Ferdinand De Saussure

Salsabila Bazighoh Z (A320170056)

Fariha Laili (A320170058)
Khusnun Afifah (A320170087)
Vanina Amalia (A320170087)
 Ferdinand De
Saussure

Durkheim's
"Rules of The
Sociological Method"

Synchronic versus Associative and Linguistic Value,

La Langue, La Parole,
Diachronic Study of The Linguistic Sign Syntagmatic Content, and
Le Langage
Language Relations Signification
The study of language in any period of history has always
reflected the predominant interests of the time. In some
instances methods of other disciplines have been adapted to
linguistic purposes.
Ferdinand de Saussure was dissatisfied with the idea that
the method of studying language scientifically was from a
historical perspective, until he became acquainted with the
work of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and saw a study that
did not consider historical developments.
 DURKHEIM’S
“RULES OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD”
Durkheim attempted to define social facts as “things”
comparable to the “things” studied by the physical sciences.
In this view social facts are, therefore, radically distinct
from individual psychological acts, since they are of a
general nature and exercise constraint over the individual.
Some of his main contributions to linguistics examining the
terms he either coined or which he gave a characteristics stamp
1. The distinctions among la langue, la parole, and le langage.
2. The distinctions between diachronic and synchronic
language study
3. Definition of the “linguistic sign”
4. The distinction between associative and syntagmatic
5. The notion of content, as opposes to linguistics signification
and value
6. Descroption of the concrete and abstract units of language
 La Langue, La Parole, Le Langage
The term “language” can be applied by suggested this book :
1. Linguistic forms
2. Relation among linguistic forms
3. Meanings of linguistic forms
4. Relations among meanings
5. Relation between linguistic forms and meanings
• The term de Saussure used to refer to the individual
manifestations of language is la parole, “speaking”.
• The sum of la parole and the rules of language de
Saussure called le langage.
• Le langage, therefore, does not have a principle of unity
within it that enables us to study it scientifically.
• One definition that de Saussure gave of la langue is “le
langage minus le parole”
• La langue is the set of passively acquired habits we have
been taught by our speech community, in term of which
we understand other speakers and produce combination
other speakers of our community understand.
• When we consider the-properties found in these three
aspects of language we can see that de Saussure, in
defining la langue, studied language “independent of its
individual manifestation.” because it is individual, active,
and voluntary, la parole is not a social fact; le langage
includes both social and individual aspects and is not,
therefore, a pure social fact; la langue is the social fact,
being general throughout a community and exercising
constraint over the individual speakers.
• La parole includes anything a speaker might say; le
langage encompasses anything a speaker might say as
well as the constraints that prevent him from saying
anything ungrammatical; la langue contains the negative
limits on what a speaker must say if he is to speak a
particular language grammatically.
This view requires some justification, and de Saussure provided
it by comparing the properties of la parole, as he defined it, and
la langue
1. Acts of speaking (la parole) are invariably individual,
variable, whimsical, and inventive
2. For a scientific study of anything we must have an
object that holds still, “since we want to count and
measure it; la parole consists of an infinite number of
individual choices, acts of articulations, and novel
combinations. Its description must, therefore, be
infinite.
3. La parole is not a collective instrument; all its
manifestations are individual, heterogeneous, and
momentary; it is only the sum of individual acts,
expressible in the formula :
(1+1’+1”+1”’…)
4. La langue, however, is a collective pattern; it is
something common to all the speakers, and, therefore, can
be expressed in a different formula :
(1+1+1+1+1…) = 1
5. La langue exists in the form of “a sum of impressions
deposited in the brain of each individual,” which are
“almost like a dictionary of which identical copies have
been distributed to each individual…it exists in each
individual, yet it is common to all. Nor is it affected by the
will of the depositaries.”
6. La langue is both “a social product of the faculty of
language and an ensemble of the necessary conventions
adopted by the social body to permit the exercise of that
faculty.”
7. Since la langue is “a deposit of signs which each
individual has received” from other speakers of the
community, it is essentially a passive thing, as opposed to la
parole, which is active.
8. La langue is a set of conventions that we all receive,
ready-made, from previous speakers of the language.
In summary, then, de Saussure saw as the sole object of
linguistic science that aspect of language which corresponds
to a social fact. While this idea may seem to be an
abstraction from the physical point of view, language (la
langue) is not and cannot be a physical fact.
Synchronic versus Diachronic Study
of Language
• The Juggrammatiker had proclaimed that the sole means of
studying language scientifically is to examine it historically,
that is, diachronically, through time. De Saussure flatly
contradicted this idea. In this connection he had a good word
to say for traditional grammar : they were purely synchronic;
they did not confuse contemporary language usage, and the
presumed reasons for correct usage, with factors derived from
the historical development of a language.
• The historical approach cannot profitably be used to study the
development of any set of linguistic forms unless one has been
reliable informed about (1) the systematic relations of these
forms in an earlier state of a language and (2) the differences
to be found in their systematic relations at a different state of a
language.
• Far from being the sole means of studying language
scientifically, then, historical linguistics is not even
scientific in its approach. That is, it does not and cannot
employ the methods and principles of scientific
investigation