A Sociohistorical View of Cultural Signification

Abstract

The influential account of the arbitrary linguistic sign in the Course in General Linguistics is ultimately revised in the course of Saussure’s lectures in favor of a differential conception of signification, one which is situated within the sign system from the start. The systemic understanding of language remains, however, incomplete without considering the role that the speech community plays within the signifying process. Language is received from others, especially prior generations, and present social interactions consecrate linguistic change. Consequently, there is no language without society, and there is no society without language—they are co-constitutive factors of cultural signification. Focusing solely on the social dimension of language, however, risks that we disregard the temporal factor or regard language at a single point in time only. Language is always already historical. The sociohistorical dimension of the language system partially transpires in the Course, where it is acknowledged that language (la langue), considered independently of the social world, would be made “artificial”; this complicates the order of the hierarchical dichotomies (la langue and la parole, synchrony and diachrony) from the “Saussurian doctrine.”