Ferdinand De Saussure was a media theorist that I

1. FERDINAND DE
SAUSSURE
By Kayyah

2. WHO WAS HE?
 De Saussure was a Swiss linguist and semiotician whose ideas laid a foundation for
many significant developments both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century. He is
widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics and one of two major fathers
(together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics/semiology.
 Born (1857-11-26)26 November 1857
 Geneva, Switzerland
 Died 22 February 1913(1913-02-22) (aged 55)
 Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland

 Era 19th-century philosophy

3. WHAT DID HE DO?
 Saussure made theoretical reconstructions of the PIE vocalic system. Saussure
also had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the
20th century. His two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one
in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions of
Saussure's thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics.
 Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it
to show the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe".
This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the
system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness
of the rest to emerge with greater clarity.

4. WHY WAS HE SO SPECIAL?
 Saussure is one of the founding fathers of semiotics, which he called
semiology. His concept of the sign/signifier/signified/referent forms the core of
the field. Equally crucial, although often overlooked or misapplied, is the
dimension of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of linguistic description.

5. SEMIOTICS AND
SAUSSURE'S EFFECT