Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss professor of linguistics who changed the way language is understood. He was a peer of Freud, Durkheim, Darwin and Marx.

He argued that meaning is created inside language in the relations of difference between its parts.

Particular concepts of interest here include:

Semiotics: The study of signs.

Langue and Parole: The system of language and utterances.

Signifier and Signified: The components of a sign.

Synchrony and Diachrony: Meaning of signs.

Syntagm and Paradigm: Relationships between signs.

He saw society as a system of institution and social norms that form a collective system that provides conditions for meaning-making and hence decisions and actions for individuals.

He criticized the philology-based current system that studied origins of words and hence started the field of semiotics and defined language as a system of representation (thus talking about a house when it is not there).

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Ferdinand de Saussure

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