Saussure: Language as Social Fact
Toward the end of
the century XII- Seem apparently everything looks good for the time, and some
still remain convincing for the present. The similarities of language with
biological has been widely rejected. This is make difficulty to understanding
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 French language is something that can be learned, which
has a specific device and in some cases the same or similar to the English
language but differ in other respects. But when the French language in an item
and the item is something strange. It is clear that it is not a concrete object
such as a table or as a stretch of land called French. You can not see or
hear the French language. You can hear is Gaston waiter said: “pas si bête..” You
can see a line on a sheet of newspaper “Le Monde” but how can we interpret a
being called the French language which is behind the thousands of concrete
phenomena than can be observed as in the two earlier example? What kind of form
that language? Biological paradigm shows the relationship between speech and
French language as the relationship between certain carrots and carrot species;
And up to the rejection of the biological paradigm opinion, this opinion has
been regarded as satisfactory even though people can only see or eat carrots.
People evaluated that it is pretty important to talk about carrots species and
discuss, said, genetic relationship and species tubers. But at the first time
biology had thrown to the side of the road; Second, the people have argued that
the paradigm can not provide a complete answer to the on going discussion in
biology. Because the species is an abstraction, at least individual species is
a concrete thing. So many things can be easily perceived from the carrots. But
the linguistic analogy in biological individual is idiolect; And almost all,
not all, same as abstraction from the concept of language. We can not hear
Gaston idiolect as a form; We can only hear the examples of idiolect. The
comments that he says when he saw a tip that we left off, and it doesn’t has
the example of parallels idiolect in biology. So, even though it’s not consider
as a particular problem by linguists in the XIX century, question of “How does
the meaning of the language or dialect of the underlying reality that can be
perceived from certain utterances” is remain exist at that time. People who can
answer the question that can satisfy linguists during his period of time and
nowadays is Swiss academician: Ferdinand deSaussure.
Mongin Ferdinand deSaussure is his
full name, born in Geneva in 1857, children of Huguenot family who moved from
Lorraine during wars of religion at the end of XVI century in French. Even
though people nowadays consider Saussure as the first man who gave the
definition about synchronic linguistic – study about language as system in
certain time, which divide as historical linguistic (which Saussure
distinguished by the name diachronic linguistics) for linguists during his
period was the only approach available to be learned that time – in his
lifetime wasn’t meant to be famous. Saussure was educated as ancient linguist
and in his young age was succeeded to publish a book title Memoire sur
lesysteme primitive des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeennes (1878).
The book published a few weeks after his twenty-firth birthday, when he was a
student in German. It was one of proto indo-European language. Saussure give a
speech about Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris from 1881 until 1891,
before he went back to teach in Geneva, the entire publishing and almost his
work more associated with historical linguistic rather than synchronic
linguistic, with a deep analysis concerning in various Indo-European
language and not with the basic theory. Whereas, although Saussure produce his
work on the theory of general linguistic at about 1890 (Koerner, 1973: 29). He
seems reluctant to give it to someone else, and the story of how the ideas be
in publishing is a strange thing. At the end of 1906, he was asked to take over
responsibility in giving lectures on general linguistics and comparative
history and languages of the Indo-European scholar who was quit his service for
30 years; Saussure taught the material in the rest of his study in
1908-1909 and 1910-1911. In the first years, Saussure limit his study only
about historical; but when he give it in the second years, he also included a
brief introduction about synchronic linguistics and in the third years, all
semesters are used to provide synchronous linguistic theory. Shortly after
that, he died without a chance to publish any material from that theory. Some
people have been asked to publish but he always replied that preparing the
materials is very time-consuming, but two of his friends, Charles Bally and
Albert Sechehaye decided on a new fabric of the student notes with their
lecture, Saussure. The book they produce is entitled Cours de linguistique
Generale (Saussure 1916) can be used by scholars in the world to understand the
thinking of Saussure and because of this the document, Saussure known as father
of linguistic.
