Sign and System of Language: A Reassessment of Saussure's DoctrineAuthor(s): Roman Jakobson and B. HrushovskiSource: Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 1a, Roman Jakobson: Language and Poetry (Autumn, 1980),pp. 33-38Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772350Accessed: 15/09/2008 17:51

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SIGN AND SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE A Reassessment of Saussure's Doctrine*

ROMAN JAKOBSON

It is remarkable that Suassure's Cours de linguistique generale was frequently mentioned in this symposium, as if one wished to establish what has changed in the basic assumption of general linguistics over the fifty years which separate us from the lectures of the Genevan master. For the theory of language and for linguistics as a whole it was indeed half a century of cardinal transformations. It seems to me that our fruitful discussion conveys a clear notion as to what in this famous heritage requires far-reaching revisions, and which parts of Saussure's teaching - in the version edited by his pupils - remains valid to this day.

Of the two basic prinicples of the Cours, les deux principes generaux, as Suassure labeled them, one may see today the first basic proposition - I'arbitraire du signe, the "arbitrariness" of the language sign - as an arbitrary principle. As Beneviste has shown it beautifully in Acta Linguistica I, from the synchronic point of view of a language community using the language signs, one must not ascribe to them an arbitrary nature. It is not at all arbitrary but rather obligatory to say fromage for "cheese" in French, and to say cheese in English. I believe that one may conclude from the whole discussion on "arbitrariness" and "unmotivated" signs, that l'arbitraire was a most unfortunate choice of a term. This question was dealt with much better by the Polish linguist M. Kruszewski, a contemporary of Saussure (and highly estimated by the latter), as early as in the beginning of the 1880s. Kruszewski made a distinction between two basic factors in the life of a language, two associations: by similarity and by contiguity. The relation between a signans and a signatum, which Saussure arbitrarily described as arbitrary, is in reality a habitual, learned contiguity, which is obligatory for all members of a given language community. But along with this contiguity the principle of similarity, la ressemblance, asserts itself. As it was mentioned here, and as Kruszewski already saw it, this principle plays an enormous role in the area of derivations and in the area of word families, where similarity between *Lecture in Erfurt, East Germany, 2 Oct. 1959, at the 1st International Symposium "Sign and System of Language," published in German in R. Jakobson's Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). Authorized translation from German by B. Hrushovski.

? Poetics Today, Vol. 2:la (1980), 33-38

ROMAN JAKOBSON

words of one root is decisive, and where it becomes impossible to speak about arbitrariness. In morphophonological issues, the question of similar structures is of primary importance when we recognize that there exist certain models, certain structural types of the distribution and selection of phonemes in roots, and other types of prefixes or suffixes of derivation and conjugation. Finally, the issue of sound symbolism, on which I shall not further dwell here, remains, in spite of all skepticism voiced in the past, an important and fascinating problem in the study of language. And so are all questions concerning the foundation of language symbols in image and indication (or, as Charles Sanders Pierce, the pioneer of the theory of signs, would have said: the problem of iconic or indexical symbols).

It seems to me that the second principle in Saussure's Cours, the so-called linearite, must also be seen as a dangerous simplification. Actually we encounter two-dimensional units not only on the level of the signatum, as demonstrated by Ch. Bally, but also in the field of the signans. If we recognize that the phoneme is not the ultimate unit of language, but can be decomposed into distinctive fea- tures, then it becomes self-evident that we may speak in phonology too about two dimensions, (as we have accords in music), the dimensions of successivity and of simultaneity. This, however, must lead to abandoning a number of Saussure's theses on basic laws of language structure. Thus, I believe that the term "syntag- matic" is often misleading, since when referring to syntagmatic relations we think of successivity in time; however, besides the combination in temporal succession, we must deal also with combination of simultaneous features. It would be advis- able in this respect to speak simply about combination, seen as contrasted by another factor, namely, selection. Selection of units or of combinations, in contrast to combination per se, belongs to the paradigmatic level of language. It is substitution, as distinguished from both simultaneity and successivity. In selection, the principle of equivalence, or association by similarity, asserts itself. While observing the paradigmatic axes rather than successivity and simultaneity, I do not believe that we abandon the domain of the objective and plunge into subjectivity. Linguistic researches of recent years have shown that in this area an objective stratification, a hierarchy of components, exists. One encounters here the problem of predictability, the problem of primary and secondary functions, which has been outlined brilliantly by Kurytowicz in the thirties and which has been recently developed in America in the theory of syntactical transformations - one of the most topical problems of linguistic analysis. At the same time, the even more important and indispensable question arises, as to the relationship and the difference between paradigmatic series and combinational series (chains or clusters).

We deal here, apparently, as in all modern sciences, with the significant idea of invariance. We speak about combinational, context-dependent variants on the level of sound as well as on the level of grammar. But it would be impossible to speak about variants as long as we have not clarified the nature of the basic invariant, the unit to which all these variants are related. The search for the invariants is now the most substantial problem not only in phonology, but in grammar as well. When dealing with the sign, the bilateral signum as a link

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between the signans and signatum, how do we discover such invariants on one hand in the domain of the signans and on the other hand in the field of the signatum? The basic difference between the two, from a linguistic point of view, is that the signans must necessarily be perceptible whereas the signatum is translatable. In both cases the principle of equivalence obtains. In the domain of the signans the relative equivalence must be externally perceivable; it can be ascertained, however, only in respect of the function of these sound relations in a given language. We recognize such distinctive features and, by means of a spec- trograph, we are able to translate them from the acoustic field into the visual level. And like the signans, the signatum too must be studied in a purely linguistic and objective manner. A purely linguistic semantics can and must be con- structed, if we agree with Peirce that the basic property of any verbal sign lies in its capability of being translated into another verbal sign, either a more deployed, explicit sign, or, on the contrary, a more elliptical sign, of the same language system or of a different one. This translatability lays bare that semantic invariant for which we are searching in the signatum. In such a way it becomes possible to submit semantic problems of language to distributional analysis. Metalinguistic identifying sentences, such as "A rooster is a male of a hen" belong to the text inventory of the English language community; the reversibility of both expressions - "A male of a hen is a rooster" - demonstrates how the meaning of words becomes a real linguistic problem through a distributive analysis of such common metalingual utterances.

Among the basic features of the Cours de linguistique generale is the split nature of linguistics: the separation of synchrony from diachrony. The thorough work done over several decades in both partial areas, as well as the refined methodology developed in this research, brought about a serious danger of a flagrant gap between these two descriptions, and also the necessity of overcoming this gap. Saussure's identification of the contrast between synchrony and diachrony with the contrast between statistics and dynamics turned out to be misleading. In actual reality synchrony is not at all static; changes are always emerging and are a part of synchrony. Actual synchrony is dynamic. Static synchrony is an abstraction, which may be useful to the investigation of language for specific purposes; however, an exhaustive true-to-the facts synchronic description of language must consistently consider the dynamics of language. Both elements, the point of origin and the final phase of any change, exist for some time simultaneously within one language community. They coexist as stylistic variants. When taking this important fact into consideration, we realize that the image of language as a uniform and monolithic system is oversimplified. Language is a system of systems, an overall code which includes various subcodes. These variagated language styles do not make an accidental, mechanical aggregation, but rather a rule-governed hierarchy of subcodes. Though we can tell which of the subcodes is the basic code, it is nevertheless a dangerous simplification to exclude the discussion of the other subcodes. If we consider langue as a totality of the conventions of a language, then we must be very careful not to be researching fictions.

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I believe that today our chief task should be to become realists, to build a realistic study of language and combat any fictionalism in linguistics. We must ask ourselves: what is the real linguistic convention that enables exchange of speech in a given language community and serves effectively the various tasks of communication? Some linguists ask, why should linguistics differ from physics in its methodology? Why could not the scholar of language impose his own system of symbols, his creative model, upon the investigated material, as is common in the natural sciences? Indeed, one observes, in many respects, an ever more meaningful and fruitful contact between the natural sciences and lin- guistics; nevertheless one must keep in mind the specific differences as well. In the London school of mathematical information theory the cardinal difference was clearly recognized and the problem of communication was separated from other aspects of information. First of all, one must distinguish between two classes of signs - indices and symbols, as Pierce called them. Indices, which the physicist extracts from the external world, are not reversible. He transforms these indices given in nature into his own system of scientific symbols. In the science of language the situation is cardinally different. The symbols exist immediately in language. Instead of the scientist, who extracts certain indices from the external world and reshapes them into symbols, here an exhange of symbols occurs between the participants of a communication. Here the roles of addresser and addressee are interchangeable. Hence the task of the science of language is quite different. We are simply trying to translate into metalanguage this code, which is objectively given in the language community. For the natural scientist symbols are a scientific tool, whereas for the linguist they are beyond that, and first of all, the true object of his research. The physicist Niels Bohr understood perspicaciously this natural realism of the linguist's position.

Having mentioned Niels Bohr, I would like to recall his methodological dictum essential both for physics and linguistics. Namely, that, when an observation is made, it is imperative to determine exactly the relation between the observer and the observed thing. A description that does not comply with this requirement is imprecise from the point of view of today's physics, as it is from today's linguis- tics. It is our task to clarify the various positions of scholars vis-a-vis language. The so-called crypto-analytical position is the point of view of an observer who does not know the language code, and who could be compared to a military crypto-analyst, attempting to decipher an enemy's encoded message. He tries to break the foreign code through a careful analysis of the text. In the study of unknown languages such devices may obviously bring fruitful results. This, however, is merely the first stage of research, and it is by no means the only, but rather one of many methodologies, a first approximation. Then the observer attempts to reach the second, more advanced stage, the stage of a pseudo- participant in the given language community. He does not any more move from the text to the code, but rather absorbs the code and tries to use the code for a better understanding of the message.

Such is the essential assumption of descriptive linguistics. But here a difference emerges, which is rarely considered. We must not hypostatize the code, but

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rather envisage it from the point of view of the speech exchange. One must distinguish sharply between two positions, of the encoder and the decoder, in other words: between the role of the addresser and that of the addressee. This seems to be a banality, but indeed, banalities are most often disregarded. The whole mode of observing a message is cardinally different for the two partici- pants in a speech event. The hearer is lead through the distinctive features, through the phonemes he recognizes, to the grammatical form and to understanding the meanings. In this process the probability factor plays an enormous role. The probabilities of the transition help one to perceive a text, its phonology and then its grammar; after certain units other units follow, endowed with higher or lower probabilities, and many are a priorily excluded. The perceiver is endowed with a subliminal statistical set; homonymy is for him an essential process. On the other hand, for the speaker, the order of the language stages is reversed. His road leads from the sentence through the hierarchy of immediate constituents, and finally through the morphological units to the sound form in which they are manifested. Both orders occur equally in language exchange; their mutual relations lie, as Bohr would have said, in the principle of complementarity. Both language aspects exist for the encoder as well as for the decoder, but the direction that is primary for one becomes secondary for the other. For the speaker qua speaker no homonymy exists. For example, when he pronounces in English /SAN/ he knows precisely whether he meant a son or a sun; whereas the hearer must use a different method of probability in order to solve this question. Both attitudes, production and perception, have equal claims to be described by the linguist. It would be a mistake to reduce this two-sided language reality to merely one side. Both methods of description participate and have equal rights. Using only one of the two without keeping in mind whether one represents the position of the speaker or the hearer is like playing the role of Jourdain, who spoke prose without having known that it is prose. The real danger arises when one makes compromises between both positions, contradictory to the rules of each side. For example, if a linguist selects encoding as the point of departure of his language description and analysis, and hence forgoes the use of statistics and theory of probability, proceeds with a gram- matical analysis of immediate constituents, and observes the primacy of morphology over phonology, then he cannot - if he follows a logical direction - exclude meaning. Meaning can be excluded only when one works from the position of the decoder, since for him meaning emerges only as a conclusion, whereas for the speaker meaning is primary. The speaker proceeds de verbo ad vocem, whereas the hearer proceeds in the opposite direction, as Saint Augustine had already stressed in his deliberations on the theory of language.

Many things will become clearer in liguistic descriptions and in the theory of language when a clean demarcation is undertaken and the proper attention paid to the different modes of observation of the encoder and decoder. The modes of observation, however, are not exhausted by those two kinds. One should also take into account the considerable process of "recoding": in this case one language is interpreted in the light of another language, or one style of speech in

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the light of another one; one code or subcode is translated into another code or subcode. This is a most illuminating problem, since translation is one of the most essential and increasingly important linguistic activities, and the methodology of translation, as well as the consistent analysis of translation, are placed on the daily order of contemporary pure and applied linguistics.

Article Contentsp. [33]p. 34p. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38

Issue Table of ContentsPoetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 1a, Autumn, 1980Front Matter [pp. 1 - 162]Roman Jakobson in His 85th Year [pp. 9 - 7]The Dimension of TimeDialogue on Time in Language and Literature [pp. 15 - 27]Problems in the Study of Language and Literature [pp. 29 - 31]Sign and System of Language: A Reassessment of Saussure's Doctrine [pp. 33 - 38]

The Poetic FunctionThe Meaning of Sound Patterns in Poetry: An Interaction Theory [pp. 39 - 56]The Poetic Function in the Theory of Roman Jakobson [pp. 57 - 82]

Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of PoetryPoetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry: (Excerpts) [pp. 83 - 85]On Poetic Intentions and Linguistic Devices in Poetry: A Discussion with Professors and Students at the University of Cologne [pp. 87 - 96]Yeats' "Sorrow of Love" through the Years [pp. 97 - 125]Subliminal Verbal Pattering in Poetry [pp. 127 - 136]

Poetry and LifeThe Language of Schizophrenia: Hlderlin's Speech and Poetry [pp. 137 - 144]

Text and InterpretationTwo Problems in Textual Interpretation [pp. 145 - 161]

Language of Poetry"The Original Crime": John Berryman's Iconic Grammar [pp. 163 - 188]

Reviewsuntitled [pp. 189 - 190]untitled [pp. 191 - 195]untitled [pp. 196 - 201]untitled [pp. 202 - 204]untitled [pp. 204 - 206]untitled [pp. 207 - 212]untitled [pp. 213 - 217]untitled [pp. 218 - 225]untitled [pp. 226 - 227]untitled [pp. 228 - 230]untitled [pp. 231 - 236]

Back Matter [pp. 237 - 240]