Sassurean Dichotomies

Saussure's dichotomies

Ferdinand De Saussure, a Swiss Linguist, brought about a revolution in the field of linguistics in the 19^th century. He is known as the founder of the modern school of linguistics popularly known as structuralism. He emphasised that every language has a structure or form which can be studied independently of the medium (sound or graphic signs) in which it is realised. Moreover, he held that linguistic studies should be synchronic instead of diachronic and descriptive instead of prescriptive.

Saussure stressed the existence of certain binary oppositions at every level of linguistic studies. These oppositions are commonly known as Saussurean dichotomies.

Synchrony and Diachrony

Saussure was of the view that every language could be studied from two different point of view: Synchronic and Diachronic.

A synchronic study of a language studies it as it exists at a given point of time. It is not concerned with the historical development of the language in question. It does not concerned with the question how the language has come to acquire the form that it has as a result of the numerous developments since it came into existence. It does not concern itself with the different stages that the language has passed through over time and what it was like at any earlier point of time. A description of English as it exists in the 21^st century would be a synchronic description.

The diachronic study of a language is historical in nature. It studies several different states of the language and, by comparing them, tries to discover how the language has arrived at its present stage. Diachronic studies try to discover the changes that have occurred in a language over time, how it has evolved and acquired the form that it has at a given point of time.

To Saussure, the synchronic study of language is more important as any person interested in learning it for practical purposes would be interested only in its contemporary form. The earlier states of the language have no use for him.

Moreover, we need to have before us several synchronic descriptions of the language which we may compare in order to discover how the language has been evolving over time before it became what it is at that given point of time.

Prescriptive and Descriptive

Saussure made it clear that there can be two different approaches to the description of a language: descriptive and prescriptive.

The approach of the traditional grammarians was prescriptive or mormative. Just as a doctor prescribes what medicine a patient should take to get well, this approach prescribes the rules that a user of the language should follow while using the language. It tells us what is right and what is wrong, what is the correct form of the language of the language and what is incorrect. It insists that the rules laid down by the grammarian are inviolable and any departure from them would make the language corrupt. It prescribes what a language should be like instead of saying what it is. It lays down an ideal instead of describing a reality. For example, it insists that the pronoun that occurs after ‘than’ should always be in the subjective (agentive) case, not in the objective (accusative) case. It says that we should always say ‘He is taller than I’ instead of saying ‘He is taller than me’ ignoring the fact that many native speakers of English use ‘me’ in such situations instead of ‘I’.  

The descriptive approach, on the other hand, describes what the people actually do when they use the language. It tells us about the different various form actually used by the people without laying down which of them is correct and which is incorrect. It describes a reality, not an ideal. A descriptive linguist would tell us that the speakers of English use both I and Me in the situation given above.

Langue and Parole

The word language is used in English in two different senses referring to language system and language behaviour. Saussure drew a distinction between the two senses using the word langue for the language system and parole for language behaviour.

Langue or language system is a social phenomenon or institution which is purely abstract. It has no physical existence. It refers to the lexicon and the grammatical and syntactic rules which the speakers of a language follow while using the language for different purposes in life. The rules become manifest to us only in the utterances of the speakers. In other words, it refers to the linguistic competence of the speakers, their knowledge of the language system which enables them to use the language.

Parole, on the other hand, refers to the actual language behaviour of the members of a language community. Parole is individual while langue is social.

Chomsky has used the terms competence and performance to distinguish the two concept. Competence, as used by him, is the knowledge of the language system which an individual speaker possesses and which enables him to use the language. It is different from Saussure’s langue in so far as langue refers to the competence of the society as a whole rather than the competence of an individual speaker. All the speakers of the language use the same system (langue) but their language behaviour may vary from individual to individual. The word parole can be used in exactly the same sense as language behaviour used by Chomsky.

Linguists cannot approach langue directly. They only infer it from the parole of the different speakers.

Signifier and Signified

A language is a system based on an infinite set of signs which combine in a given way in the language behaviour of the speakers. Some people regard language only as a naming process which links a pre-existing concept with a word.

But for Saussure, the term sign has two different aspects. These two aspects are the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the actual sequence of sounds in speech and letters in writing that users of a language actually use refer to things, concepts or relations. The signified is the actual physical or abstract entity that the sign stands for. The word is the signifier and the thing or concept it names is the signified.

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

A language system consists of elements which combine with one another in terms of two basic relations which are complementary. These relations are syntagmatic and paradigmatic.

Syntagmatic relationship is the relationship which exists among elements that combine with one another in a linear way i.e. from left to right. They cannot replace one another in the same place. It is the relationship which tells us which word or phrase can precede another word in a larger structure in order to make it syntactically well formed. They throw light on the distribution of different classes or categories of words in different types of structures. However being syntactically does not mean being semantically well formed. A noun thus can be pre-modified by an adjective in a noun phrase. Therefore. A deep mountain is a syntactically well-formed noun phrase. But it is not semantically well-formed.  

For example, the relationship among the different words in the phrase ‘a new car, or the sentence ‘I have bought a new car’ is syntagmatic. The sentence ‘Colourful green ideas sleep furiously’ is not acceptable because the syntagmatic relationships do not allow such a linear combination. The sentence ‘Happy contented people sleep soundly’ is acceptable because the words are in correct syntagmatic relationship. Syntagmatic relationships tell us which sets of elements can combine to form larger units in a linear manner to constitute sensible units.

Paradigmatic relationship is the relationship among words that exists among words which can replace one another in the same position. For example, we can substitute the word the, my, his, her, your, that etc. Similarly, the word new can be replaced by old, beautiful, costly etc. Car can be replaced by fridge, picture, book etc. Each word in these three sets is in paradigmatic relationship with the other words in the set. Similarly, in the word ‘mat’, we can substitute c or b etc. to get the words bat or cat. The letters m, b and c are, therefore, in paradigmatic relationship with one another. The paradigmatic relationship is also called the substitutional relationship. On the other hand, we can use the term linear relationship in place of syntagmatic relationship.

Complementary Distribution and Free Variation

Most of the time, when one member in a set having paradigmatic relationship is substituted for another element in the set, the larger unit becomes a different unit. When an element, when substituted for another, changes the larger unit into a different unit, the two elements are said to be in complementary distribution. For example, if we replace the word car in ‘my new car’ by the word fridge, we get a new phrase which carries a meaning different from the earlier phrase. The words car and fridge therefore are in complementary distribution.

But if such substitution does not result in a different unit, the units occupying the slot in question are said to be in free variation. For example, if in the sentence ‘I do not know him’, ‘do not’ is replaced by ‘don’t’, the sentence does not become a different sentence. Therefore, do not and don’t are in free variation. Similarly, in the word ‘little’, if the sound t is replaced by the glottal stop (?), we do not get a new word. The word remains the same but the articulation is slightly different. The sounds t and ? therefore are in free variation.

Arbitrariness and Immunity

Saussure not only differentiated between the signifier and the signified but also stressed that the relationship between the two was arbitrary. Arbitrariness means that there is no discernable system of creating signifiers with regard to the signified. It simply means that there are no clear rules for combining the sounds into a word for naming an object or concept. You do not have to match the sounds with the meaning so that the meaning may be inferred from the sounds. It just happens that someone gives a name to something and that name is then accepted by the others in the linguistic group. You could have given it a different name. But once the word is coined, it is accepted by tradition.

But arbitrariness is not complete. Once a name has been given to an object, the group has to stick to it. A tree must then be called a tree. You cannot use any other signifier to signify it. For example, you cannot call it a window. In other words, a signifier once adopted is immune to change in its relationship to its signified.

Language change happens when a given signified comes to be referred to by another signifier or when an existing signifier begins to be used to signify a different signified i.e. it gets a different meaning. But language change is very slow. It does not change all of a sudden.

But there are limits to arbitrariness. The meaning of a compound word is generally a sum of the meaning of its two components. However, there are some compound words the meaning of which is not related to their components. For example, the meaning of a pen-drive has nothing to do with the meaning of its two constituents. Nor is a subway an underpass.

In addition, there are some onomatopoeic words like bang and cuckoo in every language the meaning of which is reflected by the sound. 

Associatve Value

Saussure also asserted that the value or meaning of a signifier in a language system is the result of its relationship with all the other signifiers in its lexicon. This value is determined by its opposition to other words in the language. The French word mouton means both sheep and cooked meat. But English has two different words for these two concepts. This is called the theory of associative value.

This is true not only of words but also of sounds. The value of a sound is determined not by its own quality but by its differences from the other sounds. The sounds k and g are different sounds because k is voiceless and g is voiced. It is this opposition of one or more characteristics that distinguishes sounds from one another.

Every unit in a system is thus defined by the relations it maintains with the other units and by the oppositions into which it enters with them. Saussure thus rejected the traditional view that the data of a language have value in themselves and are objective facts, that they are absolute entities which can be considered in isolation. Their value is determined by the system which organises and governs them and in terms of the relations they have with others. They have no value except as elements in a system. By themselves, they have no value.

That is why it is the system that needs to be isolated, studied and described. Saussure thus founded a new theory of language as a system of signs and as an arrangement of units in a hierarchy.