Saussure:
Language as Social Fact
Around the end of the century
XII- 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.
