Between Inclusion and Exclusion: Writing, Semiology and the Linguistic Object in Saussure

Abstract:

This article reexamines two of Ferdinand de Saussure's most contested decisions: the exclusion of writing from the internal study of la langue and the elevation of linguistics as the model for semiology. Both have frequently been interpreted as evidence of phonocentrism and of an unjustified privileging of language over other sign systems. Drawing on the Course in General Linguistics and related materials, the article argues that these readings overlook the methodological context in which Saussure was attempting to constitute linguistics as a scientific discipline. Writing occupies a position that is neither fully inside nor fully outside the linguistic object, while linguistics becomes exemplary because the arbitrariness of the sign appears there in its purest form. The result is a more nuanced account of Saussure's project and its intellectual legacy.

Writing, Semiology and the Object of Study 

Every attempt to understand something begins by delimiting it. We decide, consciously or not, where our attention will be directed and what will remain in the background. This is not a defect of thought but one of its conditions of possibility. No science, discipline, or theory can study everything at once. To explain something is also to establish its boundaries. What becomes visible is inseparable from the point of view we adopt.

How, then, does a science determine its object of study? The question may appear straightforward, but it becomes considerably more difficult when the phenomenon under investigation refuses to present itself as a clearly bounded entity. This was the problem Ferdinand de Saussure confronted at the beginning of the twentieth century when he attempted to establish linguistics on a scientific foundation.

The difficulty was not a lack of material. Quite the opposite. Language seemed to be everywhere at once. It appeared in sounds and articulations, in psychological processes and physiological mechanisms, in individual acts and collective institutions, in present usage and historical evolution. Every attempt to isolate one aspect immediately revealed its connection to several others. What initially appeared as a single object dissolved into a complex network of relations extending across multiple domains of inquiry.

Saussure describes this situation in striking terms. Taken as a whole, language (le langage) is multiforme et hétéroclite—multiform and heterogeneous. It is à cheval sur plusieurs domaines, astride several domains at once. It belongs simultaneously to the physical, physiological, and psychological orders. It belongs to the individual and to society. It participates in the present while carrying the weight of the past. No existing classification of human phenomena can comfortably accommodate it because its unity remains difficult to discern.

Saussure repeatedly returns to the same difficulty. Linguistic phenomena present themselves through complementary dimensions that presuppose one another. If all these dimensions are studied simultaneously, the object of inquiry risks dissolving into an undifferentiated multiplicity:

“No classification of human phenomena provides any single place for it, because language as such has no discernible unity”.

Yet isolating a single dimension appears equally problematic, since each remains bound to the others. Linguistics thus confronts a dilemma at its very beginning. Either it attempts to embrace everything and loses its object altogether, or it selects one aspect and risks leaving others temporarily in the background.

The challenge facing Saussure was therefore not simply to study language but to determine what language could become as an object of scientific inquiry. Before linguistics could produce explanations, classifications, or theories, it first had to answer a more fundamental question: among the many dimensions of le langage, where should attention be directed?

Saussure's solution begins with a distinction that has become one of the founding gestures of modern linguistics: the distinction between la langue and la parole. Yet this distinction is often misunderstood if it is approached as a simple opposition. Saussure repeatedly insists that the two are inseparable. Speech presupposes language, but language also presupposes speech. As he observes, these two objects of study are "doubtless closely linked and each presupposes the other." The distinction is not intended to sever their connection but to establish a methodological point of departure.

This concern with methodological priority appears throughout the opening chapters of the Course in General Linguistics. Saussure introduces a series of distinctions that later became famous: language and speech, synchrony and diachrony, internal and external linguistics. Yet each distinction is accompanied by a reminder that the elements being separated remain profoundly interconnected. The relation between the present state of a language and its history is so intimate, he notes, that it is often difficult to distinguish one from the other. The individual and the social dimensions of language likewise presuppose each other. Every attempt at classification encounters the same difficulty: the phenomenon exceeds the categories used to organize it.

This point is crucial because it reveals what Saussure is not doing. He is not arguing that one dimension of language is important while another is negligible. Nor is he claiming that certain aspects of linguistic reality can simply be ignored. On the contrary, his constant emphasis on interdependence suggests the opposite. The problem is not how to eliminate complexity but how to study it without being overwhelmed by it.

Faced with this situation, Saussure proposes what he explicitly describes as the only viable solution. If linguistics is to become a science, it must grant methodological priority to one aspect of the phenomenon. Among the many dimensions of le langage, it must select a point of departure capable of introducing order into an otherwise heterogeneous field. His choice is la langue.

The passage is well known but deserves careful attention. After reviewing the difficulties involved in defining the object of linguistics, Saussure concludes: "One solution only, in our view, resolves all these difficulties. The linguist must take the study of linguistic structure as his primary concern, and relate all other manifestations of language to it."

The significance of this statement extends beyond linguistics itself. Saussure is not discovering an object that had previously remained hidden. He is constituting one through a methodological decision. La langue becomes the primary object of inquiry not because it exhausts the phenomenon of language but because it provides a principle of classification. Unlike le langage, which appears as a heterogeneous aggregate, la langue presents itself as what Saussure calls "a self-contained whole and a principle of classification." By granting it priority, the linguist introduces order into a field that otherwise resists systematic analysis.

This is the context in which one of Saussure's most famous remarks acquires its full significance: "the point of view creates the object." The statement is often quoted, but its methodological force is not always appreciated. Saussure's point is not that reality is arbitrary or that objects are simply invented. Rather, scientific inquiry does not encounter its objects in a pure and unmediated form. Objects emerge through the questions we ask, the distinctions we draw, and the priorities we establish. The point of view does not create language itself; it creates language as an object of scientific investigation.

Seen from this perspective, la langue is not the discovery of a hidden essence but the result of a methodological act. Faced with a phenomenon that was multiforme et hétéroclite, Saussure selected one dimension and made it the centre of inquiry. Everything else remained relevant, but it would henceforth be approached in relation to this newly constituted object.

The importance of this gesture is difficult to overstate. It established the conditions under which modern linguistics could develop. Yet it also contained a lesson that extends far beyond linguistics itself. Every science begins in a similar way. Faced with a reality that exceeds any single description, it must delimit its field of inquiry. What distinguishes Saussure is not that he performed this operation, but that he remained acutely aware of what it required. Again and again, he reminds his readers that the dimensions temporarily set aside have not disappeared. They remain connected to the object that has been constituted. The point of view creates the object, but the object never entirely escapes the complexity from which it emerged.

At this point another question emerges. If linguistics is only one branch of a broader science of signs, why does Saussure nevertheless assign it a privileged methodological position? Why should the study of language provide the model for semiology as a whole?

The question is important because it touches upon one of the most frequently misunderstood aspects of the Course. Saussure does not claim that language is the only sign system worthy of investigation. On the contrary, when he introduces the project of semiology, he immediately situates language alongside many other systems of signs:

"A language is a system of signs expressing ideas, and hence comparable to writing, the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, symbolic rites, forms of politeness, military signals, and so on."

The point is often overlooked. Writing, rituals, gestures, symbols, and codes are already present at the very moment semiology is announced. Linguistics is not conceived as a self-sufficient discipline detached from all other forms of signification. It is presented as one member of a much larger family.

Indeed, Saussure immediately adds:

"Linguistics is only one branch of this general science."

The statement could hardly be clearer. Linguistics does not contain semiology. Semiology contains linguistics.

Yet a few lines later the argument takes an unexpected turn. Although language is only one semiological system among others, linguistics nevertheless acquires a special status when he states further:

"It is simply the most important of such systems."

It becomes, as Saussure suggests, the discipline most capable of revealing the general laws governing signs.

At first glance this appears contradictory. If language is merely one sign system among many, why should it serve as the exemplary case?

The answer lies in one of the foundational principles of Saussurean linguistics: the arbitrariness of the sign.

For Saussure, the relation between signifier (signifiant) and signified (signifié) is not grounded in any natural connection. Nothing in the sound sequence tree inherently resembles or contains the concept of a tree. The association is conventional rather than necessary. Meaning emerges not from resemblance but from differences within a system.

This principle, however, is not realized with equal purity in all sign systems.

To explain the point, Saussure contrasts the linguistic sign with the symbol. Symbols retain traces of a natural connection between sign and meaning. His famous example is that of the scales representing justice:

"For it is characteristic of symbols that they are never entirely arbitrary. They are not empty configurations. They show at least a vestige of natural connexion between the signal and its signification. For instance, our symbol of justice, the scales, could hardly be replaced by a chariot."

The scales are not entirely arbitrary. They evoke balance, equilibrium, and measurement. Their connection with justice is conventional, but not completely detached from the idea they represent.

Language is different. The linguistic sign approaches arbitrariness more completely than any other semiological system. Precisely because it lacks any natural bond between signifier and signified, it reveals with exceptional clarity the relational mechanisms upon which signification depends.

This is why linguistics acquires methodological importance. It is not because language is superior to writing, ritual, gesture, or symbolism. Nor is it because language exhausts the field of signification. Rather, language offers the clearest instance of the semiological principle itself.

Seen from this perspective, Saussure's argument appears far less imperial than it is often portrayed. Linguistics becomes exemplary not because it dominates the other sciences of signs but because it studies the phenomenon in which arbitrariness manifests itself most fully. If semiology seeks to understand how signs function, language provides the most transparent laboratory in which that functioning can be observed.

The distinction matters. It transforms the meaning of Saussure's claim that linguistics can serve as the patron for semiology. The model is methodological rather than hierarchical. Language occupies a privileged position not because other sign systems are secondary, but because the principles governing signification appear there in their most systematic form.

This clarification will become important in what follows. For once language has been constituted as the exemplary semiological system, another question inevitably emerges. What becomes of those other systems of signs that helped define the field of semiology from the very beginning? And what becomes of writing, the sign system that accompanies language so closely that it can never be entirely separated from it?

Among the many phenomena that Saussure brackets in order to constitute linguistics as a science, none occupies a more curious position than writing (écriture).

The common interpretation is well known. Saussure is often presented as a thinker who simply excludes writing in favour of speech, thereby establishing a hierarchy that later generations would challenge. There is certainly some textual basis for this reading. One of the most frequently quoted passages of the Course states:

"The object of study in linguistics is not a combination of the written word and the spoken word. The spoken word alone constitutes that object."

Read in isolation, the sentence appears unequivocal. Yet when placed within the broader context of Saussure's project, the situation becomes considerably more complex.

For one thing, writing appears throughout the opening chapters of the Course with remarkable persistence. It continually returns at the very moment Saussure attempts to delimit the field of linguistics.

Consider the sequence of claims that structures his discussion.

First, he identifies the object of study:

"The actual object we are concerned to study, then, is the social product stored in the brain, the language itself (la langue)."

A few pages later he insists that writing does not belong to the internal organization of that object:

"A language and its written form constitute two separate systems of signs."

So far, the distinction appears straightforward.

But then comes a qualification that changes everything:

"Although writing is in itself not part of the internal system of the language, it is impossible to ignore this way in which the language is constantly represented. We must be aware of its utility, its defects and its dangers."

The language here is striking.

Writing is not dismissed.

It is not declared irrelevant.

It is not expelled from consideration.

It is impossible to ignore.

This phrase deserves attention because it reveals the peculiar position writing occupies within Saussure's argument. Writing lies neither entirely inside nor entirely outside the field of linguistics. It is external to the internal functioning of la langue, yet constantly implicated in our access to it.

In practice, linguists encounter languages through writing everywhere. Ancient languages survive through written records. Distant languages are often known through written documents. Dictionaries, grammars, archives, and philological studies all depend upon writing. Even one's native language is continually mediated by written forms.

Writing therefore cannot simply be eliminated. As a philologists, Saussure knew that.

At the same time, it cannot become the primary object of linguistics without jeopardizing the methodological delimitation that made the discipline possible in the first place.

This tension appears elsewhere in the Course.

When Saussure discusses aphasia and agraphia, he repeatedly emphasizes the interconnectedness of spoken and written language. Disorders affecting speech are often entangled with disorders affecting writing. The relevant faculty is not merely vocal production or graphic inscription but a more general capacity involving signs themselves.

Similarly, when he introduces langage articulé, he argues that what is fundamental is not the material form of the sign but the human capacity to organize distinct signs in relation to distinct ideas. The medium may vary. The underlying operation remains.

From this perspective, speech and writing appear less as rivals than as different manifestations of a deeper linguistic reality.

But the statement “The spoken word alone constitutes that object” deserves a closer examination. In Constantin's notebooks, Saussure remarks:

"Speech comes in here only as evidence bearing on the language. The fact is that we cannot explore the pigeonholes inside our brain. [We are] obliged to employ an external method, given in speech." (Constantine's Notebook VII 80a)

The observation is revealing. Speech itself functions as a kind of methodological access point to la langue. One does not directly observe the linguistic system. One infers it through manifestations. 

In the Cours he elaborates this idea further:

“Since we cannot have direct access to concrete entities and linguistic units, we shall take words as examples. Although, as previously noted, words do not answer exactly to our definition of linguistic units, they will be adequate to give a rough idea, and will obviate the necessity for talking in abstract terms. So we will treat them for present purposes as specimens supposedly equivalent to the actual signs of a synchronic system. The principles which will emerge may be taken as valid for linguistic entities in general”.

When he said “as previously noted” he refers to the following consideration that appears a few pages earlier:

“On further reflection, it becomes clear that what a word is usually taken to be does not correspond to our notion of a concrete unit”.

All these considerations make it clear that, in the controversial sentence, "The spoken word alone constitutes that object"—that is, the object of study of linguistics—Saussure is using "spoken word" as a proxy for the linguistic sign (signe). Seen in this way, it becomes evident that his primary concern is not la parole but la langue. At the very least, this weakens the accusation of phonocentrism.

What emerges from these discussions is not a simple opposition between speech and writing but a more delicate operation of methodological suspension.

Saussure brackets writing because the constitution of linguistics requires that la langue remain the primary object of inquiry. Yet he repeatedly acknowledges that writing cannot be cleanly detached from the phenomenon under investigation. It accompanies language too closely, mediates access to it too frequently, and participates too deeply in its historical existence to disappear altogether.

Writing thus occupies a threshold position. It remains outside the internal system while never becoming entirely external to its study. It is neither central nor absent, neither fully included nor fully excluded, and it is precisely this unstable position that will prove philosophically significant in the decades that follow.

At this point, the history of the Course begins to look rather different from the one often presented in secondary literature. If we focus exclusively on the distinctions Saussure established, it is easy to conclude that he sought to confine linguistics within rigid boundaries and permanently exclude whatever did not belong to the internal study of la langue. Yet the historical record suggests a more complicated picture.

One of the most revealing details concerns a project that never came to fruition.

In the Third Course, Saussure distinguished between linguistique de la langue and linguistique de la parole. The distinction is familiar enough. What is less frequently remembered is that he did not regard the second domain as illegitimate, nor did he suggest that it lay beyond the scope of scientific investigation. On the contrary, he indicated that a linguistics of speech constituted a distinct field of inquiry deserving attention in its own right.

According to Roy Harris, both Bally and Sechehaye noted in the preface to the first edition of the Course that lectures on linguistique de la parole had been promised to the students attending the Third Course but were never delivered. Saussure's death interrupted a project that appears to have remained very much alive in his thinking.

The significance of this fact should not be underestimated.

It means that the distinction between langue and parole was never intended to function as a final division between what deserved study and what did not. Rather, it established an order of investigation. The scientific study of la langue came first because it provided the principle of classification required to constitute linguistics as a discipline. But this methodological priority did not imply that everything associated with parole was thereby condemned to irrelevance.

Harris repeatedly returns to this point. Saussure never claimed that a linguistique de la parole was out of the question. What he insisted upon was that it should not be confused with linguistique de la langue. The two domains required different methods because they addressed different aspects of linguistic reality.

This observation casts several familiar debates in a new light. It suggests that many of the phenomena often described as excluded from Saussurean linguistics were, in fact, suspended rather than rejected. They occupied a position remarkably similar to that occupied by writing itself: acknowledged as important, recognized as indispensable, yet temporarily set aside in order to allow a more narrowly defined object of inquiry to emerge.

Seen from this perspective, the opening chapters of the Course appear less as a manifesto of exclusion than as an attempt to establish methodological order within an exceptionally complex field. Saussure's problem was never how to eliminate heterogeneity. It was how to make scientific investigation possible without denying the multiplicity from which it began.

The promise of a future linguistique de la parole therefore acquires a symbolic importance that exceeds the fate of the project itself. It reminds us that the constitution of an object is never identical with the totality of the phenomenon from which that object is extracted. The boundaries of a discipline are not the boundaries of reality.

The argument of this essay has returned repeatedly to a single problem: how a science determines its object of study.

Confronted with le langage—multiform, heterogeneous, à cheval sur plusieurs domaines—Saussure faced a difficulty that was as philosophical as it was linguistic. If everything were included simultaneously, linguistics would dissolve into what he called "a muddle of disparate, unconnected things." If inquiry was to proceed, some principle of delimitation had to be established.

His solution was la langue because it provided a principle of classification capable of introducing order into an otherwise unmanageable field. In this sense, the famous proposition that "the point of view creates the object" is not a statement about language alone. It is a statement about the conditions of knowledge.

The same lesson emerges from Saussure's treatment of writing and from the unfinished project of a linguistique de la parole. Time and again, the Course reveals an awareness that what has been bracketed remains connected to what has been placed at the centre. Delimitation is necessary, but it never abolishes the relations that exceed it.

The history of linguistics is often told as a series of disputes about speech and writing, voice and ink. Yet the opening chapters of the Course suggest a different story. Before asking which manifestations of language deserve our attention, Saussure confronted a more fundamental problem: how a science can be constituted at all. Everything else follows from that initial act of delimitation.

The point of view creates the object, but no point of view exhausts it.

Related Posts

A Conversation with Saussure

https://derridaforlinguists.blogspot.com/2023/10/blog-post_12.html

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Saussure, F. de. (1916/2011). Cours de linguistique générale (C. Bally & A. Sechehaye, Eds.). Payot.

Saussure, F. de. (2013). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans. & Ed.). Bloomsbury.

Saussure, F. de. (1996). Saussure's first course of lectures on general linguistics (1907): From the notebooks of Albert Riedlinger (E. Komatsu, Ed.; G. Wolf, Trans.). Pergamon.

Saussure, F. de. (1997). Saussure's second course of lectures on general linguistics (1908–1909): From the notebooks of Albert Riedlinger and Charles Patois (E. Komatsu, Ed.; G. Wolf, Trans.). Pergamon.

Saussure, F. de. (1993). Saussure's third course of lectures on general linguistics (1910–1911): From the notebooks of Émile Constantin (R. Harris, Trans.). Pergamon.

Secondary Sources

Harris, R. (2001). Saussure and his interpreters. Edinburgh University Press.