Does One Need to Taste Cheese to Understand What It Means? A Saussurean Response to Bertrand Russell

Introduction

Roman Jakobson opens his essay On Linguistic Aspects of Translation by quoting Bertrand Russell:

"No one can understand the word 'cheese' unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese."

The remark is taken from Russell's essay "Logical Positivism" (1950), but Jakobson adopts it as the starting point for a discussion of meaning and translation.

At first sight, Russell's claim seems almost impossible to dispute. How could anyone genuinely understand the word cheese without ever having encountered cheese? Surely language must ultimately rest upon experience.

Yet several decades before Jakobson quoted Russell, Ferdinand de Saussure had already developed a conception of language that invites us to reconsider this intuition. His famous rejection of the idea that language is merely a nomenclature suggests that the issue is more complex than it first appears.

Is Language a List of Names?

In Course in General Linguistics, Saussure rejects what he regarded as one of the most persistent misconceptions about language:

"For some people a language, reduced to its essentials, is a nomenclature: a list of terms corresponding to a list of things."

The idea appears perfectly reasonable. Objects exist in the world, and language simply assigns names to them: tree, house, river, cheese. Learning a language would therefore consist largely in learning which label belongs to which object.

Saussure argues that this picture is misleading. The relation between a word and the thing it designates is far less straightforward than it appears:

"...it leads one to assume that the link between a name and a thing is something quite unproblematic, which is far from being the case."

If language were merely a catalogue of names attached to pre-existing entities, many of its most fundamental properties would remain unexplained.

For Saussure, the primary object of linguistics is not the relation between words and things, but the relations that exist among linguistic signs within an already established language.

Two Different Questions

Russell and Saussure are often presented as if they were offering competing answers to the same problem. In fact, they are asking different questions.

Russell is concerned with the grounding of our concepts. His point is epistemological: at some stage, words must connect with lived experience if they are to possess content.

Saussure, by contrast, asks a structural question. What gives a linguistic sign its meaning within a language? His answer begins not with the external world but with the organization of the linguistic system itself.

This distinction is easy to overlook because both thinkers speak of "meaning." Yet they are analysing different aspects of it.

Can Someone Understand "Cheese" Without Having Seen It?

Imagine an English speaker who has never encountered cheese.

Could such a person nevertheless understand the word?

From a Saussurean perspective, the answer is largely yes—provided that "understanding" refers to understanding the word as a linguistic sign rather than possessing complete knowledge of its referent.

Suppose we explain that cheese is a food produced from milk by coagulating its proteins. If further explanation is needed, we define milk, coagulate, or protein using other words. At every stage, understanding develops through relations among signs within the language.

The person may never have tasted cheddar, Parmesan, or Camembert. Even so, they can learn how the word cheese functions, distinguish it from butter or yoghurt, and use it correctly in conversation.

Knowing an object and understanding the meaning of a word are not identical activities.

Why Pointing Is Not Enough

One might object that language ultimately begins with ostensive definition. Show someone a piece of Camembert and say, "Cheese."

Has the learner acquired the meaning of the word?

Not necessarily.

The demonstration is radically ambiguous. The speaker might be referring to:

• this particular piece,
• Camembert,
• dairy products,
• food,
• something edible,
• something white,
• today's lunch,
• an item for sale.

Nothing in the act of pointing determines which interpretation is intended.

The object alone does not determine the meaning of the word. The referent, by itself, cannot establish which concept the speaker intends.

Only a shared linguistic system allows the hearer to identify the relevant interpretation. The sign does not derive its meaning simply from the object before our eyes, as Saussure illustrates in his account of the speech circuit:

"The starting point of the speech circuit is in the brain of one individual, for instance A, where facts of consciousness which we shall call concepts are associated with representations of linguistic signs or sound patterns by means of which they may be expressed... Then sound waves are sent from A's mouth to B's ear: a purely physical process. Next, the circuit continues in B in the opposite order: from ear to brain, the physiological transmission of the sound pattern; in the brain, the psychological association of this pattern with the corresponding concept."

Saussure's critique of nomenclature begins precisely here. The relation between a word and its referent is mediated by a linguistic system rather than established by the object alone.

Meaning Through Difference

One of Saussure's central insights is that linguistic units acquire their significance through their relations to one another. The word cheese means what it does not because of any mysterious connection with cheese itself, but because it occupies a particular position within English. It contrasts with butter, cream, milk, meat, dessert, and countless other terms.

This is why Saussure famously insists that language is a system of differences.

The linguistic sign does not consist simply of a word attached to a thing. The external referent is deliberately absent from Saussure's model because he is describing the internal organization of language rather than explaining perception or the existence of external objects.

This does not amount to denying the existence of reality. Camembert exists independently of language. Saussure's point is different: meaning is not an intrinsic property of the referent. The same object can be described, classified, and interpreted in different ways because linguistic meaning depends on the relations among signs within a language rather than on the object considered in isolation. Reality exists, but reference alone cannot explain meaning.

The Case of Unicorns and Black Holes

Imaginary creatures illustrate this point particularly well.

No one has ever encountered a unicorn, yet competent speakers understand the word. They know roughly what kind of creature it designates, the kinds of stories in which it appears, and how it differs from a horse, a Pegasus, or a rhinoceros.

Scientific concepts provide another illustration. Few people have direct acquaintance with black holes, yet many understand the expression well enough to follow discussions about them.

This does not show that experience is irrelevant. Rather, it shows that linguistic meaning cannot be reduced to direct acquaintance with the referent.

What Saussure Really Rejects

Saussure is sometimes portrayed as claiming that language has nothing to do with reality. That is not his position.

The world certainly exists independently of language. Camembert exists whether or not anyone speaks about it.

His claim is both more modest and more radical.

Meaning is not an intrinsic property waiting inside objects to be discovered. Rather, it emerges from a network of signs whose elements are defined by their relations to one another.

The referent is therefore bracketed, not denied. Saussure is not claiming that words fail to refer to things; rather, he is arguing that the relation between words and things is not what explains linguistic meaning.

Cheese Was Never Really About Cheese

Russell's observation remains valuable because it reminds us that language does not float free from human experience. Words are ultimately used by embodied speakers living in the world.

Saussure, however, shifts the focus. Instead of asking how our concepts originate, he asks what gives a linguistic sign its meaning once it belongs to a language:

"The initial assignment of names to things, establishing a contract between concepts and sound patterns, is an act we can conceive in the imagination, but no one has ever observed it taking place... That is why the question of the origins of language does not have the importance generally attributed to it. It is not even a relevant question as far as linguistics is concerned. The sole object of study in linguistics is the normal, regular existence of a language already established."

The difference is subtle but decisive.

Cheese, in this debate, is not really about cheese.

It is about whether the meaning of words is explained primarily by the objects they designate or by the relations that constitute the linguistic system.

It is therefore fitting that Jakobson chose Russell's sentence to open an essay on translation. The question of whether words derive their meaning from experience or from their place within a linguistic system lies at the heart not only of translation but of modern linguistics itself.

Saussure's answer would be that the key to linguistic meaning is not found in the objects themselves but in the network of relations that constitutes a language. Objects belong to the world; meaning belongs to the system of signs through which that world becomes linguistically intelligible. As he famously concludes, "in language there are only differences without positive terms."

References

Jakobson, R. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. A. Brower (Ed.), On Translation (pp. 232–239). Harvard University Press.

Russell, B. (1950). "Logical Positivism." Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4(13), 3–19.

Saussure, F. de. (1986). Course in General Linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Open Court. (Original work published 1916).