linguistics.. my second love.

"the bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary". -ferdinand de saussure, course in general linguistics

let's start at the beginning. the definition of the signifier is the sound or image used to represent a sign. a sign is the actual word. the signified is the concept. to say that something is "arbitrary" without using the word "random" is to understand that something is completely free from a constriction or law. examples:

to look outside and see the sleet today is to understand that the word sleet has been registered, in our language as we know it, as the frozen, sharp rain that falls from the sky. we can differentiate sleet from snow and sleet from hail. the word "sleet" is the sign. to write and spell s-l-e-e-t and to read it on a piece of paper is the signifier. the signified is what we know it to be. saussure argues that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is unnatural. that a sign is without value and is only identifiable through the phonetic and visual image that are culturally assigned to it.

it's all gravy to me. through my overuse of the term "condition" in its various forms in my previous blog post, i cringe at using it again, but; i've been conditioned to automatically respond to a sound, image, and written word with a concept that has been assigned to it based on the culture i was raised in and the language i was raised speaking. this is true of all people, all over the world.

saussure argues that language constructs the world we live in. words, alone, mean nothing without other words to put them in some sort of context. to have an "old dog" and a "rabid dog" is two have two completely types of dogs... but they're both dogs.

structuralism is "the beliefe that things cannot be understood in isolation..." is it safe to say that there are basic meanings for words that allow us to connect a sound, an image, and a spelling to the same basic concept? or would saussure disagree with even the basic meaning of a word? on a most basic linguistic and literary level, these basic meanings have no value outside of allowing the people of a shared population to agree upon the concept of said word.