Saussure: LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL FACT
Towards the end of the XIX century -
apparently everything looks good for the time, and some
still remain convincing for the present - the
language similarities with
biology has been widely rejected. This raises the difficulty of understanding the language as an
academic discipline: If the language is not
the species of life, in the sense of whether the language is "stuff"
that can be investigated? A layman pleased
that the French language
is something that
can be learned, which have certain devices
and in some cases the same or similar to
English but in other respects
different; but when
the French language in an item
and that item is something strange. It
is clear that the language was
not a concrete object
such as a table or
as a stretch of land
called France. You cannot see or hear the French language. You
can hear is the servant Gaston said
"pas si bete ...” .You can see a line on a sheet of letterpress
newspaper "Le Monde": but how can we interpret a being called
the French language which is behind thousands and thousands of concrete phenomena
that can be observed as in the two earlier
examples? What kind of form that
language? Biological paradigm
shows the relationship between the speech and language of France such as the relationship between Carrot (carrot)
and certain species
of carrots: And until the rejection of the
biological paradigm opinion, such opinion
has been deemed satisfactory - although one can only
see or eat
carrots, vote important
enough to talk
about carrots species and discuss, say, genetic
relationship with species potatoes. But the first time biologists
have been thrown to
the side of the road; second, people have found
that paradigm cannot provide a complete answer to the ongoing discussion. In
biology, because the species
is an abstraction, not least the individual species are goods that are concrete, some kinds of goods can be easily felt than carrots.
But the linguistic analogy
to biological individual
is idiolect; and
almost all, if
not all, the same as a broad abstraction
of the concept of
language. We cannot hear idiolect Gaston
as a form;
we can only
hear the idiolect
examples - comments
which he says that
he saw a tip
that we left off,
and it does not
have idiolect example
parallels in biology. So even though is not
regarded as a particular problem by linguists of the
nineteenth century, the question "How
does understanding a form called a language or a
dialect of the underlying reality
that can be felt rather
than specific utterances? Remain open at that
time. People who answer that can satisfy
experts as well as experts during her
today is the Swiss scholar: Ferdinand de
Saussure.
Mongin Ferdinand de Saussure, his full name,
was born in Geneva
in 1857, the son of the Huguenot families who
moved from Lorraine
during the French religious wars in the
late sixteenth century. Although people
now regard as the
first Saussure provides a
definition of the notion that
so-called synchronic linguistics - the study
of language support as the system contained in the given time, which is distinguished
by historical linguistics (which
to distinguish Saussure
called diachronic linguistics) is for
experts contemporaries is the only approach available
for studying that
time was -
in his lifetime was not meant to make it famous. Saussure got educated
as an ancient language, and successfully while
he was young published a book entitled Memoire sur lesysteme
primitive dans les langues des Voyelles
indo-europeennes (1878). The book was published a few weeks after his birthday XXI: When he was a
student in Germany. The book is one of the basic reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European
language. Saussure gives Ecole Pratique des Hautes lecture Etudes in Paris from
1881 to 1891, before he returned to teaching in Geneva, all publishing, and almost
all the lectures he gave, throughout his more than dealing with historical
linguistics synchronic linguistics, with in-depth analysis about the various Indo-European
languages and not with the general theory that makes it famous now.
In fact, even though Saussure produce his work on the theory of general linguistics
at about 1890 (Koerner, 1973: 29), he seems reluctant to give it to someone
else, and the story of how his ideas can go into publishing is a strange story.
In late 1906 he was asked to take over responsibility in giving lectures on general
linguistics and comparative history and languages of the Indo-European from a
scholar who has quit his service for 30 years; Saussure taught the material on the
rest of her student days and on the lectures in 1908-1909 and in 1910-1911. In the first years
of Saussure limit at only about historical
matters; but when
he gave the
two years he
was also a brief introduction to post a synchronic linguistics,
and the third
lecture, the entire semester is used to provide
synchronous linguistic theory. Soon after
he died, without a chance to publish any material
that theory, some
people have been
asked to publish,
but he always
answered that for preparing lecture materials
very time-consuming, but two of his colleagues, Charles
Bally and Albert
Sechehaye decided on a new fabric of the
student lecture notes together with notes
Saussure left college.
The book they produced is called Cours de linguistique gererale
(Saussure 1916) is
a medium that can be used by scholars in the
world to understand
the ideas of Saussure, Saussure and since this
document is known as the father of twentieth-century linguist.
