Ferdinand De Saussure

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Ferdinand de Saussure Why are we studying Saussure, a linguistic = theorist, in a literature class? When we discard the assumptions of liberal humanism, = we start our new conceptions of how literature operates by noting that, first and = foremost, literature is made of language; to understand how literature = works, we must therefore have some ideas about how language itself works. = Saussure, as a structuralist, is interested in language as a system or = structure. His ideas apply to any language--English, French, Farsi, computer = languages--and to anything we can call a "signifying system" (more on what this is later). = He describes the structures within any language which make meaning = possible, but he's not interested in what particular meanings get created. Like all structuralists, he's not interested in the details of what fills up the structure, the specifics of speech or writing, but only in the design of = the structure itself. SECTION I: THE NATURE OF THE LINGUISTIC = SIGN Language is based on a NAMING process, by which = things get associated with a word or name. Saussure says this is a pretty naive = or elementary view of language, but a useful one, because it gets across = the idea that the basic linguistic unit has two parts. = Those two parts Saussure names the "concept" = and the "sound image". The sound image is not the physical sound (what your = mouth makes and your ear hears) but rather the psychological imprint of the sound, = the impression it makes. An illustration of this is talking to yourself--you = don't make a sound, but you have an impression of what you're saying. The linguistic SIGN (a key word) is made of the = union of a concept and a sound image. The union is a close one, as one part will instantly conjure the other; Saussure's example is the concept "tree" = and the various words for tree in
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