “to know” by the English language. Instead, we should understand that language is instrumental in creating concepts. In other words, it is language which divides up and organizes the swirling chaos of thought.

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Another useful example is the visible color spectrum. English divides the spectrum into seven discrete colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Greek and Russian, on the other hand identify eight colors. In these languages, the range of the spectrum which English calls blue is split into two separate colors. So again, we see that language does not name things which already exists, but actively divides the world of ideas into concepts of its choosing.

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Our analysis of language has now shifted. Previously, we were discussing the internal division of the sign, being composed of the signifier and the signified. Now, we are looking at the differences between signs. This is because, as noted above, when we want to understand how meaning works, we need to examine the system of language and not just individual signs. We can use Saussure’s example of a coin to illustrate this shift. We can think of the significance of a coin in two distinct ways. One the one hand, it can be exchanged for something entirely different. A piece of fruit for example. This exchange is like the signifier/signified axis – each side of the axis is completely different. On other hand, we can also understand the coin in comparison to other coins of different value. In this case, we are comparing it to entities which are similar. This is like the differences between different signs.

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We now have all of the pieces of Saussure’s argument. We can list them as follows: 1. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. 2. Language is not a nomenclature (it does not name pre-existing concepts) 3. Signs are arranged in a system of differences. So where does meaning come from? It cannot come from the sign itself, since there is no logical relationship between the signified and signifier. It cannot just be social convention since the world is not made up of things just waiting to be named. This leaves the system of differences as the mechanism through which meaning is generated.

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To examine this in more detail, let’s read a key passage from Saussure:

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In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.

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Language is a system of differences without positive terms. We can examine this claim in terms of the signified first. Ideas, Saussure states, do not exist outside of language. Taking the color green, we only have an idea of green in terms of its difference from other color terms. Green is green because it is not blue and because it is not yellow. We know of green not for what it is, but for what it is not. Were it not for the wider system of language, there would be no way of differentiating green from the other colors. In addition, if the color spectrum had been divided into six rather than seven colors, and there was no green, then the idea of blue and the idea of yellow would be expanded to encompass what we currently think of as green. Another way of thinking about this is to consider that there is no one shade of green. Green covers a wide range of shades such that it is not possible to say precisely what green is. It is only possible to state what it is not – it is neither blue nor yellow.

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In terms of the signifier, Saussure insists above that linguistic sounds can also not be said to exist prior to the system of language. The human vocal tract is capable of producing a wide range of sounds which are also arranged into a system of differences by language. The phonemes of a language do not have specific essence; there can be all sorts of variations in pronunciation of the same phoneme. The only restriction is that the phonemes cannot overlap. So, for example, in English, there are two completely different /l/ sounds: the l in “lit” is different from the l in “ball.” But since neither overlap with the sounds of any other phoneme, then English speakers can consider them to be the same.

Saussure points out that the same ideas of difference apply to writing. It is possible to hand-write the letter “t” in a variety of ways. All of them will count as a “t” so long as they are not confused with other letters of the alphabet. In all these examples, the lesson is the same: ideas, sounds, letters only have meaning as part of a system and their meaning is derived from the outside. To put it paradoxically, they are what they are not.

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Let’s look at one last example. Saussure uses the game of chess as a metaphor for language. The pieces on the board are like linguistic signs which can be divided into signifiers (what the piece looks like) and signifieds (what the rules of the game permit the piece to do). Now, imagine that a game of chess has been set up only to reveal that one of the bishops is missing. Saussure points out that there would be no problem with replacing the missing piece with anything at all, so long as it is different from all the other pieces on the board and that it fits onto a chess square. In other words, there is nothing inherent to the bishop that makes it a bishop. A pen top can just as easily be a bishop and this is because what makes it into a bishop is its difference from the other chess pieces.

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To return to our question of where meaning comes from, the answer is that the meaning of each linguistic sign is produced by the fact that language is a system of differences. Meaning does not come from within the sign, but from outside of it. The meaning of each sign is a function of its difference from the signs closest to it in the system of language. Words have meaning which fills the space left by other similar but different words. The word green fills the gap between yellow and blue. The word chair fills the gaps between stool, bench, throne, sofa etc.

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Let’s close this topic with an image of what happens whenever language is used. For each sentence uttered or written, overlaying the linear sequence of words, is a vast web of associations which exist in the head of the speaker, listener or reader. Each word is given meaning and held in place by what Saussure calls a “constellation” of associated terms without which the utterance would be meaningless. To use a term which is not associated with Saussure, we can think of this constellation as a kind of haunting. Floating around each word in a sentence is a cloud of ghostly words. These are the similar but different terms which must be there in order for the word to have meaning.

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To consider the significance of Saussure’s insights, it is worth pausing again over the final part of the quotation above: “language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.” In other words, it is language itself, as a system of differences, which produces ideas. Saussure’s claim is that ideas, the very things that we think with, are a product of language. If this is true, then there can be no such thing as pure or unmediated thought. The only way to think is through language, using the terms that language has provided us with.