Page 9
Q: Language has an individual aspect and a social aspect.
N: (Individual aspect) only in-so-much that it is part of a whole. Language has no meaning (or rather, doesn’t exist) without its social nature.
Q: It is quite illusory to believe that where language is concerned the problem of origins is any different from the problem of permanent conditions. There is no way out of the circle.
N: the problem of origin: Where language comes from. Permanent conditions: The facts of language, what language IS.
Q: So however we approach the question, no one object of linguistic study emerges of its own accord. Whichever way we turn… but their methods are not the ones that are needed.
N: This paragraph concludes that language doesn’t fall into any of the following field: psychology, anthropology, prescriptive grammar, philology and so on…
Q: One solution only, in our view, resolves all these difficulties. The linguists must take the study of linguistic structure as his primary concern, and relate all other manifestations of language to it.
N: The structure is the only object of study. Because language is thinking, it is therefore the foundation of all sciences. The study of structure is thus revealing to the workings of a human mind. The structure is thus the main object of study of linguistics.
N: What is the foundation of language? What give language the substance from which a structure can emerge? It can only be human experience (sensory experience). And this experience must be shared, I.e. social.
N: Structure doesn’t come before substance. It must be extracted from our common experience.
Q: Indeed, amid so many dualities, linguistic structure seems to be the one thing that is independently definable and provides something our minds can satisfactorily grasp..
N: It seems to me that the linguistic structure is something that is created by our mind (based on a lot of linguistic material), and thus can ipso facto be understood by the mind.
(P9 – 10)
Q: What, then, is linguistic structure? It is not, in our opinion, simply the same thing as language. Linguistic structure is only one part of language, even though it is an essential part. The structure of a language is a social product of our language faculty… (cont.)
N: Contrary to popular beliefs, the structure of a language is NOT inherent to the language, although it may appear so when we learn a language as a second language.
Q: At the same time, it is also a body of necessary conventions adopted by society to enable members of society of use their language faculty.
N: Still NOT inherent to the language itself. However, I would argue that social convention is an integral part of language because language cannot function without it being a social convention, I.e. understood and used by most if not all of a community.
Q: Language in its entirety has many different and disparate aspects… It is at the same time physical, physiological and psychological. It belongs both to the individual and to society. No classification of human phenomena provides any single place for it, because language as such as has no discernible unity… A language as a structure system, on the contrary, is both a self-contained whole and a principle of classification…
N: To study language as a structure system allow it to be studied together with any signs and symbols which is the association between a sign and a meaning. It is through this articulation that Saussure founded the science of Semiology. Language structure is a set of sign system, the most complicated one. In a broader sense, we can call all signs a form of language.
(P10 – 11)
Q: It might be objected to this principle of classification that our use of language depends on a faculty endowed by nature: whereas language systems are acquired and conventional, and so ought to be subordinated to – instead of being given priority over – our natural ability.
N: Saussure’s excellent rebuttal essentially contains the following points:
1) It has not been established that the function of language is entirely nature: “it is not clear that our vocal apparatus is made for speaking as our legs for walking”. Sure, our vocal apparatus is made for making sounds, but that doesn’t equate speaking. Just like using the legs for walking doesn’t equate dancing.
2) In disease such as aphasia and agraphia, it is not the ability to (physiologically) utter or to inscribe that is affected, but the ability to produce signs corresponding to normal language.
to add to this excellent rebuttal, I would also argue that language doesn’t rely on any one physiological ability to produce them: sign language is as much a language as speech, and in both case they can understand writing by sight. It seems to me that although the way to produce language is limited by our natural faculties, it doesn’t depend on them. If there is a physiological faculty that correspond to the usage of language, it is not any of the observable faculties.
On the other hand, even if such faculty exist (let’s assume it does), it is hard to imagine that such a faculty can generate a language structure on its own. It is logical to assume that a language structure is the product of the interaction between a natural faculty of symbol articulation and the external linguistic material that a person is exposed to, which is a social product based on collective experience. This dual nature of language found unity in linguistic structure, and thus the structure should be the primary object of study.
Q: *The language we use is a convention.
N: Because it is a convention, it has no inherent truth. And because it is a convention, the community of primary and majority speakers always have primacy over its usage and people who learn the language as a second language must observe and respect this primacy.
Q: …language articulation… In Latin, the word articulus means ‘member, part, subdivision in a sequence of things’. As regards language, articulation may refer to the division of the chain of speech into syllables, or to the division of the chain of meanings into meaningful units… one may say that it is not spoken language which is natural to man, but the faculty of constructing a language, I.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.
N: How that distinction is drawn should thus be an important aspect of linguistic studies. It also offers insight into how the community of speakers think collectively.
Q: Broca discovered that the faculty of speech is localised in the third frontal convoltion of the left hemisphere of the brain… All this leads us to believe that, over and above the functioning of the various organs, there exists a more general faculty governing signs, which may be regarded as the linguistic faculty par excellence.
Q: Whether natural or not, the faculty of articulating words is put to use only by means of the linguistic instrument created and provided by society. Therefore it is no absurdity to say that it is linguistic structure which gives language what unity it has.
N: The commonality of language structure should reflect the unity of natural linguistic faculty in individual human (we assume), and the unity in experience (more common among community of close proximity). Language should thus be taught by uniting human experience; this is the thought behind situational teaching methodology.
SUMMARY (p8 – 11)
In these pages, the book deals with these issues:
- Why it is difficult to establish an object of study for language study.
- Discuss the various aspects involved in the phenomenon of language (physical, physiological, psychological, social, individual, etc)
- What linguistic structure is.
- Why linguistic structure is a suitable primary object of study for linguistics.
My understanding:
It is difficult to establish an object of study for language because it involves too many aspect of human activities, and also the nature of language is not the sum of all its manifestation. From the perspective of the generation of language, there is the physical aspect (medium, sound or paper, etc), the physiological aspect (how the sound is produced, the motion involved in writing, the hearing process, etc), and psychological (the association of a sound/visual pattern with a distinct meaning). From sociological perspective, language is both individual and collective, it is produced by individual human, but the understanding and utility of language depends on a collective understanding, a convention. The social convention aspect of language again has a dual nature of it being a product of the past (philological), and the existing system (grammatical).
What unites all these varied aspect is the fact that language is a structured sign system. The linguistic structure represent the inherent logic used in the generation of a language and all other linguistic facts (the pronunciation, writing, etc). We find the nexus connecting all phenomenon of language in linguistic structure.
S2: Linguistic structure: its place among the facts of language (P11 – 15)
N: For most of the linguistic inquire, Saussure give primacy to the act of speech. It is natural considering the oral nature of western languages. However, the same method can be apply to using writing as an object of analysis. For example, the hear-speak circuit can be easily replace by the read-write circuit.
SUMMARY (S2: p11 – 15)
In this section, Saussure attempted to isolate linguistic structure from all the phenomena of language by analysing a speech circuit.
Saussure inquires that, since users of the same language form approximately the same association between (sound) patterns and concepts, from where does this “social crystallisation” originate from? Which part of the circuit is involved the most?
One can immediately dismiss the physical part of the circuit to play any role besides the most functional in the formation of linguistic structure.
Saussure argues that the executive side of the psychological process also does not play a part, because it is an individual act, and is not subject to the will of collective. Saussure term the executive part of the psychological process ‘speech’ (could be a translation approximation).
Saussure then proceeds to observe that the “individual’s receptive and co-ordinating faculties build up a stock of imprints which turn out to be for all practical purposes the same as the next person’s”, and call it the “language”.
He went on to distinguish “speech” and “language” by stating that “language” is a social product, not a “function of the speaker”, but the product “passively registered by the individual”, whereas speech is always an individual act of the will and the intelligence, where two parts are involve: the combination of concept with the language signs, and the psycho-physical mechanism which allows for externalization of that combination.
Saussure also attempted to steer the discussion from the semantics of “speech” and “language” to the nature of the “things” we have defined.
He summarized language as a structured system as follows:
- Language structure is the social part of a language which can be localised in that “particular section of the speech circuit where sound patterns are associated with concepts”. It is external to the individual “who by himself is powerless either to create it or to modify it. It exists only in virtue of a kind of contract agreed between the members of a community.”
- A language system can be studied independently (as opposed to the whole act of speech). He also argues that “A science which studies linguistic structure is not only able to dispense with other elements of language, but is possible only if those other elements are kept separate.”
- While language is heterogeneous, a language system is homogeneous in nature. The system has common features which can be studied as a united whole.
- Linguistic structure is real and tangible (as opposed to it being abstract), which can be set down in writing. Thus a suitable object of study.
Critical analysis of S2(p11-15)
N: In general, Saussure seems to give a lot of primacy to the sound component of language. His understanding of writing as recording a sets of sound pattern reveal his limitation as a user of western language. On the whole though, if we replace his usage of “speech” with “a form of expression”, then his understanding of language and language structure is an accurate one. Also, in his discourse, it is clear that he distinguish thinking as a separate process, as oppose to the same process of “speech”.
Q: … distinguish… “what is essential from what is ancillary and more or less accidental”
N: Original notes on the margin: “The “essential” varies according to social situation, even within the same language”. At first, my response to the word “essential” took on the meaning of “context”. Although in his discourse, what Saussure mean by “essential” is the essential part of language, which is the structure.
Q: It is the product passively registered by the individual
N: Original note on the margin: “The partial language. The complete language can only exist in the collective. Here I confuse the language structure with the linguistic act of “speech”. What Saussure meant by “language” no doubt means the language structure which is the entirety of the relations between the symbol and the concept. Which, as he articulated, is originated as a social convention among the collective.
Q: …speaker uses the code provided by the language in order to express his own thought.
N: Isn’t a thought formed at the same time as the language which expresses it? Here, by viewing language as a tool for thought expression, Saussure missed the nature of language. There can be no thought without language. The process that Saussure described IS the thinking process itself.
Q: That is why all definitions based on words are vain. it is an error of method to proceed from words in order to give definitions of things.
N: Saussure wrote this part to orientate his reader towards understanding the meaning of the terms “speech” and “language” by starting from the actual “thing”, instead of focusing on its lexical definition. My original response: “True, but when an individual encounter a new experience outside of his original language, he still needs to rely on existing lexicon i.e. words to make sense of the new phenomenon” deals with another matter, which is the function and role of lexicons.
Q: A science which studies linguistic structure is not only able to dispense with other elements of language, but is possible only if those other elements are kept separate.
N: My original response: Structure interacts with other aspects of language and shouldn’t study in isolation. Structure should be the result of linguistic facts, not despite it. I now think that Saussure in the original statement meant that linguistic structure can be distinguished from other aspect of linguistic facts, which is correct. of course when studying linguistic structure, we can only approach it by its substance, i.e. other linguistic facts.
Q: Writing can fix them in conventional images, whereas it would be impossible to photograph acts of speech in all their details.
N: Is writing evolves as such out of necessity of social and technical limitations? Now that there are ways to captive speech act conveniently (videos), will it change this aspect of linguistic? Will writing continue to be necessary?
Q: … if one leaves out of account that multitude of movements required to actualise it in speech, each sound pattern, as we shall see, is only the sum of a limited number of elements or speech sounds, and these can in turn be represented by a corresponding number of symbols in writing. Our ability to identify elements of linguistic structure in this way is what makes it possible for dictionaries and grammars to give us a faithful representation of a language. A language is a repository of sound patterns, and writing is their tangible form.
N: This paragraph reveals a limited understanding of the writing phenomenon and an assumed primacy in phonics (speech). This is due to the author’s roots in western languages (And his observation is accurate as far as we take into consideration his objects of observation are western languages). A language is a repository of “signs / symbols”. Speech words could be the earliest symbols, but may not by the primary ones. Most definitely not the only one. Writing is the concrete and tangible form of these symbols, which may or may not be a sound (auditory), it can also be a visual symbol (Chinese character). In Chinese, the writing (character) is actually the primary form, and speech derived from writing.