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.
