Download Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure
Structuralism
Saussure’s work spread beyond linguistics to effect humanities and social sciences
including anthropology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II8_p2RBRfs
We’ve been looking at words as fundamental in spoken language.
How does word meaning fit into the picture?
The basic doctrine of structuralism is that the true nature of things (words included)
lies not in the things (words) themselves, but in the relationships between them
(things and words).
• How do we know the meaning of the color term orange?
• Only by virtue of the fact that it contrasts with a whole set of color terms.
• Orange is what is not-green, not-purple, not-blue etc.
• Orange is not an independent concept. Only by understanding its relationship with
other terms do we know its meaning.
Language exists because of the relationship between concepts
and sound-images.
• A linguistic unit is a double entity.
• A word is not simply a sound-image made up of phonemes. (A phoneme is
the smallest meaning-distinguishing unit of the sound system of a language.)
• Phonemes are applicable to the spoken word only. They are purely
physical.
• Still, we can talk to ourselves, within our minds, without moving our lips
or tongues. So our sound images have a psychological character.
The word chocolate is a linguistic unit. It is a concept and a sound image or perception. It is an impression
made on our senses, a two-sided psychological entity.
•
The elements of the concept and the sound-image are intimately united. They
recall each other.
•
Together they are a sign
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Signified = the concept (of chocolate)
Signifier = the sound-image (of the word chocolate)
Chocolate = the sign that combines concept and sound-image
Review: Language exists because of the relationship between concepts
and sound-images.
Words are not independent from thought.
• Words do not simply stand for things which exist independently
‘out there’.
• The vocal aspect (sound image or signifier) and the concept
(signified) are fused together in the sign.
• What about the thing itself? It is called the referent.
Saussure says that with the word
H-O-R-S-E, the concept of ‘horse’ is what is signified. (The concept is
different from the real thing or the referent.)
The referent is what kicks you.
The real thing (the referent) is external to the sign …
Whereas the signified is a part of the sign and inseparable from the
signifier …
… the signifier is influenced by its relationship with other signs, signifiers
and signified concepts.
A horse is not a motorized vehicle
A horse is not a mule or donkey
These are not the same categorical relationships that the concept of horse might have,
necessarily, in all language groups. The sign (signified + signifier) is culturally
influenced and constructed.
(Linguistic relativity)
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The true nature of signs, signifiers and signified lies in the relationships
between them. The sign, signifier, and signified suggest and oppose each
other at the same time.
Red, blue, and green things suggest that brown things are different, but the
same as other brown things. Red, blue, green and brown together suggest
that colors are in a category different from smells.
Saussure was working to show differences between language groups … to
show relativity
Later linguists and anthropologists began to use his ideas to find universals.
Understanding meaning by virtue of oppositions
… or by virtue of contrasts
•
Saussure’s ideas concerning meaning led to the practice of using minimal pairs to
identify phonemes
One example: Linguistic Structuralism anthropologist
Edmund Leach (1964)
Leach asserted that it is because the signifier “dog” and the signifier “polar bear” have
particular and different relationships with other signs (signifiers + signified-concepts).
Why is “you dog” an effective epithet (defamatory label), but not “you
polar bear”?
In English the meanings attached to the words dog and polar bear are
generated by relationships of difference among signs in a signifying
system (a language system in general and animal categories in
particular).
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These meaning relationships are culturally influenced and constructed.
What are they for many English speakers, according to Leach?
Leach’s theory of relationships of difference
•
For most English speakers, the basic distinction between animals and
humans is that animals belong to nature and humans belong to culture.
2) Food animals are different. They belong to the domain of culture.
Non-food animals belong to the domain of nature.
Human = not animal
Not human = animal
Oppositions
Nature (non-food animals) opposite of culture (food animals)
Food animals are okay to joke about. They are not taboo
or sacred. We eat them. They are part of human culture.
You swine
You chicken
You goat
But some animals are food in some cultures and taboo in other cultures.
Snakes are an example.
Ambiguous categories exist between the two poles
• Animal pets are one ambiguous category
• Leach felt that ambiguous categories are powerful. They partake of both
poles of the opposition, but belong to neither.
• It is the ambiguous, liminal (boundaries and borderlines of binary constructions) categories that
attract the maximum cultural interest and arouse the strongest taboos.
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• Pets are part of culture but it is taboo to eat them.
(Ambiguous: Open to more than one interpretation; having a double
meaning.)
A fundamental oppositions in the area of taboos and epithets
associated with animals is nature-culture
• Pets don’t fit neatly into both or either polarity of the nature-culture opposition.
• Pets are highly tabooed as food for Australians and Americans. (dogs, cats)
• When categories are problematic because they fail to fit neatly into clear, opposite
categories, they are the focus of the greatest cultural elaboration.
• Because of the ambiguity of pets’ relationships to the human-animal and natureculture categories, and because these animals are tabooed from usual humananimal (eating) relationships, their names make effective epithets.
Another opposition is food animals and non food animals
(food animals [culture] and non-food animals [nature])
•
The liminal or ambiguous category includes creatures that are
simultaneously food and non-food animals. (Game animals such as
rabbits are a good example) They fit into both and neither pole dividing
culture and nature.
•
Game animals do not fit into neat oppositional categories because they
are eaten but also wild at the same time. Such liminal categories are
subject to the greatest cultural elaboration.
•
Certain names meaning rabbit have been subjected to heavy taboo
during English history. (coney)
•
Other more recent derogatory names related to rabbit or bunny (Playboy
bunny and Penthouse pets)
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What ambiguous category might the following
belong to?
You rat? You snake? You weasel? You skunk?
In ‘mainstream’ U.S. culture they are usually not food, and they are sometimes pets.
What else are they and what else are they not?
Do they fit into clear oppositional categories of nature/culture, human/non-human,
food/non-food?
Remember, Leach asserted that:
• When categories are problematic because they fail to fit neatly into clear, opposite or
comparative categories, they are the focus of the greatest cultural elaboration.
Leach extended Saussure’s theories
• Identified basic semantic oppositions
• Demonstrated how those oppositions generated diverse cultural forms
• Structuralism ended up being – as in Leach’s case – a description of
‘universals’ and ‘laws’ based in oppositions.
• Saussure, however, began structuralism with an emphasis in linguistic
relativism.
• Saussure talked more about differences and suggestions than about
oppositions.
Thought, according to Saussure
• Thought is only a shapeless and indistinct mass without language and words.
• Without the help of signs we would not be able to make a clear-cut, consistent
distinction between two ideas.
• Without language there are no pre-existing ideas.
• Nothing is distinct without language.
Sounds, according to Saussure
• Without thought, sounds would have no substance as meaning.
Language provides a link between thought and sound.
Thought-sound implies division. Language is able to work out its limits because of this
division or opposition between two shapeless masses. (thought and sounds)
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