Episode 2: Language and Saussure

Episode 2: Language and Saussure

Hello and welcome back to the Plutarch Project Podcast. I’m your host Josh Nieubuurt and today I’m here to talk to you about something of the utmost importance. It’s something you use everyday… sometimes in naughty ways. You filthy rascals… (tongue growl). It’s what separates us from other animals, it shapes our thoughts and our reality, and it has had the power to alter the hearts and minds of just about everyone who has ever lived. Today’s topic is… language.

Now I know what a few of you out there are thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know ALL about language. I use it all the time. What can this cat teach me about it? Well hopefully by the end of today’s podcast you will have an entirely new way of thinking about this integral part of your life. Before we start though it’s important to note that this podcast is for anyone interested in the humanities. This includes experts and beginners alike. I try to keep a healthy medium in terms of the language that I use. This podcast will have some jargon. For those extra keen folks out I hope you don’t mind me breaking down a few terms for folks on their journey toward mastery.  So, let lets go waaaaay back in time and see where things all began.

About 150,000 years ago early homosapiens roamed through East Africa. About 70,000 years ago they began successfully migrating outside of Africa. From 70,000 to 30,000 years ago early humans began making specialized tools such as boats, lamps, weapons and even began creating social inventions. Things like commerce, religion, and social hierarchy based upon these abstract ideas. All of this was possible due to the growth of cognitive abilities and early forms of language. Although other animals can communicate humans have the ability to transform a limited amount of sounds to an infinite number of stratified ideas. As far as we can tell it’s only humans that can manipulate their communication style to discuss abstract ideas and things that don’t even exist at all. This seems a little strange but think about it, how often do you think your dog has talked to other dogs about Harry Potter, the latest season of game of thrones or the intricacies of international politics?

This ability to use our language has been one of the biggest social bonds we as a species have shared throughout time. It allows large numbers of people to believe in a common world view and to cooperate in incredibly large numbers. As Yuval Noah Harari puts it in their book, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” language allows quote, “large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.” Without language these myths and ideas would never be able to exist. Each culture, nation, family, team -basically wherever groups of humans come together- the ability to use and manipulate language- even that funky body language we use when traveling to other countries- binds us together in a magical way. We’ll come back to the idea of common social myths in a little but let’s take a look out what language is.

Lets jump ahead a few thousand years to the late 19th and early 20th century. Ferdinand de Saussure is the man, linguistics and semiotics is the plan. For those of you unfamiliar with these terms linguistics “is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.” The earliest linguist was from 6th century India. His name was  Pāṇini and he was a grammarian studying sanskrit. was and semiotics “is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign process (semiosis) and meaningful communication.” A subset of semiotics is semiosis, this is concerned with how utterances of sound connect themselves with concepts.

Today we will be focusing on language through the semiotic lens. There are tons of ways to look at language but semiotics is a great place to start. We will be primarily using Ferdinand de Saussure’s work as a semiotician and linguist to think about how language is assigned meaning. If you’re interested in him shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to send you some reference materials.

You might be wondering, “This podcast is supposed to be about language not some dude from Switzerland.” You’re absolutely right. Let’s take off our clothes and jump right in shall we?

In the period leading up to Saussure and his developments linguistics had begun gradually shifting to be more scientific. During previous eras- up until the late 1700’S- people took a fanciful approach toward understanding language. n the late 1700’s analysts of language had not approached the structure and development of language in a scientific way.

Of course grammar was understood and explained well. This had been relatively unchanged going back to ancient times; do you recall the Sophists and the Roman idea of the Trivium in the last episode? This line of thinking was carried on for a very large portion of human history. But- to be honest-there was very little understanding of how a language actually worked in the real world. What the rules that languages operated by, the ways in which languages are related to each other and can be traced back to reconstructible unrecorded ancestral spoken languages. These just weren’t even options for people. People would often make up etymologies-etymologies being the origins or start of a word- for words that were totally made up and not based on evidence, but they did make good stories. You might think, “But we have been using language FOREVER! how could we not know how it works?” Much like a lot of the technology we use today we probably don’t fully comprehend how it works. We can push buttons, swipe screens, maybe even conceptualize how cell networks function, but for most of us how things work might as well be magic. A big shout out to all the folks out there who do know and keep everything running. You’re all the real MVP’s!

This shift in how language was studied and thought about came after an English scholar and British Judge living in India by the name of William Jones had a realization.  His realization was that the ancient language of India, Sanskrit, was closely related to ancient Greek and Latin. He proposed that they must all must have some unrecorded common ancestor – a kind of proto-Indo-European language. This realization would later go on to set the foundation for historical linguistics which, by the time of Saussure had solidified itself as a form of scientific study.

Early in the 1900’s, Saussure changed the course of scientific linguistics by moving away from the historical linguistics set forth by Jones, to analyzing how language functions. Saussure analyzed language from its most basic levels even down to how the most basic of sounds function.

One notable aspect was that of sound oppositions This is what oral language sprung from. The voiced sounds of vocal cords vibrating in opposition to the unvoiced sounds in which the vocal cords are not vibrating. some examples of this are the “t sound” “t” which is unvoiced and “d sound” “d” being voiced. Note the mouth and tongue are roughly in the same position but the vocal cords are vibrating in the “D” sound but not in the “T” sound.

This study of oppositions led to the understanding that all the sound variations in language that create meaning are based on oppositions in how they are articulated. This kind of analysis works all the way up through grammar. An easy example being the oppositions between the present forms and past forms of verbs-both express different time distinctions in opposition of each other. The present only has meaning by being in opposition to the future and the past.

Saussure emphasized that language is at its core a system of signs. It is a system that incorporates the sense of hearing, seeing, speaking and writing systems. It’s important to let you guys know that writing would be considered a secondary sign system. Writing consists of visual and recorded sets of signs. These signs duplicate by re-presenting the original sign system of language, which existed for many millennia before writing was ever thought about being used. We’ll talk more about writing in the next podcast so we’re going to set this aside for now.

So now that we have all that information a valid question to ask is, “Well what in the heck is language?” Is it communication between members of a species? Is it a bunch of weird sounds and scribbles we cast out into the world? To explore this topic we’re going to start out with a bit of an experiment.

I’m going to say a few words and I want you to think about the image that comes to your mind: Bushi, popoki, billi, paka, neko, gato… You might have guessed the word if you’re a speaker of any of the previous languages. If not the word in English is, “cat.” eow, this simple experiment shows one of the most vital parts of language.

Quote: “Language only exists within a group/community of people who adhere to certain sounds as signs for something other than sound.”

To put it in another way, the sounds we make only make sense if they are agreed upon to mean something by members of the same linguistic group. Without this agreement the sounds we make have no sign to correspond to. In the previous example the fragments of sounds: c-a-t have been agreed upon to represent those cute little critters who meow, purr, and waste endless hours of our lives on youtube. This is where Saussure pops into the picture. In his mostly posthumous work, “Course in General Linguistics” he delves into the inner mechanisms of what makes language work.

Language is the Union of image, sound, and ideas that have been commonly agreed upon by a group of society. So you might think, “great. That’s all language is… a bunch of folks walking around pointing at things giving them specific sounds and the rest of the group nodding in approval.” “ah yes, yes, platypus is a great name Alphonso, great indeed. What about this thing here? Booby, haha what a delightful name for a bird.”

But this isn’t quite the way it works. It does indeed bring us closer to the truth though. Let’s think of language as a coin. On the one side there is the concept. This is the image or idea we think of when we recognize something. On the other side is the sound-image, the kinds of sounds we associate with a given concept. Saussure defines Sound-image as quote, the “Psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses.”

Now it’s important to note that these ideas are very subjective when it comes to a detailed level. In the previous experiment we talked about the word “cat.” Let’s revisit this again. When you think of cat immediately some image of a cat pops into your mind. But is that cat exactly the same cat that pops into my head?

My cat has steely grey fur with white mustache looking patches near its long adorable whiskers with big blue eyes. What does yours look like? I’m willing to bet the farm that you have a slightly different cat stock image inside your head. But we both recognize some sort of image with an innate essence of what a cat is.. an essence of cat-y-ness. These essences make up what Saussure would call the signifier. Meow, they aren’t purrrfect but they do help work together to create a generally understood meaning.  These details are what we perceive in our own mental dialogues.

To recap signs are the actual object or idea in existence, the signifier is the sound, word, or image of the sign, and the signified is the mental concepts we see and understand inside our minds.

Do you recall last podcast when we talked about the Socratic method? A lot of these ancient guys were toying with the signifiers to gain a greater understanding of the signified. Without an adequate definition language can be manipulated to mean something very different than its intention. A lot of Saussure’S critics state that he didn’t exactly help create the fields of semiotics and semiology. Rather he updated the thoughts of ancient thinkers to reflect the scientific shift in language study.

The connection to the sign (the concept) and in this case the sound-image or signifier is completely arbitrary. There is literally no reason for them to have these sounds originally. Now with language being more understood we can conceptualize how these languages developed from other older languages but there is no non-arbitrary reason that they have the sounds that they do. Some guy or gal just thought, “hey how about I name this strange thing a cat.” Which, according to etymology.com, is “Probably ultimately Afro-Asiatic” in which they cite the “Nubian kadis, Berber kadiska, both meaning ‘cat'”

Now some of your silver tongued cunning linguists might shout, “But what about Onomatopoeia?” well saussure had an answer for this too. In short Onomatopoeia aren’t directly related to the concept or signified but are rather imitations of sound. They do change an evolve and are different from language to language but they are not directly related to the concept.

Let’s recap what we have so far. Language is a system of signs, signified, and signifiers. Language is a system of sounds that have been agreed upon by a group of speakers to represent the same sign/concept. The sounds are arbitrary. Ok good.

Let’s add a little more to the mix now. This one seems obvious but the more you think about it the crazier it becomes. There are no ideas existing before language in regard to concept, sign, signifier. The vast majority of our reality as fully functioning members of a community is perpetuated by language. Without language we would be pure sense experience. Let that sink in for a sec.

Language literally frames the way you perceive the world. Without it how would your existence be? How would you perceive yourself? Would societies, friendship, love, hate, freedom, and life have any meaning whatsoever to you?

Let’s take this even further now. For value to exist–for signs to be linked to their signifiers- the idea must have similar signs and signifiers for comparison and dissimilar signs and signifiers for exchange in order for the ideas to create and have value. In short, without similar and dissimilar words and concepts– language is basically useless. In order to understand what a cat is we need to be able to say what it isn’t as well.

Each language manipulates sounds differently to refer to similar concepts. Also, values are created by the language system which makes them. In English we call it a cat in spanish it’s un gato, and in Japanese it’s neko.

The idea of what freedom is will more than likely be different in Reno, Nevada in the United States than on Pyongyang North Korea. Each group of people has a different idea of what this sign, signifier, and signified mean.  Each uses different sounds and places a different value on simple and even more so on abstract concepts. The linguistic cultures you grow up in and exist within affect the way you use and think about language–and also the world.

 This is the evidence Saussure used to help prove that words are arbitrary. He states, “If words stood for pre-existing concepts, they would all have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next; but this is not true.” Using even a simple example of a cat has each of us filled with different mental images of cats what about more abstract ideas such as freedom, socialism, or justice?

It’s here that we can connect the ideas of a 20th century linguist with what we now face in 2018. If you live within the borders of society you are almost always deeply marinated in language. The news, the advertisements on all platforms, your friends, family, coworkers, street signs, your email– everywhere you turn you’re faced with some form of language. Heck, even inside your own head- your inner monologue is framed by the language or languages you know. Add in the cultural myths every culture and nation have agreed upon and we have ourselves one heck of an abstract picture to contemplate.

 

There’s been an exhaustible amount of literature on the power of positive thinking. But quite often they reference how you talk to yourself. So take a moment and consider your relationship with yourself. What kinds of language are you using to frame your own world? Does your reality actually coincide with the language you use to frame it? Are you using language accurately with yourself and those you associate with?

 

Next time you find yourself listening to the news, reading an article, or even chatting with a friend. Think closely about the language you are being given and are using. Is there a direct link to what you think they mean-or are they playing with these signifiers to alter your signified mental concept? Are they giving you the real definition of a signifier or are they trying to connect ideas you would presumably think of as negative to the signified? All of these are huge questions that need to be asked about a government and the various parts of media.

 

When leaders talk about ideas like freedom, heritage, tradition, winning, or losing- what is it that they are trying to say. And furthermore, are you certain that they aren’t misusing their language to convince you of a position that might not be true? I hope you take the time to think about your own relationship with language. If nothing else you are now armed with a new way to think about how language frames the world and your place in it.

Thanks for checking us out and as always,

 

ONWARD.

 

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