| Born: Switzerland, 26 November 1857 |
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| Died: 22 December 1933 |
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| Ferdinand de Saussure developed the study of linguistics as a form of social behaviour. He has had a great impact on the study of language, literature and the philosophies of communication and expression in the 20th century. I first came across his work while studying for an MSc in Information Technology in 2005. |
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| He was interested in the relationship of utterances to the whole system of language. |
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| He was interested in the study of signs and what has become know as semiotics or semiology. |
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| His argument was that signs in language are arbitrary and conventional. This means that speakers of a language agree conventionally that, for example, the word cat refers to the cat animal and the chosen word 'cat' is arbitrary i.e. it has no relation whatsoever to the actual cat other than being agreed upon by a group of speakers. There is so essential relationship between words and things. They adhere to arbitrary and conventional forms of agreement. |
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| Langue involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful utterance, "parole", would be possible. Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue. This is the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject. Saussure did not concern himself overly with parole; however, the structure of langue is revealed through the study of parole. Very good video explaining Saussure's work from Bella Ross: |
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