The meaning of this title is arbitrary

"The bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary" (35)


Saussure says that essence is not found within a word. Our minds are what give a particular word meaning. The meaning given to a word is thus random, there is no outside element influencing what meaning is given to what word. He explains this by saying that no ideas pre-exist language. Language is a “link between thought and sound”.

An example I had thought of was when I was younger, I didn’t know what a yield traffic sign meant. To me, it was just a sign with a word on it. Finally, my mother explained to me how cars yield, and what the sign meant for her to do while driving. There is no way I could understand what yield meant just by reading the sign. Once my mother explained the definition of yielding to me, the sign had a new meaning for me.
This has larger implications with Saussure’s langue and parole model. He uses a word in the French language as an example of parole. If a person doesn’t understand the French language (the langue), that person won’t understand that particular world.

Previous theory suggests that language is a reflection of our world. Structuralism, instead, says that language is what constitutes our world. This theory goes against Liberal Humanism in that we are not the source of meaning. Also, words don’t simply define the world around us. They are what give meaning to every single idea. A text is limited language to describe the world around us.

The Eskimo language example that was brought up in class is a good example of how this theory shapes the way I think about language, and ultimately literature. I’m not going to see the differences in snow. It’s all simply snow to me. If we had different words to differentiate types of snow, I would have to examine snow to tell which kind it is. But instead, I lump it all into one word of “snow”. Eskimos will have a different reality from me. They will understand differences in snow that I won’t. I think this transfers into literature as well. I’m only going to see and understand the picture that the language presents in my mind. I will read a text, and create the picture of the text in my mind. I will only picture what the language of the literature presents. If I read the word “snow”, I picture that one type of snow in my mind. I’m limited to the reality of the language.