Cours de linguistique générale¶
F., d. S. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale.
Cited by¶
17 citations across 13 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Arbitrariness of Symbolic Conventions
- The core principle emerges from Saussure's foundational 1916 Cours de linguistique générale,
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot, 1916. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959.) Originating statement of l'arbitraire du signe — that the bond between signifier and signified is arbitrary, with no intrinsic acoustic/visual property of a word forcing its meaning — and of structural linguistics broadly.
- The core principle emerges from Saussure's foundational 1916 Cours de linguistique générale,
- Contrast
- As Saussure (1916) put it, value (meaning, identity) emerges only through systems of difference — terms gain their content from what they are not.
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959.)
- As Saussure (1916) put it, value (meaning, identity) emerges only through systems of difference — terms gain their content from what they are not.
- Iconography
- The system of conventional associations between visual forms and their representational or conceptual domains
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- The system of conventional associations between visual forms and their representational or conceptual domains
- Observable Surface Becomes Contract
- In linguistic descriptivism, persistent observed usage in a population becomes the language regardless of prescriptive rules.
This sourceFounds the descriptive view of language as constituted by actual usage (parole) in a speech community rather than by prescriptive rule.
- In linguistic descriptivism, persistent observed usage in a population becomes the language regardless of prescriptive rules.
- Paradigmatic vs. Syntagmatic Relations
- Any structured system decomposes along two orthogonal axes, the foundational structural-linguistic duality that Saussure
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- (5) the structural-linguistics analytical primacy — separating "what could have filled this slot?" (paradigm) from "how do the chosen fillers line up?" (syntagm) is a universal analytic move, generalizing far beyond its Saussurean origin to software architecture, music composition, organizational design, and genomics.
This sourceSaussure paradigmatic-syntagmatic axes linguistic analysis structure.
- Any structured system decomposes along two orthogonal axes, the foundational structural-linguistic duality that Saussure
- Representation
- Linguistics and semiotics uses representation for the sign / signifier / signified triad of Saussure
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- Linguistics and semiotics uses representation for the sign / signifier / signified triad of Saussure
- Signifier–Signified Duality
- The essential commitment is that every sign — whether spoken word, written letter, visual icon, or gesture — consists of (1) a signifier (signifiant) — the material signifier form, the perceptible acoustic, visual, or tactile manifestation (the sound-image /tri:/, the letters "tree," the pixels of an icon); (2) a signified (signifié) — the conceptual signified content, the mental concept or cognitive category evoked in the interpreter's mind (⟨TREE⟩, the taxonomic concept of a woody perennial plant); (3) a conventional, arbitrary relation — the arbitrary connection — joining form to concept, neither motivated by nature nor by resemblance but established through social use and transmission within a speech community; and (4) the systemic-differential function — the systemic-differential value, the insight that signs gain meaning not from independent reference to things but from their position in a System of contrasts with other signs.
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- Saussure's 1916 Cours de linguistique générale established the foundational framework: "le signe linguistique unit non pas une chose et un nom, mais un concept et une image acoustique" — not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.
This sourceSection II.1. ("Le signe linguistique unit non pas une chose et un nom, mais un concept et une image acoustique.") Saussure concept acoustic-image bond not thing and name.
- Saussure's duality is internal to the sign structure and brackets the referent question; it is not naive realism (words pointing directly to things).
This sourceSaussure sign brackets external referent internal structure concept acoustic image.
- The two concepts are tight companions in Saussurean theory but logically distinguishable.
This sourceSaussure arbitrariness signifier-signified binding non-motivated convention.
- The essential commitment is that every sign — whether spoken word, written letter, visual icon, or gesture — consists of (1) a signifier (signifiant) — the material signifier form, the perceptible acoustic, visual, or tactile manifestation (the sound-image /tri:/, the letters "tree," the pixels of an icon); (2) a signified (signifié) — the conceptual signified content, the mental concept or cognitive category evoked in the interpreter's mind (⟨TREE⟩, the taxonomic concept of a woody perennial plant); (3) a conventional, arbitrary relation — the arbitrary connection — joining form to concept, neither motivated by nature nor by resemblance but established through social use and transmission within a speech community; and (4) the systemic-differential function — the systemic-differential value, the insight that signs gain meaning not from independent reference to things but from their position in a System of contrasts with other signs.
- Symbolic Representation
- Symbolic representation requires interpretive communities who know the convention, arbitrariness in the sign-meaning link (there is no necessary connection — "dog" could equally have meant cat, and "5" could equally have been written "V"), and durability through convention maintenance (the link persists because the community continues to enforce it), a structural reading Saussure (1916) formalized in his foundational distinction between the signifier and the signified as a socially-bound dyad.
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- Symbolic representation requires interpretive communities who know the convention, arbitrariness in the sign-meaning link (there is no necessary connection — "dog" could equally have meant cat, and "5" could equally have been written "V"), and durability through convention maintenance (the link persists because the community continues to enforce it), a structural reading Saussure (1916) formalized in his foundational distinction between the signifier and the signified as a socially-bound dyad.
- Synchronic vs. Diachronic Analysis
- Saussure's foundational 1916 Cours de linguistique générale
This sourceEdited posthumously by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students' lecture notes. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. (English translation: Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. The originating treatment of the sign as a signifier-signified pair and of structural linguistics more broadly; foundational for 20th-century semiotics and the structural-relations strand of the social sciences.)
- Saussure's foundational 1916 Cours de linguistique générale
Domain-specific¶
- Etymological fallacy
- Meaning is not an intrinsic property of a word that travels with it unchanged from coinage; it is determined by the conventions of current speakers in a given community.
This sourceSaussure's Cours defines la langue as a body of necessary conventions adopted by the social body, and holds that values remain entirely relative, established only by usage and the general consent of the collective.
SupportedVerified against a saved copy of the source
“valeurs restent entièrement relatives, et voilà pourquoi le lien de l'idée et du son est radicalement arbitraire.”
- Meaning is not an intrinsic property of a word that travels with it unchanged from coinage; it is determined by the conventions of current speakers in a given community.
- Structuralism
- Saussure's foundational formulation: "in language there are only differences" — a phoneme is what it is by virtue of not being the other phonemes, and the value of any linguistic unit is its position in a system of contrasts, not any property it has in isolation
This sourceThe Cours de linguistique generale's account of linguistic value as pure difference within a system of contrasts ('in language there are only differences without positive terms').
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“mais dans la langue il n'y a que des différences sans termes positifs.”
- Saussure's foundational formulation: "in language there are only differences" — a phoneme is what it is by virtue of not being the other phonemes, and the value of any linguistic unit is its position in a system of contrasts, not any property it has in isolation
Mechanisms¶
- Symbol Collision Checklist
- Its logic is fundamentally about difference: in structural semiotics a sign carries meaning only by contrasting with the others in its system
This sourceTreats linguistic value as differential: signs function through their relations to and distinctions from other signs in the system.
- Its logic is fundamentally about difference: in structural semiotics a sign carries meaning only by contrasting with the others in its system
- Symbol Legend or Key
- Its strength is that it makes an arbitrary code usable immediately, lowering the convention burden for newcomers — precisely because a symbol's tie to its meaning is a matter of learned convention, not resemblance, a published key is what lets an outsider read it at all.
This sourceEstablishes that the signifier-signified relation is arbitrary, conventional, and not grounded in natural resemblance.
- Its strength is that it makes an arbitrary code usable immediately, lowering the convention burden for newcomers — precisely because a symbol's tie to its meaning is a matter of learned convention, not resemblance, a published key is what lets an outsider read it at all.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 4 other ways.
- https://archive.org/details/coursdelinguisti00saus ×1
- https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31303351g ×1
- https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k658280r ×1
- https://www.payot-rivages.fr/payot/livre/cours-de-linguistique-g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale-9782228889421 ×1
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