Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (French pronunciation: /fɛʁdinɑ̃ də sosyʁ/; Geneva, November 26, 1857-Vufflens-le-Château, February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician, and philosopher whose ideas served to initiate and later develop the study of modern linguistics in the 19th century. "font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">XX. He is known as the father of "structural linguistics" of the XX century.He also started the Geneva School within the so-called & # 34; Structuralist Schools & # 34;. A linguistic group continued his work as a linguist. Despite this, many linguists and philosophers consider his ideas as extemporaneous.

Intellectual biography

He studied Sanskrit in Leipzig, Germany, where he was influenced by the neogrammarians, who sought to renew the methods of comparative grammar. He then dedicated himself to the study of musical expression and published at the age of 21 Memory on the primitive system of vowels in Indo-European languages with such rigor and method (comparative grammar) that it is still valid today. The following year he published his doctoral thesis entitled On the use of the genitive absolute in Sanskrit , work that gave him the merits to be appointed professor of comparative grammar at the School of Higher Studies in Paris.

After working as a professor in this academy for ten years, he is appointed professor of comparative grammar at the University of Geneva, concerned with language problems. The result of all these years would be the posthumous publication (in 1916) of the General Linguistics Course (the premature death of the teacher had occurred three years earlier, in 1913), which would become a milestone in the history of linguistics. Its publication was carried out by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, based on the reworking of the notes taken by several students (Ch. Bally, A. Sechehaye, H. Frei, A. Meillet, J. Vendryes) from the three occasions on which Saussure taught the course at said university between 1906 and 1911. In this course, Saussure's considerations regarding the linguistic sign are highlighted, which unfolds into a concept or meaning and its « acoustic image» or significant.

General linguistics course

The greatest contribution that Saussure made in his General Linguistics Course was the constitution of linguistics as a science. For this, in the first place, he had to delimit the object of study of him (language) leaving aside what he will call speech. This bipartition, so criticized later (since they are the two sides of the same coin and one cannot be studied without considering the other), we must understand it in its context, positivism, to understand that its objective was to formulate a method to give its studies the same scientific value with which the so-called "exact sciences" are measured. Indeed, his study abounds in dichotomies of this type.

The General Linguistics Course, by Ferdinand De Saussure, has the following ideas that are fundamental to understanding his structuralist perspective on Linguistics.

• Language and speech

Language: Known as human language (language).

Speech: Realization of language, communicative tool.

• Symphony and Symphonic Linguistic

Diachronic linguistics: Studies the evolution of language over time, how words, signs, appearance and discontinuation of these change.

Synchronous linguistics: It is the study of language during the present moment.

• Phontics and Phonology

Phonetics: It is the study of sound and its value in speech, specifically speaking of phones (speech sound unit).

Phonology: Study that focuses on knowing the phoneme system of a language.

• Meaning and significant

Meaning: Acoustic image, chain of sounds.

Significant: Conceptual image, is the concept or idea that we attribute to a thing.

• Sign immutability and mutability

Sign immutability: The individual is not capable of changing the meaning of the linguistic sign.

Sign mutability: Society is capable of changing the meaning of the linguistic sign.

• Syntagmatic relationships and associative relationships

Syntagmatic relations: Combination process of linguistic elements, combination axis.

Associative relations: Selection process, is a virtual set of linguistic elements (Phonemes), selection axis.

• Agglutination and analogy

• The linguistic value

It is the relation of a conceptual image and an acoustic image.

• Semitic and linguistic.

Semiotics: Study the relationships between the human being, signs and symbols.

Linguistics: Science whose field of study is language.

• Linearity of the signifier

Dictates that the sequence of sounds has an order within time.

Saussure decided to focus on language because it can be approached scientifically. In his Course..., Saussure gives many definitions of the notion "language". The most important, which accounts for his structuralist perspective, is that language is a system, that is, its elements are related to each other, they are not isolated.

In addition, the author establishes very clear differences between language and speech. First, it could be said that language is social while speech is individual. This means that language is a set of social conventions that allow the exercise of speech in individuals.

Secondly, Saussure says that speech is accessory and more or less accidental. This means that speaking exercise is not essential. For example, we can think of the lyrics of a song, made up of linguistic signs, without the need to speak. Finally, language, unlike speech, is passively registered by individuals. This can be appreciated by observing, for example, how babies begin to understand the people around them. Although they are not given classes to learn their native language, they are able to passively absorb it by listening to others speak it.

It is important to note that, according to Saussure, language "is not a nomenclature". That is, language does not unite a word and a thing, but rather unites two psychic entities: the concept and the acoustic image (meanings and signifiers). This is associated with the author's structuralist perspective and, above all, with the notion of value..

Linearity of the signifier

Another of the principles of the sign is the linearity of its signifier. That is, that it develops in a linear extension: one element after another. It has an auditory nature and only develops in time: it is represented in an extension, and this extension is measurable in only one dimension, a line.

To illustrate this property, let's think about what would happen if we have these four letters A-C-S-O, to form a sign, or find a meaning that can be represented by them and thus form a signifier. As for example the word SACO; The letters are placed one in front of the other. It can also be THING. So if the order of the elements changes, the signifier changes. And without leaving aside the syllables and their accents, a totally different case is that within that set of letters, we can form the word SACÓ. The signifier is constituted by "only diverse oppositions with what is next to it" as Saussure said. So, we can say that if the order of the letters were not associated with any meaning, this would not be a sign.

Legacy

Although the repercussion of this work was not immediate, in the following years his contribution was transcendental for the development of this science during the last century. Likewise, this work was the inspiration for the intellectual movement that began with the work of Levi-Strauss, Sad Tropics, called structuralism. In his studies on aphasias, Roman Jakobson drew much inspiration from Saussure's considerations and later, on his part, Jacques Lacan elaborated theories in which he synthesized the work of Sigmund Freud, with that of Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss and Saussure; As for Saussure, Lacan considered that the Saussurian model of the linguistic sign must be reconsidered. The closed and biunivocal Saussurian model between signified and signifier would be correct in irrational animals but is open in Homo sapiens. Lacan inverts the design of the Saussurian linguistic sign: the signifier is placed above, the bar that separates it from the signified is expressed by pointing to repression, and the signified moves under that bar to the point that, according to Lacan's opinion, "low" a Signifier there is nothing. As for Lévi-Strauss, he especially takes from Saussure his criteria of binary and discrete oppositions (such as those that could occur between phonemes) and the synchronic and diachronic axes to elaborate a complex structuralist anthropology (as can be seen in Wild thinking or in Kinship structures).

Works by Saussure

Saussure's publications in life are only the Mémoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes, his doctoral thesis De l'emploi du génitif absolu en sanskrit and numerous articles gathered in Recueil des publications scientifiques.

Eponymy

• The asteroid (13580) of Saussure commemorates its name and that of the Swiss naturalist of the same name Horace-Bénédict of Saussure (1740-1799).