Sign

The power of the sign in thought

Fernand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) is the founder of the structuralist turn in linguistics and the father of
semiotics, understood as the science that studies the life of signs in the context of social life. In particular,
he focused on the study of signs and sign systems.

Saussure divided the linguistic sign into two: signified and signifier. The signified is the mental concept of
the signifier, in return the signifier is the "physical" part of the word (acoustic image), which can be written
or spoken.
For example, when we read a word such as "tree" immediately an image of tree appears in our mind,
despite the fact that the word does not resemble the representation that appeared to us.
The relationship that ce between the meaning and the signifier is arbitrary in that the letters of the word
do not resemble and represent the concept. There is no natural or logical relationship between the signifier
and the signified; this relationship is conventional. The sound or written sign used to represent a concept
may vary from one language to another.
Signs are fixed; their meanings are fixed by the codes that we as humans have as they are constructed by
language.
All signs are part of a system; differences between signs produces different meanings, as it is not the word
that produces the meaning.

He also divides the language system into 2 parts: language and parole. Language is the actual rules, and
grammatical rules; it is part of the social system in that you have to know these rules in order to speak a
language. Whereas, as for parole, it is the discursive act that exists outside of ourselves. We communicate
through parole but within the language system.
Meaning is constructed by the representational system. We have our own conceptual system of how things
are, in our head, and our own language system with words representing the concept. The act of associating
the concept with the word creates the concepts.
The conceptual and linguistic system working together creates the system of representation.

From this study I was reminded of the phrase of Charlemagne, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who
said, "To have a second language is to have a second soul."
This phrase at first glance might seem unfounded but through the study carried out with Saussure we could
instead say that it is true.
Language represents our society, consequently terms change in every language.