In the Structural Approach to Working With Families, the Focus Is on _____, Not _____.
Primal Theories of Ferdinand de Saussure
Before 1960, few people in bookish circles or outside had heard the proper noun of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Only after 1968, European intellectual life was a-buzz with references to the father of both linguistics and structuralism. That Saussure was as much a catalyst as an intellectual innovator is confirmed by the fact that the work – the Course in General Linguistics – for which he is now famous exterior linguistics was compiled from three sets of students' lecture notes for the years of the Class in Full general Linguistics given at the Academy of Geneva in 1907, 1908–nine, and 1910–11. That Saussure a linguist and, to the wider academic community and full general public, an obscure specialist in Sanskrit and Indo-European languages, should become the source of intellectual innovation in the social sciences and humanities, is also cause for thought. Information technology suggests that something quite unique occurred in the historical epoch of the twentieth century, so that a new model of linguistic communication based on Saussure's structural approach emerged to become the model for theorising social and cultural life. Saussurian theory has its basis in the history of linguistics, and its implications extend to the whole of the social sciences. We thus demand to consider both these aspects.
Life and Intellectual Trajectory
Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857, to one of the best-known families of the city, one famous for its scientific accomplishments. He was thus a direct gimmicky ofE´ mile Durkheim (1858–1917), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), although there is petty testify of his always having had contact with any of them. After an unsatisfactory yr in 1875 at the University of Geneva studying physics and chemical science, Saussure went to the University of Leipzig in 1876 to study languages. Then, in the wake of 18 months studying Sanskrit in Berlin, he published, at the age of 21, his much acclaimed me´moire entitled, Me´moire sur le syste`me primitif des voyelles dans les langues indoeurope ´ennes (Me´moire on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages). Fifty years afterwards Saussure's death, the renowned French linguist, Emile Benveniste, would say of this work that it presaged the whole of Saussure's futurity research on the nature of language inspired by the theory of the arbitrary nature of the sign.
In 1880, subsequently defending his thesis on the absolute genitive case in Sanskrit, Saussure moved to Paris, and in 1881, at the age of 24, he was named lecturer in Gothic and Erstwhile High German at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes E´ tudes. For just over a decade Saussure taught in Paris until he was appointed professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at the University of Geneva.
Although acclaimed past his colleagues, and devoted to the report of language, Saussure's published output began to dwindle as the years wore on. As he put it, he was dissatisfied with the nature of linguistics as a discipline – with its lack of reflexiveness, as with its terminology 1 – and still he was unable to write the book which would revamp the discipline and enable him to continue his work in philology.
The work now famous, Course in General Linguistics, composed from some of Saussure's lecture notes forth with the notes of his students, could be seen perhaps to be a partial fulfilment of Saussure'south conventionalities that language as such needed to exist re-examined if linguistics was to move on to a sounder footing.
Saussure'southward Arroyo to Language
Within the history of linguistics, Saussure's approach, as exemplified in the Class, is generally thought to have opposed two influential contemporary views of language. The first is that established in 1660 by the Port-Royal philosophers, Arnauld and Lancelot in their Grammaire generale et raisonnee (Eng. Tr., The Port Regal Gammar 1975), where linguistic communication is seen every bit a mirror of thoughts and based on a universal logic. For the Port-Royal grammarians, language is fundamentally rational. The 2nd view, is that of nineteenth-century linguistics, where the history of a particular language is deemed to explain the current land of that language. In the latter case, Sanskrit, the sacred language of ancient India, believed to be the oldest of languages, was as well believed to function as the connecting link between all languages, so that, ultimately, language and its history would become one with each other. Franz Bopp's Neogrammarian (as the movement was called) thesis on the conjugation arrangement of Sanskrit as compared with other languages (U¨ ber das Konjugationssystem der Sanskrit-sprache (The Conjugation Organization of the Sanskrit Linguistic communication)) inaugurated historical linguistics, and Saussure's early teaching and research did non contradict the Neogrammarian position on the fundamental importance of history for understanding the nature of language. However, the aspect of the Me´moire highlighted by Benveniste on the fiftieth ceremony of Saussure's decease – the role of arbitrariness in linguistic communication – makes itself felt with a vengeance in the Course.
The historical approach to language and, to a bottom extent, the rationalist approach, assumes that language is essentially a naming process – attaching words to things, whether or non these are imaginary – and that at that place is some kind of intrinsic link between the name and its object. Why a particular proper noun came to be attached to a particular object or idea, could, it was believed, be determined historically – or even prehistorically. The farther back in history one went the closer one was supposed to comec to a coincidence between the name and its object. Equally Saussure put it, such a perspective assumes that language is essentially a classification: a collection of names for objects and ideas.
Key Elements of the Grade
What, and so, are the key elements of Saussure'southward theory as manifest in the Grade? To begin with, Saussure shifts the focus of study from the history of linguistic communication in general, to a consideration of the present configuration of a detail natural language similar English or French. Now, a history of language becomes the history of languages, without there being an a priori link between them, as nineteenth-century linguists had assumed.
To focus on the present configuration of (a) language is, automatically, to focus on the relationship between the elements of that language and not on their intrinsic value Language, Saussure says, is e'er organised in a specific manner. Information technology is a organization, or a construction, where any individual element is meaningless exterior the confines of that structure. In a strong and insistent passage in the Class, Saussure says: 'in language [langue] there are simply differences. Even more than of import a difference generally implies positive terms between which the deviation is prepare up; merely in language, in that location are just differences without positive terms' (Saussure 1976: 166 and 1993: 118). The signal is non only that value, or significance, is established through the relation between one term and another in the linguistic communication arrangement – so that, in the example used by Saussure, 't' can be written in a variety of ways and still be understood – but that the very terms of the system itself are the product of difference: there are no positive terms prior to the system. This implies that a language exists as a kind of totality, or it does non exist at all. Saussure uses the image of the chess game to illustrate the differential nature of language. For in chess, not simply is the present configuration of pieces on the board all that matters to the newcomer to the game (no further insight would exist gained from knowing how the pieces came to be arranged in this style), merely any number of items could be substituted for the pieces on the board (a button for a king, etc.) because what constitutes the game's viability is the differential relationship between the pieces, and not their intrinsic value. To run across language equally beingness like a chess game, where the position of the pieces at a given moment is what counts, is to come across information technology from a synchronic perspective. To give the historical arroyo precedence – as the nineteenth century did – is, by contrast, to view language from a diachronic perspective. In the Course, Saussure privileges the synchronic over the diachronic aspect considering information technology provides a clearer picture of the factors present in any state of language.
Arbitrary Relation Betwixt Signifier and Signified
Of equal importance for grasping the distinctiveness of Saussure'south theory is the principle that language is a arrangement of signs, and that each sign is composed of two parts: a signifier (signifiant) (word, or sound-blueprint), and a signified (signifie´) (concept). In dissimilarity to the tradition within which he was brought upward, therefore Saussure does non accept that the essential bail in language is between word and matter. Instead, Saussure's concept of the sign points to the relative autonomy of language in relation to reality. Even more fundamentally, however, Saussure comes to enunciate what has go for a modern audience the most influential principle of his linguistic theory: that the relationship betwixt the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. In light of this principle, the basic structure of language is no longer assumed to be revealed by etymology and philology, merely can best be grasped past agreement how language states (that is, specific linguistic configurations or totalities) change. The 'nomenclaturist' position thus becomes an entirely inadequate basis for linguistics.
Langue and Parole
Perhaps the terms which have caused more than conceptual difficulties and drawn more criticism of Saussure'southward theory than any others, are langue (individual natural language viewed equally a structure, or organization), and parole (individual spoken communication acts, or acts of language as a procedure). This conceptual couple introduces the distinction between language every bit it exists every bit a more or less coherent structure of differences, and language every bit it is practised by the customs of speakers. While Saussure advise in the Course that a specific linguistic structure is distinct from speech, and while he argued that the basis of language, as a social fact, is to be grasped exclusively at the level of construction, it is too true that nada enters into the realm of the linguistic structure without commencement becoming manifest in individual speech acts. More significantly, the very extent of the totality of the structure could only exist known with certainty if the totality of speech acts were also known. In this sense, the domain of the structure always remains, for Saussure, more hypothetical than the domain of speech. Notwithstanding, much depends hither on whether one looks at speech from an individual, psychological perspective, or whether one focuses on the whole customs of speakers. In the showtime case, to view linguistic communication through the speech of the individual qua private is one thing; to view it through the speech acts of the whole community is quite another. Saussure's point is that language is fundamentally a social institution, and that, therefore, the individualist approach is inadequate for the linguist.
Language is e'er irresolute. But it does not change at the behest of individuals; it changes over time independently of the speakers' wills Indeed through a Saussurian optic, individuals are as much formed past linguistic communication as information technology is they who form language, and the question arises equally to whether such a vision might have implications for other disciplines in the social sciences. In fact, his was the case for those theorists working nether the rubric of 'structuralism' in the 1960s.
Saussure and the Human Sciences
With the emergence of the Saussurian model in the human being sciences, the researcher's attention was turned away from documenting historical events, or recording the facts of man behaviour, and towards the notion of man action as a system of meaning. Such was the consequence of emphasising, at the broader societal level, the capricious nature of the sign and the corresponding thought of language every bit a arrangement of conventions. Whereas a search for intrinsic facts and their effects had hitherto been made (as exemplified when the historian supposed that human beings need food to survive, just as they need linguistic communication to communicate with each other – therefore events turned out this fashion), at present the socio-cultural arrangement at a given moment in history, becomes the object of study. This is a system within which the researcher is likewise inscribed, much as the linguist is inscribed in language. A greater concern to exist more reflexive thus also becomes the lodge of the day.
For many, like the anthropologist Claude Le´vi-Strauss, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, or the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, equally for Roland Barthes in literary criticism and semiotics, Saussurian insights initially paved the way for a more rigorous and systematic arroyo to man sciences – an approach that would genuinely attempt to have seriously the primacy of the socio-cultural domain for human beings. Just as Saussure had emphasised the importance of not studying speech acts in isolation from the organization of conventions which gave them currency, so it was deemed inadequate to study social and cultural facts independently of the social or cultural organisation which gave them currency. Society or culture at a given state of development, and not discrete individual human actions in the past or nowadays, became the focus of study. Whereas the generation before (the generation of Sartre) had sought to notice the natural (intrinsic) basis of man guild in history – much as nineteenth-century linguists had sought to reveal the natural elements of linguistic communication – the structuralist generation's endeavour was directed towards showing how the differential relations of the elements in the system – whether the latter exist a series of texts, a kinship system, or the milieu of fashion photography – produced a meaning, or meanings, and thus had to be 'read' and interpreted. In other words, the report of socio-cultural life is seen to entail deciphering signs through focusing on their differential value, and not on their putative substantive value (often equated with the 'natural'), and as well paying attention to the symptomatic level of signification, also every bit to the explicit level.
Construction
Structure, as inspired by Saussure'due south theory of language, can thus refer to the 'value' of elements in a system, or context, and not to their mere physical, or natural existence. At present it has go clear that the physical existence of an entity is complicated past the effects of the linguistic and cultural milieu. Structure, then, is a reminder that nothing social or cultural (and this includes, of course, the individual) exists every bit a 'positive', essential element outside it in isolation from all other elements. Such an approach reverses the i taken in the political philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the biological individual is placed at the origin of social life. And just as this philosophy saw no society as existing prior to the private, so it also denied the relative autonomy of language.
Probably the main objection that can be raised confronting the translation of Saussure's accent on structure into the written report of social and cultural life, is that it does not make sufficient assart for the function of practice and individual autonomy. Seeing human being liberty as a product of social life, rather than equally the origin, or crusade, of social life, has made it seem, in the eyes of some observers, to exist quite limited. A conservative bias, denying the possibility of modify, would thus exist the consequence of construction While this problem is withal unresolved, it is perhaps of import to recognise the difference betwixt the freedom of the hypothetical individual (whose very social existence would exist equivalent to a limit on freedom), and a society of gratuitous individuals, where freedom would exist the result of social life understood equally a structure of differences. Or, rather, we could say that perhaps researchers should brainstorm to explore the idea that, to paraphrase Saussure: Social club is a system of freedoms without positive terms. On this reading, there would be no essential, or substantial liberty – no freedom incarnate in the private in a state of nature.
Note
i Cf. 'I am more and more than aware of the immense corporeality of work required to show the linguist what he is doing. . . . The utter inadequacy of current terminology, the need to reform it and, in order to practice that, to demonstrate what sort of object language is, continually spoil my pleasure in philology' (Sausssure 1964: 95, cited in Culler 1986: 24).
Source
Fifty Fundamental Gimmicky Thinkers From Structuralism To Post-HumanismmSecond Edition John Lechte Routledge 2008
References
Arnauld, Antoine and Lancelot, Claude (1975), The Port-Royal Grammar: full general and rational grammar, ed. and trans. Jacques Rieux and Bernard E. Rollin, The Hague: Mouton.
Culler, Jonathan (1986), Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Printing.
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1976), Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, ed. Tullio de Mauro, Paris: Payot. In English as Saussure (1993) Course in Full general Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris, London: Duckworth.
Saussure, Ferninand de (1986), Letter of 4 Jan 1894, in 'Lettres de F. de Saussure a` Antoine Meillet', Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 21 (1964), 95, cited in Culler, Jonathan (1986), Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Printing.
Saussure'south Major Writings
(1993) Course in Full general Linguistics, trans Roy Harris, London: Duckworth.
(1976) Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, critical edn Tullio de Mauro Paris: Payot.
(1967) Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, 2 vols, critical edn by Rudolf Engler, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.
Further Reading
Benveniste, E´ mile, (1971), 'Saussure later on one-half a century' in Bug in Full general Linguistics, trans. Mary E. Meek, Miami Linguistics Serial No. 8, Coral Gables, Florida: Academy of Miami Press.
Culler, Jonathan (1986), Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca and New York: Cornell Academy Press.
Gadet, Franc¸oise (1989), Saussure and Contemporary Culture, trans. George Elliott, London: Hutchinson Radius.
Harris, Roy (1987), Reading Saussure: A Critical Commentary on the Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, London: Duckworth.
Holdcroft, David (1991), Saussure: Signs, System and Arbitrariness, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Saunders, Ballad, ed. (2004), The Cambridge Companion to Saussure, Cambridge:
Cambridge Academy Press.
Strobinski, Jean (1979), Words upon Words, the Anagrams of Ferdinand de Saussure,
trans. Olivia Emmet, New Oasis and London: Yale University
Press.
Thibaut, Paul (1996), Re-reading Saussure: the Dynamics of Signs in Social Life,
London: Routledge.
Categories: Linguistics, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Structuralism
Source: https://literariness.org/2018/03/12/key-theories-of-ferdinand-de-saussure/
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