A Swiss linguist and semiotician, de Sausseure's ideas laid a foundation for many significant 20th century developments in both linguistics and semiology. He, along with Charles Sanders Pierce, is widely considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics, and the study and application of semiotics and semiology. Referring to the study of semiotics as semiology, and using the specific concepts of the sign/signifier and signified/referent forms as theoretic focus, de Sausseure applied the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of linguistic description to the patterns and functions of language.
Ferdinand de Saussuere
(1857 - 1913)
Although the topic name has been changed from semiology to semiotics, de Saussuere's theory is still commonly used in today's society. He also believed that the relationship that exists between the signifier and the signified is purely arbitrary and analytical. Scholars such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, influenced by de Saussure's ideas, applied his structural principles and methods as an approach to language in their own areas of study (literary and film studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively).
MOTIVATIONS / IDEAS
-
Semiology and semiotics are two related disciplines, which study semiosis, the relation of signification involving sign, object and mind, and classification of signs.
-
The signified idea represents the concept or the meaning, of the thing indicated by the signifier. It is not necessarily a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers. The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them. When we share concepts, we do so via signifiers.
-
'Orders of signification' establish levels of meaning according to denotation and connotation.
RELATED STUDY TERMS
-
Codes -- a system of words, letters, figures, or other symbols substituted for other words, letters, meanings.
-
Connotation -- an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.
-
Denotation -- the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.
-
Sign -- an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.
-
Signifier -- a sign's physical form (like a printed word, image, or sound).
-
Semiology -- used as an analytical tool for studying the ways by which visual images form a system for the communication of meaning.
-
Langue -- system of language in society.
-
Parole -- individual use of language.