Saussure and Structural Linguistics: The Arbitrariness of the Sign

Course in General Linguistics

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) never published his key theory himself. The "Course in General Linguistics" (1916) was compiled posthumously by his students based on lecture notes—yet it became one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

Saussure put linguistics on a scientific foundation, defining its subject matter and key distinctions. The most important distinction is between langue (language as a system, code, structure) and parole (speech, the individual act of language use). The science of language studies langue—the system, not the countless individual utterances.

The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign

Saussure’s key thesis: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. A sign consists of the signifier (the acoustic image, the sound pattern) and the signified (the concept, the content). The connection between them is not natural, not motivated, but conventional, arbitrary.

Proof: the same concept is denoted by different sound complexes in different languages. "Дерево" — tree — Baum — arbre — شجرة. There is no natural link between the sound and the concept. (Exception: the few onomatopoeias—cuckoo, buzz—but these too are conventional: "cuckoo" sounds differently in other languages.)

Consequence: the meaning of a sign is determined not by its link to reality, but by its relation to other signs in the system. "Neck" means what it means because it is different from "throat", "nape", "shoulder". Language is a system of differences.

Synchrony and Diachrony

Saussure distinguished between synchronic analysis (language at a given moment, as a system) and diachronic (language in historical development). He insisted: linguistics must study the synchronic state—the system as it is now. Historical explanation (why a word sounds a particular way) does not explain what it means now.

This methodological distinction became the foundation of structuralism—a method applied not only to language, but also to myth (Lévi-Strauss), literature (Jakobson, Barthes), anthropology (Lévi-Strauss), psychoanalysis (Lacan). Everywhere—the search for the synchronic system of relations, not historical genesis.