A Seminar in

General linguistics
On
European Structuralism

Prepared by
Saad Basim Thannoon

10/10/2018
 Introduction:
The study of language has a long history starting from the great
contributions of Greece scholars Plato and Aristotle in grammar and Romans
scholars as Verro who wrote twenty five volume work on the Latin language.
then coming to the middle ages and after. In 17 century sir William jones
pointed that languages had structural similarities. and in 19c the concern with
reconstructing the proto Indo European languages, also there were ( neo or
young grammarians, they claimed that language change is regular.
The study of language before 20c was historical while in the 20c the
emphasis shifted to language description in which the linguists began to
concentrate on describing single languages at particular point in time.

Structuralism:
As a term refers to various theories across the humanities, social
sciences and economics many of which share the assumption that structural
relationships between concepts vary between different cultures/languages and
that these relationships can be usefully exposed and explored.
Structuralism appeared in academia for the first time in the nineteenth
century and then reappeared in the second half of the twentieth century, when
it grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields
concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society. The work
of Saussure concerning linguistics is generally considered to be a starting point
of twentieth century structuralism.

European Structuralism:
What is commonly refer to structuralism especially in Europe , is of multiple
origin . it is both conventional and convenient to date its birth as an identifiable
movement in linguistics from publication of Ferdinand Saussure’s course in
general linguistics in 1916 many of the ideas that Saussure brought together in
the lectures that he delivered at university of Geneva between 1907 and 1911
upon which the course is based can be traced back into the nineteenth century
and beyond .
Ferdinand Saussure can arguably be called the father of modern linguistics and
in particular of structuralism .De Saussure has made shifting from historical to
descriptive linguistics .and his crucial contributions was this explicit and
reiterated statement that all languages items are essentially interlinked. So
instead of tracing the historical development of particular form or meaning, it
demonstrates how all the forms and meaning are interlinked . this was an
aspect of language which had not been stressed before ,nobody had seriously
examined the relation of each element to all the others
And Ferdinand de Saussure is the first one who suggested that language was
like a game of chess pointing that the design of the pieces and their names are
structurally irrelevant they can take any form agreed between the participant
provided only that each side starts with sixteen pieces divided into six
contrasting categories, with the correct number of units in each category .the
game may then proceed according to a system of agreed rules known to each
player, this analogy demonstrates the clearly distinction between the surface
phenomenon of a game and the underlying system of categories and the rules
for their deployment which together constituent “chess” perhaps the most
important point Saussure wanted to make is that each component of the system
is defined by reference to its distinctive place in the system : change one
element and the entire system is affected .
Removing the bishop , for instance , would destroy chess , but a different game
might emerge if the new bishop –less system were agreed by all participant .
similarly , language is an arbitrary system of rules and categories that works by
virtue of social contract tacitly accepted by all speakers , a socially sustained
agreement to call a rose “a rose”
So his insistence that language is a carefully built structure of interwoven
element initiated the era of “structural linguistics”

Ferdinand de Saussure's central ideas concerning the study of language were

expressed in the form of pairs of concepts (dichotomies) these can be
illustrated as below :

Synchrony - Diachrony
Before Ferdinand de Saussure, there was historical linguistics, a prescriptive
perspective (now that's a tongue-twister) on language that dealt with language
change from past to present. Saussure came along and dubbed this kind of
approach diachronic, as opposed to a synchronic approach, i.e. a descriptive
look at language at a certain point in time. Note that diachrony (the
examination of historical change) need not be prescriptive in nature.
This dichotomy evolves more or less naturally from Saussure's lectures, but is
not formulated in them. Just like a doctor tells you what medicine to take via
prescription, prescriptive linguistics are a normative approach
concerned with what is »right« and »wrong«. On the other hand,
descriptive linguistics are only concerned with, well, describing what is
(rather than what should be). If you took grammar as example, prescriptive
grammar would give you grammar rules, whereas descriptive grammar would
tell you how people actually use it – which is often not how their English
teacher would have wanted it to be.

Langue (language) and Parole

The dichotomy of langue and parole would more accurately have to be
described as a »trichotomy«, because Ferdinand de Saussure introduced not
only these two, but also a third term, language (pronounced Frenchly).

Langue, as used by Saussure, describes the general linguistic system of a

given language, e.g. English. In contrast to Chomsky's competence, langue
does not refer to a single person's knowledge about his or her language, but
to the system as a whole, the shared knowledge in a given community. In
that regard, langue also highlights the social attributes of language.

Parole, on the other hand, can be used synonymously with Chomsky's

performance. Both terms describe a given utterance, a recording or a text. It
is not possible for linguists to directly examine langue; they can only study
parole and infer from it.
Finally, language is the term Saussure uses to describe the abstract ability to
learn and communicate via language. Since this understanding of language is
most commonly associated with language aqcuisition or neurolinguistics, it
lacks common ground with the then-dichotomy of langue and parole, and it
is often left out of the discussion of these two.

Signifier - Signified
Or, as the Swiss put it, significant and signifié. These two terms describe the
two concepts contained within a given word, i.e. the actual combination of
letters and sounds on the one hand and the meaning of the word on the other.

Saussure held that language was a system of signs. In general conversation

we would call these signs »words«, but in linguistic terms each word is a
sign pointing to a certain concept, object or relationship. Distinct signs differ
in the combination of phonemes (meaningful sounds). Each sign can be
examined based on that combination or with regard to the meaning behind it.

The signifier is the actual combination of sounds (or letters, i.e. graphemes)
that comprise a sign. It is, so to speak, the word itself.
The signifier points towards the signified, i.e. the conceptual idea behind the
word, its »meaning«. At the same time, the signified automatically makes us
think of the signifier; only by putting it into words can we talk about it.
This abstract relationship is best explained with an example, and one of the
most common examples is that of the word »tree« (see left). The signifier
»tree« [tri:] points to the general concept of a big, leafy plant-thing. Note that
this concept is not specific, but very general. One might think of a birch tree, a
huge redoak, an oak sapling, or a Christmas tree upon reading or hearing
the word. To use a different example, »phone« will most probably
signify a long-distance verbal communication technology, but there's no
guarantee you won't think of an old dial phone where others think of a cell
phone.
On the other hand, the image of a tree, or seeing one in real life, will cause you
to think of its signifier, whether that be the general »tree« or, if you are more
knowledgeable in foresty things, its specific name.

Arbitrariness
Saussure not only differentiated between signifier and signified, but he also
characterized the relationship between these two as arbitrary. Arbitrariness
in this context means that there is no discernable system of composing signs
with regard to the signified. To give an example, a tree is called a tree simply
because some people thought it would be a fitting name, and the rest of us
agreed. The word does not look like a tree, or sound like one, nor is there a
code by which we could infer something about the signified. If you've never
seen a tree, or don't know what it's called, then hearing or seeing the word will
give you no clue as to its meaning.

Syntagm – Paradigm
The last of Saussure's key dichotomies is also the one most difficult to grasp.
It concerns the way signs are combined and thus belongs to the linguistic field
of semiotics (the study of signs). The relationship between signs, according to
Saussure, is a syntagmatic one, i.e. linear and direct. If you take a sentence,
we have one sign following another, the whole sentence having a distinct
meaning. In the image, »she can go« is a meaningful sentence, as is »I may
come«.
The paradigmatic relationship is between similar signs taking up the same
spot in a syntagms. In linguistics, this spot is called slot. The example
sentences have three slots. Paradigmatically related signs can now be used in
the same slot in order to change the meaning of the sentence: »I can come« or
»she may go« have quite a different meaning even though, syntagmatically,
they are the same. In the image to the left, a blue arrow separates different
syntagm. You could say that you move sideways from one syntagmatic slot to
the next, whereas you scroll up or down on the paradigmatic axis for a given
slot.
 References :
1- Language and linguistics (1981) john Lyon .
2- Linguistics (1971 ) Jean Aitcheson .
3- Linguistics (2010) Muayad T. yousif .
4- The linguistics encyclopedia (2009 )