What’s in a Word? Two Things
So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with. - John Locke (English philosopher, 1632-1704)
A bit of cultural theory
In my first post, I told you what I’m up to with regard to applying various cultural theories to our social moment. In my second post, I offered an example of how such an application works. Using bits of theory about masculinity and oppression, I carried out an extended reading (two-parts, no less!) of the streaming series Ted Lasso. I hope a fine time was had by all.
For this third post, and for the next few after that, I want to establish some of the groundwork on which these cultural theories are built. The task won’t be easy. As I always tell to my students, no matter where I start in explaining what these theories are and how they work, I should have started somewhere else. That’s because the concepts behind these theories overlap and interlink and are interdependent. Whenever I go into an explanation of one theory, I should be explaining, simultaneously, about ten other theories that substantially pertain to it. What I also always tell my students is this: go with the flow for the first few weeks of the course. Let these ideas wash over you; consider them; ask questions. Then, at some point down the line, everything will start to gel. A bigger picture will come into focus. You’ll begin to see the connections.
Dear Rant Reader, I ask the same patience of you.
So let’s get basic. What’s in a word?
At the start of the 20th century, a Swiss linguist named Ferdinand de Saussure taught a “General Linguistics” course three times at the University of Geneva between 1907 and 1911. Saussure died in 1913, but colleagues compiled lecture notes from his students to publish, in 1916, a book quite descriptively titled Course in General Linguistics. Although it took some years for the work to gain widespread attention, when it did, Saussure’s ideas changed how we think about language.
Saussure departed from the established study of Philology, which is the close analysis and comparison of languages as they change over long periods of time (for example, the Indo-European Language Family Tree). Such an approach assumes, more or less, that a word simply equals a thing in the world. Here’s an advanced scientific way to represent that idea:
Word = Thing
Although he spent many years being an accomplished Philologist himself, Saussure started to question this standard-procedure, one-to-one relationship between words and the objects and concepts around us. He started to theorize about a deep structure to language, that is, how it functions at a basic level common to all languages. In other words, this idea occurred to him:
Word ≠ Thing
(I hope you’re able to keep up with all this high-flying science.)
So, if a word doesn’t just mirror and mimic the one thing in the world to which it refers, what, then, is a word?
Here’s what Saussure came up with. He proposed a new science called semiology. He described this new pursuit as one “that studies the life of signs within society.” He put forward that language serves as the “master-pattern” for all such cultural sign systems. Saussure’s innovation, then, was to stop just looking at the long history of everyday speech (in French, what he called parole) but to discover as well the core framework of language (what he termed langue). Structuralist linguistics came into being.
What does that mean? For Saussure, that means a Word stops being a dull and static mimetic object stuck in the mud of history and becomes, instead, a very lively Sign within a dynamic system of signs that animates all social interaction. Again, at the risk of hopelessly confusing some readers, permit me put this into science talk for you once more:
Word = Sign
What’s in a Sign, then? Two things.
Saussure theorized a two-part structure to the Sign. One part he called the Signifier (abbreviated Sr), and the other part he called the Signified (abbreviated Sd). Think of a Sign as being like a sheet of paper, one side being the Signifier and the other side being the Signified. That’s how closely joined are a Sr and a Sd. Nonetheless, they are two individual elements of a Sign, each one carrying out a distinct function.
The Signifier is a “sound-image” but can equally be—as they are now as you read these signs—a “text-image.” The Signified is a concept that is triggered in your head by the Signifier. For example, I make the sound “tree”—or type it now as text for you to read—and into your head pops the concept of, shall we say, tree-ness. In yet another exceedingly scientific diagram, here’s how Saussure’s Sign often is depicted:
Again, think of the circle with the line bisecting it like two sides of a piece of paper. Each side is different and has its own purpose, but the two sides are firmly bonded together. Now let’s put this Sign into action.
Applying this bit of cultural theory
When introducing Saussure’s Sign to students, the very first thing I do is ask them to take out a piece of paper and draw a tree. They’re nicely baffled by the request but carry out these simple instructions anyway. Invariably, most students make a quick and rudimentary sketch of what looks like a head of broccoli, not unlike the tree icon in the diagram above.
I select at random two of these broccoli-tree drawings and hold them up for the class to see. Then I ask a simple question: Are these two trees exactly alike? Of course, everyone shakes a head and says no, they are not exactly alike. They both look vaguely like heads of broccoli, yes, but they are certainly not identical drawings. Then I ask: Why not? I said one word—“tree”—so why didn’t these two people draw exactly the same picture of a tree? Students immediately answer the obvious: Because two different people drew them. At this point I tell them congratulations. They now know the most important thing there is to understand about Saussure’s Sign.
The Signified is not just a single concept. It is a GENERALIZED concept altogether dependent for its interpretation on the listener (or reader) of the Signifier.
To illustrate further this key point, I ask if anyone drew a pine tree. Not in all classes, but on occasion, someone raises a hand and holds up a nice sketch of a pine tree. (Interestingly, these people are often left-handed.) I point out that pine-tree drawers tend to be cheery folks with a fondness for Christmas. Then I ask if anyone drew a dead tree. In every class, at least one person (whose wardrobe often features black) sheepishly holds up a leafless tangle of branches. I advise that we should all be very kind to this person.
Saussure points out that, “The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.” Moreover, Saussure is adamant to assert how this unity of Sd and Sr is wholly arbitrary. That is, there is no necessary or natural or material connection between the two. The Sign is an entirely concocted device. As we just saw, no absolute and invariable relationship exists between the Sr “tree” and the Sd tree-ness; otherwise, every student in class would draw the self-same tree. Additionally, any sound-image or text-image can serve equally well as a grunt or a scribble calling to mind any general thought. Just think of the many, many different languages humans speak.
In English, we utter “tree” to mean broccoli-tree (or pine tree or dead tree or palm tree...). But in French it’s “arbre.” In Spanish it’s “árbol.” In German it’s “Baum.” In Urdu it’s “درخت.” I tell students that if we, in our class, start using the word “glimblatt” to mean a tree, well, then it means a tree. As in, “I love it when the leaves on the glimblatts turn color in the fall.” Or, “Isn’t it a pity that Eve ate the fruit from the Glimblatt of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?” We’ve just created our own language system. (Sadly, as a coinage, my word “glimblatt” has yet to catch on—although sometimes students use it in their essays. It’s nice to know that I’m making a difference.)
Along with the Sign being arbitrary, another crucial point Saussure makes is that a language—that is, a sign system—functions only by difference. As with his point about the arbitrary nature of the sign, this attribute of difference—once understood—might seem trivially self-evident. But its importance, like that of arbitrariness, can’t be overstated. What Saussure means is that we only know what a sign means because it doesn’t mean any other sign we know. We’ll ask science one last time to help us grasp this idea:
tree ≠ cat / dog / Studebaker / hash browns / about / fumbling / byte / peer ...
In other words, in order to understand every word you hear (or are currently reading), your brain shuffles through every other word you know going “nope, nope, nope, nope...” until it arrives at the meaning you’ve been conditioned to associate with that particular word. (Sidebar: what amazing linguistic computers we carry around in our noggins!)
Language is a noise+notion island completely unto itself. Its relationship with physical reality is feeble at best. Gossamer, really. Based solely on more than one person agreeing that such-and-such a noise corresponds, somehow, to such-and-such a notion.
I say again: glimblatt.
More scientifically, Saussure sums things up this way:
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. ... language is a form and not a substance.
So what?
As much as we might like to think of language as a solid, fixed, permanent part of the world around us, it’s not. Language is an ever-shifting mash of gibberish. When we use language (and when do we not?), we are awash in make-believe, living our lives inside a contraption of randomly bonded Signifiers and Signifieds.
Certainly, we can be excused for believing that language is a stable substance. We’re all compelled to learn the “rules”—such as grammar and usage and pronunciation and spelling—of the language system we’re born into. (Rules, by the way, that are always shifting.) If we’re required to learn another language, a deep frustration might easily set in at having to master a whole other set of rules. (As comedian Steve Martin once complained: The French have a different word for everything!)
Due to this training—that starts the minute we’re born—language takes on the appearance of being a reliable link to the universe sitting outside of our brains. But if credibility is to be given to Saussure’s theories, we must admit, alas, no. In reality, language is a self-contained, conventional, arbitrary system of cultural signs that creates meaning only by way of difference.
Moreover, we are far more under its control than it is under ours.
But, hey, what could go wrong?
After we go over the basics of Saussure’s Sign, I ask students to take a good look at the drawing of it I always put up on the blackboard and tell me: Where might shenanigans happen within this device? That is, what aspect of this Sr/Sd transaction has the potential to become politically charged, to get enmeshed in issues of social power? After a bit of discussion, students spot the trouble area: the Signified.
Who gets to say WHICH generalized concept is triggered by a sound-image?
For a word such as “tree,” it’s not normally a big deal if a broccoli-tree or a pine tree or a dead tree wins the day. But what about a word like “truth”? Or “justice”? Or “facts”? Or “equality”? Or “God”? Or “terrorist”? Or “masculine”? Or “feminine”? Or “woke”? To elaborate on a hackneyed phrase: words matter in the sense of whose Signified is enforced as the Signified.
For the rest of the semester, as we explore other cultural theories, we refer to this linguistic power struggle at the level of the Sign as the Battle for the Signified. Students start to notice its occurrence everywhere. I’ll end this post with a quick recent example.
In her response to Joe Biden’s 2023 “State of the Union” address, Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared that “the choice is no longer between right or left” when it comes to Republican or Democratic policy, but “the choice is between normal and crazy.”
Now there’s a couple of loaded Signifiers for you.
Huckabee Sanders’ Republican Signifieds for political normal and crazy are emphatically the inverse of Biden’s Democratic Signifieds for political normal and crazy.
As we head toward the 2024 election, the battle rages for whose Signifieds will win the day as the Signifieds—and thus gain political power over us all.
Although, like two sides of one piece of paper, Sr and Sd are securely melded by linguistic habit, that union, nonetheless, can be split asunder. Indeed, it happens all the time. Indeed, it’s a phenomenon fundamental to understanding the operation of all sorts of cultural theories.
As we started with a stimulating quote, so shall we end.
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbors, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them. - Samuel Butler (English novelist and critic, 1835-1902)
Reading of possible interest on Words/the Sign:
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics, edited by C. Bally and A. Reidlinger, translated by W. Baskin, Philosophical Library, Inc., 1958.
COMING NEXT WEEK: Sign and Structure