Saussure and Derrida: The Semiotics of Limitlessness
Saussure and Derrida:
The Semiotics of Limitlessness
Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos
In linguistics, however, the object is not given, but is created by the point of view. 233
The language system is the product of an operation of abstraction and is not an empirical object. 233
Saussure (1916: 97–100) locates two elements that are transmitted, the “acoustic image” (image acoustique) and the concept (concept), which later in his book he will call, respectively, “signifier” (signifiant) and “signified” (signifié), and which together, as an indivisible whole, constitute the fundamental unit of the language system, the sign (signe). Parole is made possible by the language system, and is for Saussure attached to communication. 233
Thus, while epistemologically langue is an ex nihilo construction, historically it is a concrete historical construction, or — to use a sociological term — a product of a social, more specifically cultural, practice. In terms of systems theory, the use of the language system in speech is one of its possible functions, in fact its predominant function, and it is this function that historically creates the system. 233- 234
Saussure’s final choice of prioritizing the language system, revolutionary as it proved to be (not only for linguistics but for all of the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts), imposed epistemological and sociological limitations on semiotic research, because it marginalizes the semiotic process, that is, signifying practices. 234
A central characteristic of the Saussurean language system concerns the dimension of time. Saussure observes that all sciences should realize that the approach to their object always includes two axes: the “axis of simultaneities” (axe des simultanéités), which refers to coexisting things and is time-independent, and the “axis of successitivities” (axe des successivités), which refers to the individual (as opposed to systemic) changes in time of these things. In respect to these two axes, Saussure defines two independent linguistics of langue: “synchronic linguistics” (linguistique synchronique) and “diachronic linguistics” (linguistique diachronique), of which the first has as its object the (static) state of the language system at a particular time. 234
The language system is considered by Saussure as a system of only pure values, but it is such a system because of the nature of the sign; this nature is of a fundamental importance for linguistics and must, for him, also guide sémiologie. It is the arbitrariness (arbitraire) of the sign which is the “first principle” of linguistics. This principle has two aspects. The one, which is emphasized, is the relationship between signifier and signified, a relationship which is “unmotivated” (immotivé). The second concerns the relationship between the sign, made up of these two components, and the thing to which it refers. 234
According to Saussure, the signified is defined positively as a specific content related to a signifier. On the other hand, value is defined negatively as the relationship between (each one of the two components of ) a sign and the other signs of a langue. It is reasonable to assume that the need to differentiate each position of a signified from all other positions led Saussure to a purely differential concept of value, a quality inseparable from the arbitrariness of the sign. Value is a concept superordinate to signification, because the (spectre of the) latter does not exist without the former. Since the language system is a system constituted only by values, it consists only in differences, without having any positive terms. 235
What is Saussure’s conclusion from this relationship between linguistic signs and material reality, an issue he considers as being beyond linguistics? A word refers to an object through an idea that is at once totally insufficient and infinitely vast. Linguistic terms do not apply completely or even very incompletely to defined objects, material or other. They have access to a material object only “obliquely” and they express it only in a “rough manner”. A material object is represented to our knowledge “very indirectly” and (in this formulation) “very incompletely”. 237
Lagopoulos, Alexandros Ph. “Saussure and Derrida: The Semiotics of Limitlessness.” American Journal of Semiotics, vol. 28, no. ¾, 2012, pp.231-255. PhilPapers, 10.5840/ajs2012283/416
