The document discusses structuralism in linguistics, focusing on concepts introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure. It defines structuralism and outlines Saussure's key ideas, including that language is a system of signs composed of a signifier and signified. Saussure saw languages as being governed by their own internal rules rather than mirroring the external world. He also distinguished between langue (the system of a language) and parole (individual instances of language use).

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2. Structuralism in Linguistics
SAUSSURE’s CONCEPT

3. Defination
 Structuralism
 • Flourishing in the 1960s, structuralism
is an approach to literary analysis
grounded in structural linguistic, the
science of language. By utilizing the
techniques, methods and vocabulary of
linguistic, structuralism offers a
scientific view of how we achieve
meaning not only in literary works but
also in every form of communication and
social behavior.

4. Historical Development
 Pre-Saussure’s Linguistics
 philology, not linguistics, was the
science of language.
 While Wundt is often listed as the
founder of structuralism, he never
actually used the term.
Instead, Wundt referred to his ideas as
voluntarism. It was his student,Edward
B. Titchener, who invented the term
structuralism.

5. Characteristics of Structural
Systems
 Wholeness
 Transformation
 Self-regulation

6. Wholeness
 The system functions as a whole, not
just as a collection of independent
parts.

7. Transformation
This means that the system is not static,
but capable of change. New units can
enter the system, but when they do
they're governed by the rules of the
system.

8. Self-regulation
 Self-regulation (related to
transformation) You can add elements
to the system.
 but you can’t change its basic
structure. Transformations never lead
to anything
 outside the system.

9. Saussure’s ideas on
linguistics
THE NATURE OF THE LINGUISTIC SIGN
 Language is based on a NAMING
process, by which things get associated
with a word or name.
 The linguistic SIGN (a key word) is made
of the union of a concept and a sound
image. A more common way to define a
linguistic SIGN is that a SIGN is the
combination of a SIGNIFIER and a
SIGNIFIED. Saussure says the sound
image is the SIGNIFIER and the concept
the SIGNIFIED.

10. Saussure’s concept of SIGN

11. Characteristics of SIGN
 The SIGN, as union of a SIGNIFIER
and a SIGNIFIED, has two main
characteristics. This principle
dominates all ideas about the
STRUCTURE of language. It makes it
possible to separate the signifier
and signified, or to change the relation
between them.
 The second characteristic of the SIGN
is that the signifier exists in TIME, and
that time can be measured as
LINEAR.

12. The Structure of Language
According to Saussure, all the
languages are governed by
their own internal rules that do
not mirrored or imitate the
structure of the world.

13. EXAMPLE
 Phoneme Speech sound that distinguishes
one word from another.
 Grapheme The written symbol that represents
the phoneme´s sound.
 Phonology The study of the rules governing
the meaningful units of sounds in a linguistic
system .

14. EXAMPLE
 In Middle English (1100-1500)
 LAMB
 /m/and /b/ were both pronounced
 Modern American English (1775-
present)
 LAMB
 no English word can end with the two phonemes
/m/ and /b/

15. SAUSSURE’s concept
about
PAROLE and LANGUE

16. Four basic principles of
Saussure
 1 Saussure stated that the meanings
we give to words are arbitrary. The
physicality, or structure of a word,
holds no bearing to its connotation or
denotation. (The only exceptions may
be onomatopoeia; however, because
even these vary by language, it is not
necessarily correct.)

17.  2 Saussure stated that the meanings
of words are relational. "No word can
be defined in isolation from other
words" (Barry). It is necessary to have
other words frame a context to
understand one word.

18.  3 According to Saussure, there are no
intrinsic, or fixed meanings in words. If
a group of people were asked to think
of "dog," some people may mentally
conjure a border collie, others a
beagle, and others a Labrador, etc.
While these are all dogs, and would
correctly fit under the category of
"dog," this word would not accomplish
simultaneous thought, or a fixed
meaning.

19.  4 The fourth principle according to
Saussure is that language constitutes
our world. Because language exists,
thought exists (think 1984 and the
removal of words from the dictionary).
Because the word "freedom" exists,
we understand the concept; however,
if no such word existed, the thought
would be vague or unclear, at the very
least.

20. ANY QUERY ???