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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 7 page
report discusses Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who is best-known for
developing the ideas Plato originally presented in Cratylus regarding the relationship of
the “signifier” to the “signified” which is also applicable to the “namer” and the “named.”
For de Saussure the “signifier” are unified in an overall “sign” in which the signifier is
the sound image related to a particular world while the signified is the conception or the
mental image the sound evokes. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_BWsausur.rtf
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"signifier" to the "signified" which is also applicable to the "namer" and the "named." For de Saussure the "signifier" are unified in an overall "sign" in which the signifier is
the sound image related to a particular world while the signified is the conception or the mental image the sound evokes. His focus was on the fact that language is
virtually always a structured system. He was the first to categorically establish a structuralist approach to linguistic study and was far more interested in describing and understanding the structure of
language instead of the history of a specific language or the various forms of that language. As the student working on this project reviews se Saussures work, it will
be important to understand that, from the perspective of structuralism, de Saussures contribution in linguistics was one in which the "naming" process associated with the overall context of language in
which words are used to define what something is and, of course, what it is not. Klages (2003) notes that: "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" (Internet source). But as a structuralist, de Saussure was most
interested in how words acted as separate units which constructed the whole of language. Furthermore, Saussure made a definite distinction between "synchronic" linguistics (studying language at a specific moment of
time) from "diachronic" linguistics (which examines how language changes over time). The publication for which he is the most famous, A Course in General Linguistics, was published posthumously and is
actually a compilation or transcription of notes from his many lectures that was put together by a number of his students after his death. It is here that the student
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