Structuralism - Ferdinand De Saussure ---The Object of Linguistics

           Structuralism (Introduction, Chapter 3)

The object of other sciences is clear before we begin to study them. Then it is studied from different points of view. But it is not so in the case of linguistics.

It is often said that Linguistics is the study of language.

But what is language?

Take a word.  Is it a concrete linguistic object? It may appear to be so at first sight.

But is it to be studied as a sequence of sounds, as the expression of an idea, or as an equivalent of a word in another language?

So the object to be studied from different angles is not there in advance. At least it is not clear what it is. It is the attitude which creates the object?

A speech sound or a syllable is a sound heard by the ear. But it would not exist without the activity of the vocal organs. So, we cannot reduce language to sound (a sequence of sounds) which has nothing to do with the activity of the articulatory organs i.e. the articulation of the sound. Nor can the articulation be considered without taking into account the quality of the sound which is heard by the ear.

But even if we ignore articulatory activity and take the sound to be a simple thing,

Will it be considered speech? No. It has no existence by itself. It is the instrument of thought. And cannot be studied without taking the thought into account. A sound combines with an idea to form a physical, physiological, psychological unit.

But the picture is still not complete, which has both an individual and a social side to it. A word, although the speaker knows what concept it represents, will have no meaning if the society also associates with the same concept.

So speech (language) is an established system created and sustained by society. It is carried by tradition or convention from generation to generation. It evolves with time. It is dynamic, not static. 

It would be wrong to study the system as it existed or exists at any one point of time. In the thirteenth century or the twentieth. In a child or an adult.

We cannot distinguish between the system as it exists today and its history. It would seem to be a simple solution but it is wrong. Language is an existing institution but at the same time a product of the past. The two are so closely related that we cannot keep them apart.

So we do not have an undivided or integral object to study. Everywhere, we are faced with a dilemma.

If we consider one side and ignore the other, our study would be partial and incomplete. We are unable to take into account the dualities pointed out above.

 If we look at the problem from all the angles, the result would be a confused mass of heterogeneous but unrelated things. Whichever way we move, linguistics appears to be a part of many sciences.

The only solution seems to be to treat language, not speech, as the object of linguistics. We can then define language independently and make the fulcrum of our study.

But what is language? It is not speech. It is only a definite but essential part of speech.

It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions which have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to use this faculty.

Speech, in itself is many sided.  It covers many areas – physical, physiological and psychological. We cannot discover any unity in it. So it is not a human fact that we can study.

It belongs both to the individual and the society.

Language on the other side is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification complete in itself. It is a system which manifests itself in speech or writing. It is this system which forms the subject matter of linguistics. But then, there can be objections to this decision of giving language as a system  the first place.

1. Speech is based on a natural faculty, language is something acquired and conventional and therefore, it is not right to give it the first place i.e. to consider it more important than speech.

But this objection can easily be refuted.

It cannot be proved that speech is entirely natural, that our vocal organs were designed only for speaking just as the legs for walking. According to Whitney, it was only by a lucky chance that we chose the vocal apparatus (our speech organs) as the tool of language. We could have chosen gestures or visual symbols and signs as the tool instead of sounds or their sequences.

We may say that he is wrong and the choice was, more or less, imposed by nature. But there is one valid point in what he says – language is conventional irrespective of the nature of the sign which is immaterial.

Vocal apparatus is obviously secondary in the problem of speech. The Latin word for vocal organs is articulus which means a member, a part, a subdivision.

So speech may be treated as a subdivision of a spoken chain into syllables or sounds or the subdivision of a chain of meaning into significant units – sentences, phrases, words.

If we accept the second option, we can say that what is natural to man is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing or assimilating a language i.e. a system of signs corresponding to distinct ideas.

It has been proved that the same part of the brain as controls the production of speech controls also all other activities connected with speech such as writing; Injury to this part pf the brain results not only in the loss of speech but also in the ability to write. It means that what we actually lose is the ability to evoke the signs of a regular system of speech. This brings us to the same conclusion – that language as a system should be given the first place.

The faculty of articulating words is exercised only with the help of the instrument created by society and provided to us for the use of this faculty of speech i.e. the language system which makes this activity meaningful.

2. Place of Language in the Facts of Speech

Now the circuit continues in B but in the reverse order. The ears transmit the sound image which they have heard to the brain which is a physiological activity. The brain then associates the image with the concept i.e. it interprets the meaning of the sound image which is a psychological activity. If B then makes a reply, another circuit begins.

There is much more to it. These are only the essential elements without which language cannot be used. Even the word image is different from the sounds and is as psychological as the concept with which is associated.

The circuit can be divided into the following parts:

a) an outer part which includes the sound waves which travel from the mouth to the ear and an inner part which includes everything else.

b) a psychological and a non-psychological part. The non-psychological part is the production of sounds the vocal organs and their reception by the ear and the physical facts that are outside the individual.

c) An active and a passive part. Everything that goes from the associative centre of the speaker to the ear of the listener is active. Everything that goes from the ear of the listener to his associative centre is passive.

d) Everything that is active in the psychological part is executive and everything that is passive is receptive.

We should also include here the associative and coordinating faculty which plays a dominating part in organising language into a system.

To understand the role of the associative and coordinating faculty, we have to move over from the individual act to the social fact.

All the individuals using a language will use nearly the same signs to express the same concepts.

How does this social crystallisation of language take place? Obviously, all parts (physical, physiological and psychological) do not participate in this crystallisation process. We have to identify the parts which are involved in this process.

It is clear that the non-psychological part has no role in it. When we hear someone speaking a language not known to us, we hear the sounds but they have no meaning for us. We remain outside the social fact of language i.e. the concepts associated by the society using that language with those sound sequences.

Speaking, the executive part is also ruled out because it is an individual act not executed by the collectivity.

Even the psychological part is not wholly responsible for this crystallisation and organisation. Through the functioning of the receptive and coordinating faculties, impressions and the rules according to which they combine to form meaningful strings which are perceptibly the same for all are stamped on the minds of the speakers. The sum total of these word images and rules, if they could be separated from everything else, constitutes the system which we call language. It is a storehouse filled by the members of a given community through their active use of speaking with a large number of word images and the rules of a grammatical system that has a potential of existing in each brain or, more typically, in the brains of a group of individuals. It is this system that linguistics attempts to investigate. Language is not complete in any individual speaker. It exists in its totality only in the minds of a community.

When we are trying to separate language from speaking, we are at the same time separating

1. The social from the individual

2. The essential from the accessory or more or less accidental.

So language is not a function of the speaker. It is a product of the society which is passively assimilated by the individual. It does not need any premeditation. Reflection comes in only for the purpose of classification.

Speaking, on the contrary, is an act of the individual. It is intentional and intellectual.

Within the act of speaking, we should understand the difference between two things.

1. The combinations (of sounds) by which the speaker uses the language code to express his own thoughts.

2. The psychological mechanism which enables him to exteriorize those combinations.

We can sum up the above discussion as follows:

1) i.  Language is a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts.

ii. It can be localized in the limited segment of the speaking-circuit where an auditory image becomes associated with a concept.

iii. It is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself;

iv. It exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community.

v. Moreover, the individual must always serve an apprenticeship in order to learn the functioning of language;

vi. A child assimilates it only gradually. It is such a distinct thing that a man deprived of the use of speaking retains it provided that he understands the vocal signs that he hears.

2. Language, unlike speaking, can be studied separately from the other elements of speaking. In fact, the science of language is possible only if other elements are excluded. In this way, it is possible to study even dead languages no longer spoken.

3. While speech is heterogeneous, language is homogeneous. It is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images, and in which both parts of the sign (the form and the concept) are psychological.

4) Language is as concrete as speaking. Linguistic signs, though basically psychological, are not abstract things because associations which have collective approval—and which added together constitute language —are realities that exist in the brain.

Moreover, linguistic signs are tangible because it is possible to convert them into writing which can be seen with the eyes. On the other hand, it is not possible to convert speaking actions into visible graphic images.

The articulation of even the smallest word involves a large number of muscular movements which are hard to identify and represent as a fixed visual image. But language is a collection of sound images which can be represented as a set of fixed visual images. This is so because sound images are the sum of a limited number of elements (phonemes) which can be represented by corresponding written symbols. Dictionaries and grammars can represent it accurately because language is a storehouse of sound images and writing is the tangible form of these images.. 

 3. Place of Language in Human Facts:

One important characteristic of language is that it is a part of human phenomena whereas speech is not. Language is a social institution but it has to be distinguished from other institutions such as legal and political institutions.

Language is a system of signs that express ideas. We can compare it to the writing system for the deaf and dumb, symbolic rites, political formulas, military signals etc. But it is the most important of them all.

It is possible to conceive a science of signs as a part of social psychology and by implication of human psychology. We can call it semiology. It does not exist yet. But it has a right to exist. It would show what signs consist of, and what laws govern them. Linguistics would be a part of the general science of semiology and the laws of semiology would be applicable to it. It will mark out a well defined area within the mass of anthropological facts.

It is for the psychologist to determine the exact place of semiology. The job of the linguist would be to decide what makes language a special system within semiology.

In the absence of semiology, linguists have been moving without a direction. Language , more than anything else offers a basis for understanding the semiological problem. But for this purpose, language must be studied in itself. So far, it has been studied in connection with other things and from other viewpoints.

First of all, common people see it as a system of giving names to ideas and things. This fact has prevented us from investigating its true nature.

It should also not be confused with semantics which studies changes in meaning. Then there is the role of the psychologist who studies the working of the sign system in the individual. But the psychologist confines himself to the individual and does not approach the social aspect. The sign is a social, not an individual fact.

Even when studying signs from a social angle, only their traits which attach to other social institutions are emphasised. These traits are more or less voluntary. As a result, the real goal is bypassed. The special characteristics of semiological systems in general and of language in particular are totally ignored. This happens because the sign is not subject to either individual or social will.

The characteristic distinguishing the semiological systems from all other institutions manifests itself most clearly in language. And even here, it appears in things which are studied least. Therefore, the necessity or specific value of a semiological science is not recognised. But the language problem is chiefly semiological. To understand the true nature of language, we must find out what it has common with other semiological systems. Linguistic forces like the vocal apparatus, which appear to be very important at first glance will move down to a secondary position if they serve only to distinguish language from other systems.