Structuralism

European Sense of Structuralism

Ferdinand
de Saussure
Presented by
Shafqat Zaidi
 Structuralism
Structure: It is a network of interrelated units,
the meaning of the parts being specifiable only with
reference to the whole. Language, in this sense, is a
structure. Language is a system of mutually defining
entities.
Structuralism: In linguistics, the term refers to
any approach to the analysis of language that pays
explicit attention to the way in which linguistic
features can be described in terms of structures and
systems.
Structural description of a language tells us how
all the components fit together.
 Structuralism: Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist, is often
descried as the founder of modern linguistics because it was he
who first turned European linguistics away from its exclusive
occupation with historical explanations of linguistic phenomena
towards descriptions of the structure of language at a particular
point in time.

His famous Course in General Linguistics (1916), published

posthumously, represents his linguistic approach.

Sausuure’s structuralism can be summed up in his famous

four dichotomies: synchronic vs diachronic, langue vs parole,
signifier vs signified, syntagmatic vs paradigmatic.
 Synchronic vs Diachronic
The 19th century was preoccupied with
historicism: only valid explanation in linguistics is
historical; languages are as they are because, over
time, they have been subject to various internal and
external causal factors affecting sound, syntax, and
lexis. Therefore, linguist’s main task was to
compare Indo-European languages and, on the
basis of such comparison, to discover the principles
guiding the changes undergone by the languages.
Saussure does not consider such diachronic
studies worthless; he merely maintains that they
should be kept apart from, and should not preclude,
synchronic language studies which aim at
describing a language as a whole at a particular
point in time.
Diachrony
Studying a language at two different
points of time; relating two different
stages of a language
Synchrony
Studying a language as a complete
system at a particular point of time
When we study language
developments through time, it is
called diachronic or historical
linguistics.
Synchronic linguistics focuses on
the state of language at any point
in history while diachronic
linguistics focuses on the
differences in two or more than
two states of language over
decades or centuries.
 In the following diagram, axis AB is the synchronic,
static axis. It can intersect at any point with XY. The
diachronic axis XY has been considered dynamic
d
I
a
c
h
r
o
n
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synchronic
In the following diagram, axis AB is the synchronic,
static axis. It can intersect at any point with XY. The
diachronic axis XY has been considered dynamic
 La Langue vs Parole
Langage: It is the faculty of speech which all
humans are endowed with.
Langue: It is the underlying system on the basis
of which speakers are able to understand and
produce speech. Since no speaker has complete
command of langue, it exists fully as a shared,
social phenomenon. It is a social fact.
Parole: It refers to the actual utterances speakers
produce. It is always an individual realization of
the system.
The object of study in linguistics is la langue.
 Langue Vs. Parol
Langue: the abstract linguistic system shared
by all members of a speech community.

The ‘system’ of a language exists in a speech

community, in the collectivity; it is shared by all
the speakers of that speech community

Parole: the realization of langue in actual use.

An individual’s use of the system of ‘langue’

A Sociological View
 Distinction between langue and
parole
(1) Langue refers to the abstract linguistic
system shared by all the members of a
speech community. Parole refers to
particular realization of langue.
(2) Langue is the social, conventional side
of language, while parole is individualized
speech.
(3) Langue is the code, and parole is the
message.
(4) Parole is the concrete manifestation of
language either through speech or writing.
Langue is the abstract knowledge.
la langue la parole
1it is stable and institutionalised. it is mobile and personal.
2. it is a social fact it is individual and

3. it is a sum of properties shared by it contains infinite number

all speaker of a community of individual properties.
4. it is abstraction. it is concrete manifestation
5 It is set of convention and It is diverse and variegated

habits handed down to next with marked individual

differences.
generation ready made.

6. it is the language as a It is language in actual use.

speaker is expected to use
7.It is fixed. It is free.
8.It is a potential It is actualized form of language.
 Signified vs Signifier
The language system is seen as a
system of signs.
Sign is a relationship between the
signified and the signifier.
The signifier is some acoustic noise
or graphic form which the sign takes.
The signified refers to the concept the
sign represents.
The relationship between the signifier
and the signified is known as
signification.
 Signified vs Signifier
The bond between the signified and the signifier
is absolutely arbitrary, e.g. the concept of ‘tree’ is
signified in English by tree, in German by Baum.
The signs in the language system are
interdependent. Each sign has a value. The value
refers to the functional identity of an entity when
seen in the context of a rule-governed system.
The value of a sign depends on its relations with
other signs within the system - a sign has no
'absolute' value independent of this context.
 Syntagmatic vs Paradigmatic
The signs in the language system
are related to each other in two
ways: there are rules for their
combination, and there are contrasts
and similarities between them.
These two dimensions of language,
combination and contrast/similarity,
are often presented as 'axes', where
the horizontal axis is the
syntagmatic and the vertical axis is
the paradigmatic.
 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic
relations
The former refers to the horizontal
relationship between linguistic elements,
which form linear sequences.
The later means the vertical relationship
between forms, which might occupy the
same particular place in the structure.
 Language as a system of relation
andUnderlying
differenceour use of language is a system, a pattern of paired
opposites, or binary oppositions.--or a system of differences
relations: toy  boy (sound),
 table (grammatical unit),
 girl (antonym), etc.
difference: binary opposition
I saw a girl in red.
(Syntagmatic) tagmatic
relations)
I am a girl.
a boy,
a girl, (Paradigmatic)paradigmatic
an ironing board.
 A vivid picture of the two concepts
syntagmatic

P
A b I t
R f I t
A h I t
D k I t
I p I t
G s I t
M w I t
A
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A vivid picture of the two concepts

syntagmatic

p
a Nature
r Beauty
a Love purifies the mind
d Honesty
I Morality
g Education
m
a
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Explanation of the two pictures
Syntagmatic relations are actually
positional relations.
That is, the sequential arrangement of
smaller linguistic forms into larger
linguistic forms, e.g. the arrangement of
words and phrases into sentences.
Whereas, paradigmatic relations are
relations of substitution.
That is, linguistic forms can be substituted
for each other in the same position in a
word or sentence.
 Structuralism-II
In the closing decades of the nineteenth
century, structuralism began with the basic
insight that language is a system, not an
inventory, of human communication using
words and particular ways of combining them.
A ‘system’ is not simply a collection of
individual components. Unlike inventory such
as a dictionary, a system is a network of
structurally interrelated elements.
 Structuralism
Every language is a system all of whose
parts interrelate and interact organically.
In a famous Saussurean formula, a language
is ‘a system in which everything holds
together’. Change one element, and the system
is different. This basic insight – language is a
system – was fully developed with the
publication of Saussure’s Course in General
Linguistics.
 Structuralism
If languages are systems, they are, from an external
viewpoint, closed. Each will have a determinate set of
basic units, and a determinate set of relations among
them, and will be distinguished sharply both from
other languages and from anything that lies outside
such systems.
Therefore the study of each individual language is
separate from that of any other individual language;
and within linguistics, the study of individual
languages must form a distinct science. In Saussure’s
terms this is a ‘linguistics of languages’ whose object
is limited to what we may call ‘language systems’.
 Structuralism
In Saussure’s structuralism, three notions stand out:
1. Linguistics as a science of language systems
2. The division between synchronic linguistics and
diachronic linguistics
3. A language as a system of values
1. Linguistics as a science of language systems
• ‘langage’ (language as a phenomenon) remains
the concern of various disciplines. But the object
of study in linguistics should be ‘la langue’ (‘the
language’ or ‘the language system’) which is
different from ‘ parole’
(‘speech’, the individual act of communication).
 Structuralism
‘la langue’ is of its nature a social phenomenon.
This is a stock that is built up by the experience of
speech (‘parole’) in people who belong to the same
community. It is a system that exists potentially in each
brain, or more precisely, since it is not complete in any
individual person, in the brains of the entire group.
There is a distinction, within the phenomena of
‘langage’, between the language system as a ‘social fact’
or ‘social product’ of the functioning of our intellectual
faculties, and speech (‘parole’) as an act that is
individual and contingent.
 Structuralism
Since ‘la langue’ is our first object of study,
Saussure distinguished a linguistics ‘of the
language system’ from a linguistics ‘of speech’
(‘de la parole’) which is secondary to it. The
latter has both a mental and a physical (that is,
physiological and acoustic) side. But the former
is exclusively mental. Its object of study exists in
the community as a whole, in the form of a
‘totality of imprints registered in each brain’.
The study of this is ‘linguistics in the strict sense’
 Structuralism
2. The division between synchronic linguistics
and diachronic linguistics
Synchronic linguistics is a study of the
relations among elements that form a system ‘as
they are perceived by a single collective
consciousness.
Diachronic linguistics deals with ‘the relations
among successive elements that are not
perceived by the same collective consciousness’.
 Structuralism
3. A language as a system of values

A language is a system of equivalences between a

‘signifiant’, or something that ‘means’, and a ‘signifié’,
or something that ‘is meant’.
A language is a system of ‘signs’ relating ‘signifiers’
and things ‘signified’; and, just as a coin has its value
only in a specific system of coinage, a signifier has its
value only in a specific language system. Outside the
system of coinage a coin is a mere piece of metal.
Outside the language system a word would likewise be
nothing. It is a word precisely because it has a value;
and, just as the value of coins is in relation to those of
other coins, so the value of words is in relation to those
of other words.
 Structuralism
For the Cours, the signifier is an ‘acoustic
image’ in the minds of speakers; what it
signifies is a ‘concept’ that, as we saw earlier in
this section, is triggered by it. But the ‘linguistic
sign’ as such encompasses both. It is ‘a mental
entity with two sides’: one a ‘signifiant’ or
‘signifier’, and the other a ‘signifié’ or what is
‘signified’.
 Structuralism
We now have one structuralist answer to the question -
what constitutes a language? - with which we began this
lesson. ‘A language’, such as English, is a ‘social
phenomenon’ (‘fait social’) whose existence is solely as a
system of values holding in a specific society. Its
manifestations through speech (‘parole’) are individual
and fleeting. Therefore, in the first instance, it is the
system (‘langue’) that we must study. When languages
change, one system is replaced by another. Therefore the
study of changes must be distinguished rigorously from
the study of a system in abstraction from time. Each
language, as the Cours insists at this point, is ‘a system
of pure values’,‘determined by nothing other than the
momentary state of its terms’
 Descriptivism
American Sense of Structuralism
 Descriptivism
The focus is on describing, not on theorizing.
To describe means to give a comprehensive, systematic,
objective and precise account of the pattern and use of a
specific language at a particular point in time.
Descriptive linguistics aims to describe the facts of linguistic
usage as they are, and not how they ought to be with reference
to some imagined ideal state.
The emphasis on objectivity and systematicness places it in
contrast with ‘prescriptive approach’. The emphasis on a given
point in time places it contrast with historical linguistics where
the aim is to demonstrative linguistic change. Descriptive
linguistics aims to describe ‘a language’ synchronically.
 Descriptivism
The emphasis on ‘a’ language distinguished the subject
from comparative linguistics and also from general
linguistics, where the aims is to make theoretical statements
about language as a whole.
A description is the result of an analysis, which must in
turn be based on a set of theoretical assumptions. But in
descriptive linguistics, the theory is only a means to an end.
An approach which is characterized by an almost exclusive
concern with description is known as descriptivism, and its
proponents are descriptivists.
In linguistics, the term is usually applied to American
structuralist studies before the ‘generativist’ approach of the
late 1950s.
 Descriptivism
The ‘Descriptivist linguistics’ emerged
under the leadership of American
anthropologist Franz Boas (1858 - 1942).
For this school, the description of an
individual language was an end in itself, or a
necessary first step towards understanding the
wider culture of a
particular community.
 Descriptivism
The Descriptivists tended to think of abstract linguistic
theorizing as a means to the end of successful practical
description of particular languages, rather than (as
Chomsky does, for instance) thinking of individual
languages as sources of data for the construction of a
general theory of language. It is true, of course, that the
most eminent of the Descriptivists are well known because
they did theorize about language in general; but in all cases
their general theories were backed up by intensive research
on the detailed structure of various exotic languages, and
many of their less famous colleagues and followers
preferred to take the theories for granted and concentrate
on the data.
 Descriptivism
A characteristic of the school founded by Boas
was its relativism. There was no ideal type of
language, to which actual languages
approximated more or less closely: human
languages were endlessly diverse, and,
although the structure of a language spoken by
some primitive tribe might strike us as very
'arbitrary' and irrational, there was no basis of
truth in such a judgement: our European
languages would appear just as irrational to a
member of that tribe.
 Descriptivism
- Boas must take pride of place in any account of the
Descriptivist school. But the man who is nowadays taken
as principal representative of the Descriptivist school is
Leonard Bloomfield (1887 - 1949). He is best known for
his book Language (1933) which represent the
Descriptivist tradition of linguistic analysis.
-What was new in Bloomfield was a sophisticated
emphasis on the status of linguistics as a science.
-The book Language is characterized by empiricism
because Bloomfield was an active proponent of the
Logical Positivism. If linguistics is to be scientific, it
must confine itself to sense-data statements.
 Descriptivism
It will be obvious that positivism was
wholly incompatible with notions such
as 'collective mind' on which the view of
linguistics as sociology seems to depend;
for Bloomfield linguistics was a branch
of psychology, and specifically of the
positivistic brand of psychology known
as 'behaviourism'. His theorizing about
language was
heavily behaviouristic.
 Descriptivism
-Behaviourism is a principle of scientific method: a rule
which says that the only things that may be used to confirm
or refute a scientific theory are interpersonally observable
phenomena, rather than, say, people's introspections or
‘intuitions’.
- The behaviourist method entered linguistics via
Bloomfield's writings; it manifested itself in slogans such as
'Accept everything a native speaker says in his language and
nothing he says about it'. That is, a linguistic description was
reliable insofar as it was based on observation of unstudied
utterances by speakers; it was unreliable if the analyst had
resorted to asking speakers questions such as 'Can you say
so-and-so in your language?'
 Descriptivism
According to Bloomfield, a language is
a ‘set utterances’. This definition is
based on logical positivism in which all
scientifically meaningful statements are
translatable into physical terms.
To describe a language is to describe
its utterances.
What exactly, then, is an utterance?
‘An act of speech’.
 Descriptivism
This speech act is the ‘act’ of emitting
the sounds that constitute ‘speech’. A
‘speech event’ is described in strictly
physical terms: the movements of a
speaker’s vocal cords and other organs;
the resulting sound-waves; their action
on a hearer’s ear-drums. An act of
speech is therefore distinguished
carefully from whatever surrounds it, in
the state of the world or in a speaker or
hearer’s other behaviour.
 Descriptivism
The utterances that we describe are thus
specifically the sounds that speakers emit. The
totality of utterances that ‘can be made’ in a
community is the totality of sounds that, in
speaking their language, members of that
community may emit. To describe the language is,
accordingly, to describe the structure of such
sounds.
This leads directly to the programme developed,
largely after Bloomfield’s incapacity and death in
the 1940s, by his follower Zellig S. Harris.
 Descriptivism
Harris rejected the notion that a ‘language structure’,
conceived as we will see in the Saussurean tradition,
can be studied independently of the ‘speech act’. The
former, he says, is ‘merely the scientific arrangement’
of the latter. In describing English we establish that,
for example, the sounds represented by I’m hungry
constitute a possible utterance. We analyse them into
recurring units: for example, a unit I recurs in other
utterances such as I must eat or You know I won’t. We
establish relations among units: for example, in each
of these
utterances, I bears the same relation (traditionally as
subject) to what follows
 Descriptivism
One further insight: a language is in this view a set.
Its members are ‘utterances’; and, at the level of
abstraction, each utterance is characterised by the
relations established over a set of smaller units.
Although we are talking, in principle, of sounds that
speakers may emit, we have in effect abstracted
something very like a set of written sentences, in
which determinate words stand in determinate orders.
The set as a whole is also, by implication,
determinate.
What then are the properties of the sets that we call
‘languages’, that distinguish them, in general, from
other sets?
 Descriptivism
In abstraction from reality, sets are mathematical objects. Our
question, therefore, is about the properties of ‘languages’ as
mathematical systems.
This insight led directly, in the 1950s, to the pivotal concept of
a ‘generative grammar’. A set is ‘generated’ if, by following a
series of rules or instructions, its membership is specified. For
example, the instruction ‘multiply x by 2, where x is a whole
number’ generates the set of even numbers. A language is, in
this view, a set; its members are ‘utterances’ or, equivalently
for Harris, ‘sentences’. A grammar is traditionally a
description of ‘a language’, and could therefore be ‘viewed as
a set of instructions which generates the sentences of the
language’.