It is hard for one imagine a life without language. Our interaction through complex language is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but what is language? And do we speak, even when we don’t? Even in our thoughts there is a sort of discourse going on between the consciences’s and even in the unspoken lies an undercurrent of language. But what is that language? Saussure spoke of language as “a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others” (857). Plainly put, language is a system of binaries. We distinguish a word, an object, from its counterpart, its immediate opposite. We wouldn’t know black without white, a dog without a cat or happiness without some form of pain to separate the feelings. But language is more than that also. It is a system of signs, all arbitrary in which we use myriad of images to place the word with the object. A dog isn’t only a dog. It is man’s best friend, it’s faithful, all loving. The one image of the word or of the creature conveys many different ideas which we connect with that one arbitrary image. If this isn’t confusing enough, Saussure also contended that since we know of something by knowing more clearly what it is not than the whole existence of that one idea exists solely in the basis of everything that exists without it. So, I guess the real saying is; I know you are because I’m not.
Work Cited
De Saussure, Ferdinand. "Course in General Linguistics." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
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