Shadows of Authenticity: A Misguided Arrow

Saussure: No one can consider "fouet" and "glas" as authentic onomatopoeias. Not me, at any rate. Why do you ask? What prompted your interest in these particular examples?"

Rodeaux: I found them in a book that critiques your approach to authentic onomatopoeia, particularly regarding your selection of words such as 'fouet' and 'glas' as examples. The author contends that these examples are either poorly chosen or, paradoxically, too apt. The passage unfolds as follows, with some lines omitted for brevity:

One wonders why Saussure chose these “words” as examples of presumed onomatopoeias…In other words, the examples are chosen too poorly or too well: no one can consider fouet and glas as authentic onomatopoeias…and besides, there is no authentic onomatopoeia.

How would you respond to such a critique?

Saussure: Ah, the subtleties of scholarly interpretation! My dear Rodeaux, allow me to address this matter with the clarity that linguistic theory deserves. Firstly, it appears there might be a misunderstanding. I think I never considered words like "fouet" and "glas" as examples of authentic onomatopoeia in the first place…

Emile (interrupting): That is correct. When Le Maître addressed the phenomenon of onomatopoeia, he instead used the word "pluit" as an example, explaining further that "pluit" is often thought to represent the sound of rain. However, upon closer examination of its development over time, it becomes evident that this might not be the case. Contrary to public opinion, its origins can be traced back to forms like 'plovit,' rather than being derived from nature. Its connection to the sound of rain is not as direct as some might assume, he concluded.

Saussure: If that is what your carefully taken notes say, it must have been that way. While I don't recall the exact words or details, I believe that if it's in your notes, it reflects what I said.

Rodeaux: I understand, thanks for making that issue clear to me. Moving on to another point, the author also claims in the same passage that there is no authentic onomatopoeia. What are your thoughts on that assertion?

Saussure: Well, the concept of "authentic onomatopoeia" is indeed elusive. Within my conceptual framework, the signifier and the signified are inextricably linked and articulated synchronously. The signifier cannot exist prior to the signified, even for an instant, the existence of the signifier is dependent on the existence of the signified and this relationship is immediate and constant.

The sign may be motivated to a certain extent, I must admit, but from within the system. The French word vingt (‘twenty’) is unmotivated, whereas dix-neuf (‘nineteen’) is not unmotivated to the same extent. Therefore, the notion that a sound from nature is introduced into the language system and subsequently coupled with a signified to form a sign sits uneasily with the way I understand language. To say so would suggest that we start with the sign and gradually build up the system. However, it seems to unfold in the opposite direction.

In other words, it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.

The first condition to be satisfied for identifying a linguistic entity is that the association between the two elements should be present and maintained. If we unwittingly take only one of the elements, one of the parts, we have straight away created a spurious linguistic unit. We have made an abstraction, and it is no longer the concrete object that we have before us. One must not dissociate what is associated in the linguistic sign. Only as long as the association remains are we dealing with a concrete linguistic object.

So, one might say, 'authenticity' in language is a bit like chasing shadows – an endeavor with elusive results. In that respect, I would agree with your venerated author; there is no authentic onomatopoeia if, by 'authentic,' we mean that signifiers are motivated by sources external to the linguistic system and then adopted into it. No-one may seize the original instant at which they have not yet been "to a certain extent drawn into the…evolution” because the process of being drawn into the system has always already begun.

Rodeaux: So, it seems the passage I read at the beginning was a misguided arrow, particularly in light of your compelling argument.

Saussure: You have said so.

Cite this text: 

Rodie. (2024). Return to Saussure. Retrieved from http://www.derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com

 Related post from this blog:

Lacan's Selective Reading of Saussure: A Critical Examination

https://derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com/2024/02/blog-post_25.html

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Glas. Translated by John P. Leavey, Jr., and Richard Rand. University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Stawarska, Beata. 2015. Saussure’s Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology: Undoing the Doctrine of the Course in General Linguistics. Oxford UP.

Saussure, F. (1910-1911). Troisième cours de linguistique générale: d'après les cahiers d'Emile Constantin [Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics: From the Notebooks of Emile Constantin]. (E. Komatsu, Ed.) Gakushûin University, Tokyo. (R. Harris, Trans.) University of Oxford.1993

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with Albert Riedlinger. Libraire Payot.

Bouquet, Simon, Rudolf Engler, and Antoinette Weil, eds. ESCRITOS SOBRE LINGÜÍSTICA GENERAL. Translated by Clara Ubaldina Lorda Mur. Original title: Écrits de linguistique générale, de Ferdinand de Saussure. © Éditions Gallimard, 2002.