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The Saussurean Dichotomies
By Hush on Sat Apr. 04, 2009 9:13 pm

Hello, The Saussurean dichotomies are very important in

Saussure approach, hence I wanted to share with you an article
from The Linguistics Student's Handbook by Laurie Bauer. I've
chosen this one because it's easy to be understood. I hope you'll
like it

The Saussurean Dichotomies

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is sometimes

thought of as the father of modern linguistics. Although
Saussure was well known in his lifetime for his work in the
history of Indo-European, his most influential work was not
published until after his death, when some of his students got
together and, on the basis of their lecture notes, reconstructed
the course in linguistics that he had taught in Geneva. The Cours
de linguistique generale (Saussure 5969 [1956]) became one of
the key texts in linguistics, and ushered in the era of
structuralism which we might argue continues today.

In the Cours, among a number of important statements and

illuminating comparisons, Saussure made a number of
fundamental distinctions which are still basic to linguistic
thinking. These are outlined below.

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 League versus Parole
Saussure says there are two sides to language: langue and
parole. While the French terms are generally used in English,
they are sometimes translated as 'language' and 'speech'
respectively, though not without some danger of ambiguity.
LANGUE is that part of Language which 'is not complete in any
individual, but exists only in the collectivity' (Saussure 5969
[1916]: 30, my translation, see the footnote for the original
French*). PAROLE, on the other hand, is observable in the
behaviour of the individual. According to Saussure, it is not
homogeneous.

Saussure believes that linguistics is fundamentally the study

of langue, although some later scholars have suggested that
there might also be a linguistics of parole. Had corpus
linguistics been a concept with which Saussure was familiar, he
would no doubt have dismissed it as dealing with parole rather
than with longue. In one of his celebrated images (Saussure
1969[1916]: 36), he suggests that when an orchestra plays a
symphony, the symphony exists externally to the way in which
it is performed: that existence is comparable to longue in
language study. The actual performance, which may contain
idiosyncrasies or errors, is to be compared to parole.

The distinction between longue and parole has suffered two

major changes in subsequent scholarship. First, a third level has

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been added, that of the NORM (see especially Coseriu 1962
[1952]). Our longue would allow as to say what the time is by
saying It is ten minutes before four o'clock, or It wants ten
minutes to be four o'clock, or In ten minutes it will be four
o'clock, or It is five minutes after a quarter to four. We do not
find such utterances attested in parole. Rather, we find multiple
utterances of It is ten (minutes) to four. This cannot be related to
vagaries of parole, because it is extremely homogeneous within
relevant speech communities. Neither can it be a matter of
longue, because tongue allows as to saying the something in
many different ways. It is a matter of norm that we say It is ten
to four rather than one of the alternatives. Note that different
dialects may have different norms. There are also varieties of
English in which the expression is It is ten of four.

The second thing that has happened to the longue/parole

distinction is that it has been overtaken by other, similar
distinctions. Chomsky (1965: 4) introduces the distinction
between competence and performance. PERFORMANCE is
very like Saussure's parole. It is prone to error, to memory lapse
and the like. COMPETENCE, however, is unlike Saussure's
longue in that it has no social side to it; it is a mental construct
in the individual. Although Saussure concedes that 'It [longue] is
something which exists in each individual', he also adds 'yet is
common to all of them. (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 38).

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 Chomsky (1965: 4) also points out that for Saussure longue
is 'a system of signs' (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 32), while for
Chomsky competence is a generative system. This is an accurate
description of langue, but does not seem to be fundamental to
the notion of it in the way that its social aspect is.

In more recent work (Chomsky 1986), competence and

performance have given way to a third distinction, that between
I-language and E-language (where I and E are to be interpreted
as 'internalised' and 'externalised' — see section (). For
Saussure, linguistics deals with longue; for Chomsky linguistics
deals with I-language. Thus, for Saussure, linguistics involves
studying the language of the community, while for Chomsky it
involves studying the language potential of the individual. Yet
both agree that if we use an analogy with a game of chess, the
particular moves made in any given game are not what is to be
studied; rather it is the rules of the game which allow for an
infinite number of different actual games. For Saussure the rules
correspond to longue; for Chomsky they correspond to
I-language (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 43; Chomsky 1986: 31).

Synchrony versus Diachrony

We can study a given language in two ways, Saussure

maintains. The first is that we can look at the language as it is
(or was) at any particular point in time. Thus we might study the
syntax of American English in the early twenty-first century, or

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the phonology of seventeenth-century French or the patterns of
compounding in Classical Chinese. These are all
SYNCHRONIC studies (syn- 'alike', chronos 'time').

The alternative is to look at the way in which a language

develops or changes over time. In this way we might consider
the development of the English verb system, or changes in
Arabic phonology from the classical period until today. These
are DIACHRONIC studies (dia- 'through', chronos 'time').

Saussure was reacting to an environment in which the only

linguistic study that was seen as being scientific was the study
of the development of languages. By putting the synchronic side
of language studies back on the linguistic map, he expanded the
scope of linguistics. Yet by the late twentieth century, there
were some linguists complaining that this strict distinction
between synchronic and diachronic linguistics had become a
major problem in dealing with language.

All living languages are in a continuous state of change.

Much of the complaint tradition, which is a social factor
affecting many languages including English, is a reaction to
recent changes. For example, people who complain that some
speakers do not distinguish between imply and infer are caught
up in a change whereby the two used to mean different things
and now are less likely to be semantically distinct, especially in
less formal contexts. This is evidence that aspects of language
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change are reflected in the synchronic structure of any given
language or variety. This is the subject matter of variationist
linguistics, as developed by William Labov. Any linguistic
change progresses gradually through a speech community. Some
speakers adopt the change more quickly than others, and some
speakers use both the conservative and the innovative form for
some period during the change. Thus any synchronic description
of a variety, if it is detailed enough, can make sense only if
aspects of diachrony are taken into account. Furthermore,
language change leaves relics behind whose structure can be
understood only with reference to their history. Why is
blackmail called blackmail, for example? Why is it black and
why is it mail? The synchronic structure of twenty-first-century
English does not provide an answer for this. Blackmail has
become an unmotivated word, even though we can see the
elements black and mail within it.

Despite such problems, the distinction between synchronic

and diachronic studies is generally maintained today.

Paradigmatic versus Syntagmatic

When we speak, language is produced in time, so that some

bits of our utterance precede or follow other bits. When we
write, this temporal aspect of language is replaced by a spatial
aspect the words are set out on the page in a conventional way
such that linear order corresponds to the temporal order in
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speech. Thus English is written from left to right, with elements
further to the left corresponding to elements produced earlier
than elements further to the right. So in (1) cat precedes mat in
linear order, corresponding to temporal structure in speech: we
would say cat before we would say mat.
(1) The cat sat on the mat
The elements in (1) are said to be related to each other
syntagmatically. Together they form a SYNTAGM or
construction. We can say that the verb sit (or sat in this
particular sentence) determines what it will be related to
syntagmatically in that it demands something in the position of
the cat in (1) and allows, but does not demand, an equivalent
phrase after it (as in They sat the dog on the mat).

However, language is also structured in terms of the words

(or other elements) which are not there but which could have
been. Each of the words in (1) could have been replaced by a
number of other possible words. Some examples are given in(2).
(2) The cat sat on the mat
This girl sits across your bed
That student walked over her car
My frog ran by their lap

The words in each of the columns in (2) are related to each

other paradigmatically. They are related by being alternative
possible choices at a position in the syntagm. While elements
which are related syntagmatically are all present, elements

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which are related paradigmatically are mostly absent: they are
relationships of potential.

Each of the columns in (2) can be called a PARADIGM,

although that name is more usually reserved for a particular type
of paradigmatic relationships, those holding between different
forms of the same word (or, more technically, lexeme). Thus (3)
illustrates a Latin noun paradigm.

In (3) we see a number of suffixes, each of which has a

syntagmatic relationship with the stem domin-. The endings
themselves are in a paradigmatic relationship.

Note that elements in paradigmatic relationships share

common features. All the words in the first column in (2) are
determiners, all those in the second column are nouns and so on.
Word classes can be thought of as being derived from sets of
paradigmatic relationships. Very specific syntagms can also
show semantically related words in relevant paradigms. Thus,
consider (4), where the verb — except in figurative uses —
demands the word cat or a closely related word.
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 (4) The cat miaowed.
kitten
tom
moggy

Signifier (signifiant) and signified (signifie)

Saussure insisted that the linguistic sign has two aspects to

it: a sound side and a meaning side. The two are tightly linked
within a speech community, and can be seen as being the two
sides of the same playing card, but we must nevertheless keep
these two aspects of the sign separate from each other in our
technical understanding of the way in which language functions.
The concept of a pig may be carried by the sounds /pig/, but that
concept is not to be equated with that series of sounds. The sign
unites the physical set of sounds (the signifier, or signifiant)
with a particular mental image (the signified or signifie). Note
that real-world pigs do not feature here. The sign links our
mental image of a pig with a particular set of sounds, not a real
pig. The real pig has a very indirect relationship with the sound
sequence /pig/. The same argument could be repeated for the
series of hand-shapes and gestures in sign-languages and their
link to a particular meaning.

Saussure makes a number of other points about linguistics

signs which have become accepted, although they had not
always been seen as obvious prior to Saussure. Perhaps the most
important of these is the fact that the linguistic sign is arbitrary.
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There is no natural link between the sound sequence /pig/ and
particular animals. If there were, how could the same or very
similar animals be easily associated with the word pig in
English, cochon in French, grin in Danish, Schwein in German,
and so on? Even onomatopoeic signs are to a large extent
conventional. We only have to think about the words we use to
represent animal noises in a number of languages to see that.
Without knowing, it is hard to guess what animal says gas-gas in
Russian, or what animal says chu-chu in Japanese. While the
signs of sign-languages are often said to be iconic and resemble
some feature of what is denoted, it can be difficult there to guess
what a particular sign means if it has not been explained.

References
 Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
 Chomsky, Noam (1986). Knowledge of Language. New
York: Praeger.
 Coseriu, Eugenio (1962 [1952]). Sistema, norm y habla. In
Eugenio Coseriu, Teoria del lengaje y linguistica general.
Madrid: Gredos, 11-113.
 Saussure Ferdinand de (1 6 1916]). Cours de linguistique
generale. Paris: Payot.

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