language, langue, and parole (3)
Arbitrariness
The basic principle of the arbitrariness of the sign (l arbitraire du
signe) in the extract is: there is no natural reason why a particular sign
should be attached to a particular concept.
the signified "tree" is impossible to represent because the
signified is entirely conceptual. There is no
definitive (ideal, archetypical) "tree". Even the picture
of a tree Saussure used to represent the signified is itself just another
signifier. This aside, it is Saussure s argument that it is only the
consistency in the system of signs that allows communication of the concept each sign signifies.
The object itself - a real tree, in the real world - is the referent.
For Saussure, the arbitrary involves not the link between the sign and its
referent but that between the signifier and the signified in the interior of
the sign.
In Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll exploits the arbitrary nature of the sign in its use of
nonsense words. The poem also demonstrates very clearly the concept
of the sign as a two sided psychological entity, since it is impossible to read
the nonsense words without assigning a possible meaning to them. We naturally
assume that there is a signified to accompany the signifier.
The concepts of signifier and signified could be compared with the Freudianconcepts of latent and manifest meaning. Freud was also inclined to make the assumption
that signifiers and signifieds are inseparably bound. Humans tend to assume
that all expressions of language mean something.
In further support of the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure goes on
to argue that if words stood for pre-existing concepts they would have exact
equivalents in meaning from one language to the next and this is not so.
Different languages divide up the world differently. To explain this, Saussure
uses the word bœuf as an example. He cites the fact that while, in English, we have different words for the animal
and the meat product: Ox and beef, in French, bœuf is used to refer to both
concepts. A perception of difference between the two concepts is absent from
the French vocabulary. In Saussure s view, particular words
are born out of a particular society’s needs, rather than out of a need to
label a pre-existing set of concepts.
But the picture is actually more complicated, through the integral
notion of relative motivation . Relative motivation refers to the compositionality of the linguistic system, along
the lines of an immediate
constituent analysis. This is to say that, at the level of langue,
hierarchically nested signifiers have relatively determined signified. An
obvious example is in the English number system: That is, though twentyand two might be arbitrary representations of a numerical concept, twenty-two,twenty-three etc. are constrained by those more arbitrary meanings. The
tense of verbs provides another obvious example: The meaning of
"kicked" is relatively motivated by the meanings of "kick-"
and "-ed". But, most simply, this captures the insight that the value
of a syntagm—a system-level sentence—is a function of the value of the signs
occurring in it. It is for this reason that Leonard Bloomfieldcalled the lexicon the set of fundamental irregularities of
the language. (Note how much of the meaningfulness of The Jabberwocky is
due to these sorts of compositional relationships!)
A further issue is onomatopoeia. Saussure
recognised that his opponents could argue that with onomatopoeia there is a
direct link between word and meaning, signifier and signified. However,
Saussure argues that, on closer etymological investigation,
onomatopoeic words can, in fact, be coincidental, evolving from
non-onomatopoeic origins. The example he uses is the French and English
onomatopoeic words for a dog s bark, that is Ouaf Ouaf and Bow Wow.
Finally, Saussure considers interjections and dismisses this obstacle with
much the same argument i.e. the sign / signifier link is less natural than it
initially appears. He invites readers to note the contrast in pain interjection
in French (aie) and English (ouch).