Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist who studied in Leipzig, taught in Paris and then at the University of Geneva. The Course in General Linguistics, compiled after his death by colleagues from students' lecture notes, argued that the linguistic sign is arbitrary and that meaning arises from systematic differences between signs rather than from any link to things. These ideas founded structural linguistics and later shaped structuralism across the humanities and social sciences.

Key ideas

• A linguistic sign unites a signifier (sound-image) and a signified (concept), and the bond between them is arbitrary.
• Signs get their value from differences within a system: in language there are only differences without positive terms.
• Language as a shared system (langue) should be distinguished from individual acts of speaking (parole).
• Language can be studied synchronically, as a system at a moment, as well as diachronically, as it changes over time.

Major works

• Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (1879)
• Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale, 1916, published posthumously from lecture notes)

In the conversation

• Question What is apoha, and how can a word mean something by excluding everything else? Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Discussion Dignāga’s apoha and Frege’s sense are answers to different questions Meera Kulkarni · 4 replies
• Question What does Derrida’s différance actually claim about meaning? Khady Sène · 4 replies