Barthes and Text Gestalt

Barthes’ text was definitely “jouissif” — I had fun reading it, and I am sure he had fun writing it. Our e-version had some interesting typographical errors, especially in that key word at the end: “jouissance”. We got “jotrissance”, and I tried to make sense of it. One interpretation was as a portmanteau word that blends “jouissance” (enjoyment) and “tristesse” (sadness), and that really might be a very fitting word for the text. Barthes was really focusing on “jouissance” and it is left in French in the text because it is a word with very rich connotations.  (I also got confused with those / that are in place of I. Hard to tell the difference between a slash and an italic I !)

These e-texts and their inevitable “impeded form” (scanners are poor readers at times) are interesting in themselves. They highlight our error correction module that does not allow impeded form to persist. There is something important and paradoxical in the notion that we correct the text — make sense of it whether it does or doesn’t express itself directly– and yet the text must have its own word to say in the matter, distinct from us.  (I do take it as a fact that we make the text coherent and that we seek out coherence.) We shouldn’t shout down what the text has to say.

That same corrective function readies me to detach a bit from what Barthes has to say literally and look for what he should have said. In other words, a text with typos makes us focus not on any particular element of the text, but rather on what generally is there — so the text is a democracy of sentences which produce a Gestalt. It is this paradoxical interplay between the totality and its parts that is difficult to explain.

When Barthes raised the analogy of music, I think he might have developed further his ideas. I do think music is a good metaphor for understanding how texts work, precisely because a musical piece has a coherence, a play of resonance, which creates its over-arching form. The Text is for me that orchestration we find harmonious. Perhaps one way to look a the paradox of Gestalt is through the notion of resonance.

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Ferdinand de Saussure & Roland Barthes

So-sure

 

It is somewhat difficult to accept that a concept is inseparable from a sound image. It is more difficult to accept, although, that this concept and sound image, signified and signifier respectively, have no real basis in the material world, in nature. Nothing has an intrinsic name. Nothing is born with a name to represent it. Nothing, nobody, told us that a ‘dog’ is to be called a dog, nobody said that a mountain has the name mountain, intrinsically born with that name; based on the real, a referent has no name. This situation is what must be understood as the arbitrary nature of the sign; that is to say the signified does not follow any rule or adhesive joining it with the signifier. This of course does not mean that they can live independently; they are always together.

If the author, as Barthes proposes, is not necessary to interpret a text, then does that mean language alone can give meaning to a text? Saussure develops the argument that a person alone cannot change or create language because it is the social, communal, side of speech, that is to say that it is the determining factor of a community and organizer or recorder of the discourses that the speakers articulate. Saussure is conditioning, or better said, untangling, an identity, such as that of an author, to be understood only as a speaker and not as creator. The author, or the speaker involved in a speech act, does not create anything, does not create language and therefore is not, or should not be allowed, the right to subjectively assign meaning to a given text. This situation implies a certain relations of power. The analysis of signs, of language, of text, can disarticulate common acceptances of powers. Revealing its self is something of the nature of power, which may start with a speech act and the intent to name, to create and impose a name, a meaning. This is the act of trying to give an essence before something realizes that that essence is not what it thinks of itself.

All of this points me in the direction of thinking of such issues of what is real or what is truth. Is the reality I live truthful? Is ignorance bliss if aware of the implications that a further analysis might divulge? To a certain extent, when we stop thinking of concepts and ideas as natural or preconceived to the articulation of speech, we may actually discover truths in many aspects of our culture, and our creations.

 

Barthes

 

I would like to ask Roland Barthes (or rather, in the spirit of what I understand from his texts, ask his texts) a question: is the analysis of language and other signs the answer to all sociological/political issues or to the pursuits of truths? My question doesn’t have the intention of debating or arguing with Barthes; there is no malignant intent by posing that question. Even though I explain that, posing that question or questions like that could cast doubt on or generate some negativity towards his arguments. The question could be seen as the sweat on the characters in the film Julius Cesar that Barthes analyzes; the question is thinking there is some sort of thought behind a question enunciated in such a way. The aggressiveness in the question is enunciates with by the phrase ‘answer to all’. This is a phrase that is totalizing and, contingent upon a negative, whose answer implies the uselessness of the analysis of language as a possible tool for research. Confusing the sign with the signified is, as Barthes writes, a hybrid inserted into the sign which is made to be perceived as nature. Say we have a signified, this signified is the concept of ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ and the signifier is the color black. The sign would be thus that black= bad/evil. Or the fringe= roman-ness, sweat=thinking, which in turn = crime, the author= answers to the work, a work= a specific meaning, Einstein’s brain= thought machine, foam= no violence etc. Thus, if the analysis of language doesn’t answer all the problems than it is of no use and can be completely disregarded. I was careful although to ask the text for an answer and not the author. According to the very arguments of the texts, the texts would never give me one uniform answer. Thus, the intentions or connotations (positive or negative) of question posed would fail against the text; but they would not fail against the author. The author can give you a straight answer, but that limits the possibilities of discourse, the possibilities of meanings, and the denaturalization of the one and only. In essence, my understanding from the Barthes texts is that there are finger prints around the sign and its meaning(s). The task in language (textual) analysis is to untangle or uncover certain truths (or perhaps better, histories of signs and their meanings). This tool is counter to the power of prescribing, the power of ruling with no limit, the power of ‘creating reality without the real’. The death of author= liberation (of many entities).

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Ferdinand de Saussure & Roland Barthes

So-sure

 

It is somewhat difficult to accept that a concept is inseparable from a sound image. It is more difficult to accept, although, that this concept and sound image, signified and signifier respectively, have no real basis in the material world, in nature. Nothing has an intrinsic name. Nothing is born with a name to represent it. Nothing, nobody, told us that a ‘dog’ is to be called a dog, nobody said that a mountain has the name mountain, intrinsically born with that name; based on the real, a referent has no name. This situation is what must be understood as the arbitrary nature of the sign; that is to say the signified does not follow any rule or adhesive joining it with the signifier. This of course does not mean that they can live independently; they are always together.

If the author, as Barthes proposes, is not necessary to interpret a text, then does that mean language alone can give meaning to a text? Saussure develops the argument that a person alone cannot change or create language because it is the social, communal, side of speech, that is to say that it is the determining factor of a community and organizer or recorder of the discourses that the speakers articulate. Saussure is conditioning, or better said, untangling, an identity, such as that of an author, to be understood only as a speaker and not as creator. The author, or the speaker involved in a speech act, does not create anything, does not create language and therefore is not, or should not be allowed, the right to subjectively assign meaning to a given text. This situation implies a certain relations of power. The analysis of signs, of language, of text, can disarticulate common acceptances of powers. Revealing its self is something of the nature of power, which may start with a speech act and the intent to name, to create and impose a name, a meaning. This is the act of trying to give an essence before something realizes that that essence is not what it thinks of itself.

All of this points me in the direction of thinking of such issues of what is real or what is truth. Is the reality I live truthful? Is ignorance bliss if aware of the implications that a further analysis might divulge? To a certain extent, when we stop thinking of concepts and ideas as natural or preconceived to the articulation of speech, we may actually discover truths in many aspects of our culture, and our creations.

 

Barthes

 

I would like to ask Roland Barthes (or rather, in the spirit of what I understand from his texts, ask his texts) a question: is the analysis of language and other signs the answer to all sociological/political issues or to the pursuits of truths? My question doesn’t have the intention of debating or arguing with Barthes; there is no malignant intent by posing that question. Even though I explain that, posing that question or questions like that could cast doubt on or generate some negativity towards his arguments. The question could be seen as the sweat on the characters in the film Julius Cesar that Barthes analyzes; the question is thinking there is some sort of thought behind a question enunciated in such a way. The aggressiveness in the question is enunciates with by the phrase ‘answer to all’. This is a phrase that is totalizing and, contingent upon a negative, whose answer implies the uselessness of the analysis of language as a possible tool for research. Confusing the sign with the signified is, as Barthes writes, a hybrid inserted into the sign which is made to be perceived as nature. Say we have a signified, this signified is the concept of ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ and the signifier is the color black. The sign would be thus that black= bad/evil. Or the fringe= roman-ness, sweat=thinking, which in turn = crime, the author= answers to the work, a work= a specific meaning, Einstein’s brain= thought machine, foam= no violence etc. Thus, if the analysis of language doesn’t answer all the problems than it is of no use and can be completely disregarded. I was careful although to ask the text for an answer and not the author. According to the very arguments of the texts, the texts would never give me one uniform answer. Thus, the intentions or connotations (positive or negative) of question posed would fail against the text; but they would not fail against the author. The author can give you a straight answer, but that limits the possibilities of discourse, the possibilities of meanings, and the denaturalization of the one and only. In essence, my understanding from the Barthes texts is that there are finger prints around the sign and its meaning(s). The task in language (textual) analysis is to untangle or uncover certain truths (or perhaps better, histories of signs and their meanings). This tool is counter to the power of prescribing, the power of ruling with no limit, the power of ‘creating reality without the real’. The death of author= liberation (of many entities).

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Barthes and Saussure

Barthes and the problem about the “Author”

Is hard to put in just one piece of “text” (to use Barthes´s concept) three different texts that are quiet interesting by separate. So, I will try to put in a kind of “union” a short reflection about Roland Barthes`s texts. I think that “The death of the author” and “From work to text” are two argument of the same idea: there is no relation or link between text and author. The main focus of Barthes is on the reader. According to his own words: “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author”. Is precisely that idea the one that leads the distinction between “work” and “text”. The first have a filiation to his creator, the author, who, according to Barthes, points a determination on the “piece of work”. Barthes (if we follow his rules I can´t use the word “author”) thinks that the text can be read without the “guarantee of his father”. For him,  the “author” of a text is just one more character (for example in a novel), and there is no relation between “him” and the text.

 

One of the main arguments of Barthes to say this is the quality of “multiple” that a text has. As he says at “The death of author”: “We know that a text is not a line of words releasing a single “theological” meaning (the message of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash”. This idea means, in other words, that there would be no creation in something related to language. Everything was previously “said”. So, would art or “creation” mean just a “new way” to put things together?

 

What Barthes does in his book Mythologies is an interesting exercise of analyzing different kind of texts. I would like to refer to the part of Einstein´s brain as an interesting case. As the author says (roll in your tomb), there is huge “myth” around Einstein´s brain (when he died, his brain was stolen by someone from the hospital and cut in slice to be studied). His brain become a kinf of “icon” of intelligence. The interesting part, more than the “case”, is what Barthes does “reading this phenomenon as a text”. He says that after Einstein`s dead people thought that the secret of the universe closed to them, the only one who was able to reveal the “truth” about the universe has gone. In this example we can notice that appears one of the main characteristic of the text, there is no author. Is “just there”, reality as a text to read.

 

Finally, I would like to say that I disagree about the maun issue of Barthes. I do think that there is a link between text and author. But is not a relation in terms of “the last meaning” of a text, is a relation in terms of space-time. If we “kill” the author we are destroying the relation of a discourse with it’s context, and I think that knowing what is “out” of a text (what leads to the interesting discussion about “in” or “out” of a text” and the problem of a “border” in a text) we can open the debate about it. I don’t think that linking text and author we are forced to look for “the real interpretation” of a text. Barthes says that the author means a “limit” to the text, I think that “the author” opens a wide range of possibilities of interpretations instead of close them.

 

 

Saussure

Saussure`s text is probably one of the most important text in the western tradition of the 20th Century. Is also, a foundational text. Even when the text was well known after a few decades of his original publication, is doubtless the starting point of most of the scholar reflection about language across the past century. His proposal is very precise: There is something call “the sign” that has two different parts, but, both of them constitute it. The first one is called “signified” and the other “signifier”. The first one, refers to the “sound image” of what we usually call “a word”, and the other one, to the concept that it refers to.

 

I liked the idea he exposed about “Two classes illustrated by Comparisons”. There, he exposed about two ways of approaching to the study of a language, synchrony and diachrony. Is interesting because, at the end, he is not choosing one of them, just exposing that there are this two ways of deal with the study of language. Anyway, he recognizes that to language is always a matter of “state” or “moment”. That’s why he uses the comparison of language and chess. This means that language is always “contextual”. There is no option to attribute to the language some kind of “eternal meaning”. Language is a system that changes constantly. So, we can make the study of language in a “certain moment” or state, or try to figure out the transformation that have been experimenting in time. In his own words: “synchrony and diachrony designates respectively a language-state and an evolutionary phase” (p. 64).

 

I think we can link this idea to Bakhtin`s proposal. Both agree in the constantly moving of the language and it’s internal and external transformation. Also, we can find a relation between Saussure’s idea of opposition and Bakhtn`s idea of dialogue inside the language. In both cases, there is a interaction of the element that compose the system. We can read the ideas of “arbitrary” and “opposition” in Saussure’s text, as a dialogue inside the system. There is always this dialogue and interaction among the different part of the systems, is precisely that dialogue that turns language into a constantly moving object of study.

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Mythologies, Ronald Barthes

In reading Ronald Barthes I really found interesting his theories on toys.  I believe that as he is explaining and describing his theories on toys, he is really describing his view on children; he mentions that: “Frenchman sees the child as another self”(53). He talks about toy being only being “microcosm of the real word”, he mentions that French toys always mean something it is always depicting something of real life for example medicine and the army. It is a way to prepare the child for real life. It is preparing the child for role it should carry out. He mention “There exist, for instance a doll s which urinate…This is meant to prepare the little girl the casualty of house-keeping, to condition her future role as a mother”(53). This reminds me of what my professor in infant psychology class mentioned that “the job of a child is to play”; so even though we as adults see it as just recreation; a child is learning about real life and his role and social behaviour. Does this mean that all girls who played with dolls should become mother? No, I think that as a child we experiment with all kinds of different roles, and this does not limit what we are going to become. He also brings out a very important point which is that children are no longer creators of game but instead just owners or users, so in a way toys are limiting. But children do like to imitate and this is a way of learning. I remember seeing a picture in a psychology book where a 3 year old boy has put a ball under his shirt and have he mentions he wants to have babies when he grows up and you can see mother in the background and she is pregnant. So my question is how much can you blame toys for limiting children creativity and how much is their own predisposition not to create but imitate?

In the end I find it interesting that he compares bourgeois toys with wooden toys. He calls bourgeois toys the product of chemistry graceless material, compared to the wooden toys that have a natural touch and not a cold metal feel. I think the reason to include this is to highlight the way toys have changed and involved and how the newer toys are more impersonal. In conclusion I think the importance of talking about toys is that they influence our view of children and also t children themselves. And in way children toys can depict society’s view on children.

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Mythologies, Ronald Barthes

In reading Ronald Barthes I really found interesting his theories on toys.  I believe that as he is explaining and describing his theories on toys, he is really describing his view on children; he mentions that: “Frenchman sees the child as another self”(53). He talks about toy being only being “microcosm of the real word”, he mentions that French toys always mean something it is always depicting something of real life for example medicine and the army. It is a way to prepare the child for real life. It is preparing the child for role it should carry out. He mention “There exist, for instance a doll s which urinate…This is meant to prepare the little girl the casualty of house-keeping, to condition her future role as a mother”(53). This reminds me of what my professor in infant psychology class mentioned that “the job of a child is to play”; so even though we as adults see it as just recreation; a child is learning about real life and his role and social behaviour. Does this mean that all girls who played with dolls should become mother? No, I think that as a child we experiment with all kinds of different roles, and this does not limit what we are going to become. He also brings out a very important point which is that children are no longer creators of game but instead just owners or users, so in a way toys are limiting. But children do like to imitate and this is a way of learning. I remember seeing a picture in a psychology book where a 3 year old boy has put a ball under his shirt and have he mentions he wants to have babies when he grows up and you can see mother in the background and she is pregnant. So my question is how much can you blame toys for limiting children creativity and how much is their own predisposition not to create but imitate?

In the end I find it interesting that he compares bourgeois toys with wooden toys. He calls bourgeois toys the product of chemistry graceless material, compared to the wooden toys that have a natural touch and not a cold metal feel. I think the reason to include this is to highlight the way toys have changed and involved and how the newer toys are more impersonal. In conclusion I think the importance of talking about toys is that they influence our view of children and also t children themselves. And in way children toys can depict society’s view on children.

18. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Saussure and Barthes

Saussure

Language as arbitrary and differential: implications for literature

Saussure insists that language is “form and not a substance”. Unlike speech, language is not a function of the individual speaker as it belongs in the public sphere where the speaker only passively assimilates it. As a social product, language is “a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others”. For Saussure, words are about ideas not objects, so a word as signifier does not name things but conveys a plurality of meaning that is both momentary and fluid.

There are two sides to the relationship between the signified and signifier. First, it is arbitrary as there is no natural link between words and object. Secondly, it is differential because a sign is not linked to other signs naturally. We cannot know a thing positively as a thing that just is. We can only know it negatively by what it isn’t in relation to all other terms in a particular language system.

Here language as synchrony and speech as diachrony form a thought/moment relationship that allows us to ‘know’ things by what they are not in a conventional context. Signs do not function through their intrinsic value but through their relative position to others. The value of a sound can only be determined by its context.

The paradox, as Saussure points out, is that if a dissimilar thing can be exchanged for another thing (a toonie for a muffin), but can also be compared with similar things (a toonie and a loonie), then its value is not fixed. “Its content is really fixed only by the occurrence of everything that exists outside it.” Following Saussure’s argument then, language is never fixed in time by an individual speaker. On the contrary, the ability to communicate an idea depends on those who are receiving the communication. In this way meaning is constructed from any utterance by its context, by who is speaking to whom at which moment in time. This “momentary” character of language has interesting implications for our understanding of art, in all its forms, which seeks dialogue with an audience, whether an observer, listener, reader, etc…

If we apply Saussure’s argument to literature, the author cannot communicate an individual interpretation of the world to the reader because the reader’s interpretation at a particular moment of time also creates the “message”. In other words, a text does not have meaning in itself and separate from the reader.

Therefore, we can say that a piece of literature is not an object of art but a continually morphing “language”.

Another idea I find very interesting is that if we can only know things by understanding what they are not, perhaps this is how we create our own identity within a conventional space. We construct identities by establishing what we are not. I am female because I am not male, or I am white because I am not black. Paradoxically, I need the ‘other’ to create my identity.

 Barthes

Signs infinitely deferred: the death of the author

“Language knows a ‘subject’ not a ‘person’, and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’, suffices, …to exhaust it.”

For Barthes, the notion of the author as creator of meaning in a text is dead as it is a multiplicity of writings that make up a text which is interpreted and given meaning by the reader in the “here and now”. In other words a text is never original and never reveals a fixed meaning.

This idea corresponds with Saussure’s conception of language as dependent on ‘momentary’ context; however, wouldn’t Saussure include the author’s voice in the production of language? Also, Bakhtin does not wholly do away with the author, whose ‘style’ is always evident in a text. Perhaps they would view the author as co-author with the reader rather than originator/genius of the text.

Interdisciplinarity and the epistemological slide: Barthes’ propositions on the relativization of writer reader and critic.

Barthes differentiates between the work as a fragment of substance that displays reality and can only be moderately symbolic, and the text, a methodological field that demonstrates the real and is radically symbolic.

Unlike the work, the text cannot be contained in a hierarchy as it is continuously being created and therefore experienced only in the act of production. Thus, text is language that subverts dominant discourse

Coinciding with Saussure’s definition of language, text is always paradoxical for its creation depends on the differences between discourses. As Bakhtin observes, the text cannot exist with a unified voice. The infinite deferment of the signified relies on the play of readings that abolishes the distance between writer and reader.

In this playing, or jotrissance, the writer becomes a guest reader who adds to the palimpsest of perspectives that form an irreducible and metonymic/stereographic plurality. Not organic or hermeneutic, this irreducible quality is due to the overlapping of difference produced in the act of reading. Moreover, the difference is only repeatable as difference and therefore the experience is semelfactive.

In other words there is no Father of the text, which is a network that is repeatedly being broken through the practical collaboration between readers. The separation between reader and author in a work reduces it to a product for consumption whereas a text produces a space of pleasure where circulating languages blur the lines between reader, writer and critic.

Hello interdisciplinary studies!

I’m very interested in the notion that if ideas are handed to us on a platter, so to speak, we are not creatively engaged and therefore not producing meaning. With a simple wooden toy a child can be creative; however, a complex toy that requires no imagination to operate soon becomes boring. Similarly, when all the actors have fringes in a film about Caesar, we are being told that they are Roman. In other words, someone is doing the interpreting for us. The sign is confused with the signified.


17. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Impressions on “Mythologies” by Barthes

In Mythologies Barthes proposes a new layer – ‘‘a second-order semiological system’’ – in the use of the concepts developed by Saussure. The sign defined at the language level (the first-order) becomes the signifier of the myth level (the second-order). At the myth level, this signifier is associated to a signified ; their association resulting in a new sign.

By example, at the language level, ‘fox’ (the signifier) represents the concept of a given type of animal (the signified). When we hear ‘fox’, this animal come to mind and there is therefore the presence of a sign. In a story, this sign (‘fox’/concept of a certain animal) may be associated with the concept of ‘ingenious’ ; and this new association creates a sign of second order. This concept would apply to totems since different qualities are inherent to different animals.

In the various parts of the text, Barthes gives plenty of examples coming from pop culture – from the movie Julius Caesar to touristic guides.

I really enjoy Barthe’s first examples using Mankiewicz’s movie. In the movie, Barthes observes that all Romans wear fringes and he argues that those are more than an hair-do. They actually signify that characters wearing them are Romans. The sign of first order becomes the signifier of the second and an association is made between fringes and Romanity. Hence, no confusion may survive in the viewer’s head ! Moreover, everybody in the movie (but Caesar) is in sweat. To Barthes, this sweat represents the conflict each character is battling inside himself.

The second example – soap-powders and detergents – is particularly important since advertising is an area where second-order associations are frequently made by publicists to convince potential customers that their product possess high virtues. Barthes argues that soap companies put emphasis on the idea of whiteness, since this idea is associated to that of purity. Hence, their product may help reach this high quality. In current advertising, we can see soups or sauces or chowders following mom’s recipes ; an association is here made between the mother and the concepts of warmth and comfort. Some soft drinks companies shaped their bottles like the woman’s body ; the specifically-shaped bottle is associated to sexual pleasure and satisfaction.

I believe this concept – second-order semiological system – is at work in most figures of speech. Also, Barthes’s theories are very important in the study and analysis of media where what is said and portrayed is not necessarely what is said and portrayed…

17. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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Impressions on “Course in General Linguistics” by Saussure

In Course in General Lingusitics Saussure separates language from speaking. While language does not depend on the speaker, speaking is an individual act. For Saussure, language is a well-defined concrete homogeneous object that can – and must – be studied separately from the other elements of speech.

Language is a social institution since any relation between an object and its designation by a sound is arbitrary. There is no logical or natural reason that, in English, a tree is actually called a tree, it could as well be called an animal if everybody in a given linguistic community agreed on it. It is from this observation that Saussure concludes that language is social. I find interesting that Saussure announces the invention of a science – semiology – before it has been developed. Usually, it seems that intellectuals develop ideas and theories, and way later a science emerges from this work.

Anyway, semiology – ‘‘the science that studies the life of signs within society’’ – can now grow. Saussure develops a terminology that is at the foundation of semiology ; signified, signifier and sign. A signified is the idea, concept or object to be designated. A signifier is the sound (or drawing) produced to identify the signified. A sign is the association that is made between the signified and the signifier and which meaning is shared by a community. By example, a red circle with a red line crossing it is nothing else than that : a red circle with a red line crossing it. It is only when it is associated with the concept of ‘DO NOT DO SOMETHING’ (the signified) that it carries meaning and becomes a sign. From that, we can easily see that language is a social construction.

When Saussures discusses the concept of value, we can see from where the term Structuralism comes. Each sign finds its value and its limits in the relation to other signs. Therefore, ‘‘language is a system of interdependent terms’’ ; it is structured. The text gives these examples : redouter, craindre et avoir peur are synonyms where each carries a meaning through its opposition to the others. The same is true for inflections and tenses in languages.

This leads to other evidence that language is social. If language was pre-determined, there would not exist differences amongst them such as for inflections and tenses. The idea of past, by example, would be represented in the same way in each language ; which is not the case.

Something that wasn’t clear for me was the extent of Principle II ; it is so ‘‘obvious,’’ that I’m not sure I understand it…

In conclusion, I believe it is worth remembering that this text was created by some of Saussure’s students, that is, not written by Saussure directly. This poses the possibility of bias in the source.

17. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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The Value of Knights

We won’t leave Tolstoy’s horse behind, but instead recast it on Saussure’s chess board as a knight (which knight is lighter? This provides the start of an explanation to this puzzle). It is a bit odd that in chess the knight is a horse (isn’t that demeaning for an aristocrat?) rather than the rider. Saussure might say that the horse is the knight’s distinctive feature. (In fact, for Saussure the horse is a symbol and not a sign at all; more later on the double articulation that is necessary for signs.)  And that distinctiveness is arbitrary. It could have been a saddle, or a whip, or anything else that might be picked out as different. Saussure seems to say it doesn’t have to be anything at all. In another part of the text that we don’t have he says:

Take a knight, for instance. By itself is it an element in the game? Certainly not, for by its material make-up — outside its  square and the other conditions of the game — it means nothing to  the player; it becomes a real, concrete element only when endowed  with value and wedded to it. Suppose that the piece happens to be destroyed or lost during a game. Can it be replaced by an equivalent piece? Certainly. Not only another knight but even a figure of any resemblance to a knight can be declared identical  provided the same value is attributed to it. We see then that in  semiological systems like language, where elements hold each other in equilibrium [my emphasis] in accordance with fixed rules, the notion of identity  blends with that of value and vice versa.

Although both the signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact; it is even the sole type of facts that language has, for maintaining the parallelism between the two classes of differences is the distinctive function of the linguistic institution.  [my emphasis]

Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more importantly, a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences, without positive terms.  [my emphasis and Saussure’s] Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified (see p. 115). [ “Course”, from the Internet Archive]

Saussure seems to be pointing to the fundamental puzzle of Gestalt psychology: the totality determines the value of the parts, but the parts make the totality what it is. In this image, it is the perception of a shadow that makes us interpret shades of colors, and at the same time the shades of color that lead us to perceive the shadow. 

This is confusing for me, both in Gestalt psychology and in Saussure’s model of language. Saussure (his students?) say: “in language there are only differences, without positive terms”. He also says that combination is a “positive fact”.  How does “positive fact” relate to no “positive terms”?

More later on the double articulation, which may offer another piece to the puzzle.  

17. September 2012 by Syndicated User
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