What Saussure Can Teach Us About How Languages Change
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| Stability and Chang. AI image |
Language is constantly changing, yet most of us rarely notice it. New words appear almost every year. Terms such as email, selfie, podcast, and Wi-Fi entered everyday English within a remarkably short time. Other innovations have been more deliberate: proposals to replace traditional occupational titles with gender-neutral alternatives, introduce new personal pronouns, or revise spelling systems in order to simplify writing or better reflect pronunciation. At the same time, countless expressions that once seemed fashionable disappear almost as quickly as they appeared. Yesterday's slang often sounds dated only a few years later.
These examples raise an intriguing question. Why do some linguistic innovations become part of a language while others remain proposals or fade into obscurity? Why does one new word become so familiar that we no longer notice it, while another never gains widespread acceptance?
This article is not concerned with whether particular linguistic changes are desirable or undesirable. Rather, it asks a more fundamental question: how does language itself change? If speakers are constantly introducing new expressions, why are only some of them incorporated into the language? Conversely, if language is a stable social institution, why does it never remain exactly the same?
More than a century ago, Ferdinand de Saussure offered a remarkably subtle answer to this puzzle. His explanation suggests that language is neither as fixed nor as malleable as we often assume. Instead, its apparent stability and its continual evolution are two aspects of the same phenomenon.
Isn't Language Arbitrary? Then Why Can't We Change It?
Among Saussure's many ideas, one has become especially popular: the linguistic sign is arbitrary. There is no natural reason why the animal we call a dog should be designated by that particular sequence of sounds. German speakers say Hund, Spanish speakers say perro, and French speakers say chien. The connection between a word and its meaning is established by social convention rather than by nature.
At first glance, this principle seems to imply extraordinary freedom. If words are merely conventions, why could we not simply replace them with new ones? Why could a community not collectively decide tomorrow to abandon one pronoun in favour of another, substitute an entirely new vocabulary, or redesign parts of the language that seem outdated?
Yet our everyday experience suggests otherwise. Languages are surprisingly resistant to deliberate redesign. New words may be proposed, governments may promote spelling reforms, institutions may encourage new terminology, and speakers may consciously adopt new forms of expression. Some of these innovations eventually become ordinary language, but many never spread beyond the communities that introduced them.
This apparent contradiction lies at the heart of Saussure's theory. The arbitrariness of the sign does not mean that individual speakers are free to modify language whenever they wish. Rather, arbitrariness explains why different languages can associate different sounds with the same concepts. It does not explain how an already existing linguistic system changes.
To understand that process, we must first ask a different question: who, if anyone, owns a language?
Language Belongs to Nobody
Saussure's answer is both simple and profound. A language belongs to no individual because it belongs to everyone.
Unlike speech, which consists of the countless utterances produced by individual speakers, langue refers to the shared linguistic system that makes communication possible. Every speaker acquires this system from previous generations. None of us invents English, Spanish, or German. We inherit them.
As Saussure writes:
"At any given period, however far back in time we go, a language is always an inheritance from the past."
Language therefore resembles an institution rather than a personal possession. It exists before we are born, shapes the way we communicate throughout our lives, and continues after we are gone.
Saussure illustrates this collective dimension with one of his most memorable images:
"A language, as a collective phenomenon, takes the form of a totality of imprints in everyone's brain, rather like a dictionary of which each individual has an identical copy. Thus, it is something which is in each individual, but is nonetheless common to all."
This metaphor helps explain why language exhibits such remarkable stability. Because the linguistic system is distributed across an entire community, no individual can alter it by personal decision. Even the most influential speaker cannot simply legislate new meanings or abolish existing words. Nor can dictionaries or language academies create linguistic facts merely by announcing them. At most, they describe, encourage, or discourage particular usages. Ultimately, a language exists only insofar as it is shared by its speakers.
This is what Saussure calls the immutability of the sign. Once a linguistic system has become established within a community, it cannot be transformed through individual acts of will alone.
Yet Languages Never Stop Changing
At this point another puzzle immediately appears. If language is so stable, why is Shakespeare's English noticeably different from our own? Why did Latin gradually develop into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian? Why do dictionaries regularly add new words while older expressions become obsolete?
The answer is that the immutability of language is only one side of the story.
Saussure insists that language is simultaneously an established system and a historical process:
"Language at any given time involves an established system and an evolution. At any given time, it is an institution in the present and a product of the past."
This second aspect is what he calls the mutability of the sign.
Individual speakers constantly introduce small innovations. They coin new words, extend the meanings of existing ones, borrow expressions from other languages, simplify pronunciations, and experiment with novel forms. Most of these innovations disappear almost immediately. Others spread from one group of speakers to another until they eventually become part of the language itself.
Language therefore changes not because someone decides to change it, but because countless individual acts of speech accumulate over time. What begins as an isolated innovation may gradually become a collective habit. Once widely adopted, it no longer appears innovative at all. It simply becomes part of the linguistic system inherited by the next generation.
Language is thus both remarkably stable and continuously evolving. Stability characterizes the system inherited by each generation; change emerges through the gradual accumulation of innumerable acts of speech.
Why Do Some Innovations Survive?
This brings us back to the question with which we began. If speakers constantly produce innovations, why do only some become part of the language?
The simplest answer would be that successful innovations are those that persuade enough people to adopt them. Social acceptance is certainly essential. A linguistic innovation cannot become part of langue unless it is shared by a community rather than confined to a small group of speakers.
Yet social adoption alone is probably not the whole story.
Successful innovations also tend to fit comfortably within the existing structure of the language. They conform to familiar grammatical patterns, are reasonably easy to pronounce, and integrate naturally into the semantic distinctions already present in the system. Just as importantly, they usually satisfy a communicative need. Words such as email or podcast spread rapidly because they named new phenomena for which speakers required convenient expressions.
A deeper explanation emerges from another of Saussure's central ideas: linguistic value (valeur). Words do not possess meaning in isolation. Each derives its identity from its relations to other words within the system. To modify one element is therefore never to modify it alone. Every change potentially affects a network of distinctions on which the rest of the language depends.
An analogy with chess is helpful here. The value of a bishop does not depend on its physical appearance alone but on its relations to the other pieces and on the rules governing their movements. If the movement of bishops were changed, strategies, openings, and familiar positions would also be affected because each piece derives its function from the system as a whole.
Language works in much the same way. A new word, a new grammatical form, or a new pronoun does not enter an empty space. It enters an already existing network of oppositions and relationships. Its success depends not only on speakers' intentions but also on how well it can be integrated into that network. In this sense, linguistic evolution is neither random nor fully controllable. Individual speakers may initiate change, but whether that change becomes part of the language depends on the interaction between social adoption and the internal organization of the linguistic system itself.
Synchrony and Diachrony: The Missing Piece
We are now in a position to understand one of Saussure's most influential methodological distinctions: the difference between synchronic and diachronic linguistics.
At first glance, these appear to be simply two different ways of studying language. In reality, they provide the key to resolving the paradox we have been exploring.
A synchronic study examines a language as it exists at a particular moment. It asks how the system functions now: how words relate to one another, how grammatical rules operate, and how speakers communicate successfully within a shared linguistic framework. From this perspective, language appears remarkably stable. Every speaker inherits an already functioning system whose rules are largely taken for granted. Although small innovations may occur, the language as a whole seems coherent and relatively constant.
A diachronic study, by contrast, follows language across time. Instead of examining one state of the system, it investigates the succession of different states. Vocabulary expands, pronunciations shift, grammatical constructions disappear, and meanings evolve. What appears stable in a single generation reveals itself, over centuries, as a continuous process of transformation.
The apparent contradiction therefore disappears. Language has not suddenly become stable in one case and unstable in the other. What changes is our perspective.
An everyday example illustrates the point. Words such as email, selfie, and podcast no longer strike most speakers as innovations. They simply belong to contemporary English. From a synchronic perspective, they are ordinary elements of the linguistic system. Yet a diachronic perspective reminds us that each of these words was once a novelty whose acceptance was uncertain. Yesterday's innovation has become today's convention.
This insight also clarifies why synchrony and diachrony should not be confused. Synchrony does not deny that language changes; it deliberately brackets historical change in order to understand how the system functions at a particular moment. Diachrony, in turn, explains how one stable state gradually gives rise to another. The two perspectives are therefore complementary rather than contradictory.
A City That Is Never Finished
We often speak of language as if it either changes or remains the same. In reality, neither description fully captures its double nature.
A city provides a more illuminating analogy.
Imagine walking through the same city every day. From one morning to the next, almost nothing seems different. The familiar streets remain, the buildings are still standing, and daily life follows its usual rhythm. The city appears stable.
Now imagine returning after fifty years. Some buildings have disappeared, others have been restored, new neighbourhoods have emerged, roads have been redirected, businesses have opened and closed, and entire districts have acquired new identities. The city is recognisably the same place, yet it has undeniably changed.
No single architect rebuilt it. No individual decided what it would become. Instead, thousands of small decisions accumulated over decades until they transformed the city as a whole.
Language evolves in much the same way. Every conversation, every new expression, every borrowed word, every slight shift in pronunciation contributes, however imperceptibly, to its development. Most of these changes pass unnoticed by the speakers who produce them. Yet over generations they accumulate into the historical transformations that linguists observe.
The city remains itself precisely because it changes gradually rather than all at once. Language exhibits the same remarkable balance between continuity and transformation.
What This Means for Today's Language Debates
Saussure's theory offers an important lesson for contemporary discussions about language.
It does not tell us which linguistic reforms are morally preferable, politically desirable, or socially necessary. Those are questions for public debate, ethics, and politics rather than linguistics.
Instead, Saussure helps us understand how linguistic change takes place.
His theory suggests that language cannot simply be redesigned by individual choice or institutional decree. At the same time, it rejects the opposite view that language is fixed and incapable of adaptation. Languages change constantly, but they change through a process that is both social and systemic.
Every linguistic innovation begins with individual acts of speech. Whether it survives depends on whether other speakers adopt it. Even widespread adoption, however, is not sufficient on its own. Successful innovations must also become integrated into the existing structure of the language, finding a place within its network of grammatical patterns, semantic distinctions, and oppositions. Finally, these changes require time. What seems controversial in one generation may appear perfectly ordinary in the next.
Linguistic evolution therefore emerges from the interaction of four factors: individual creativity, collective acceptance, structural compatibility, and historical development. None of these factors alone determines the future of a language. Together, they explain why some innovations become permanent while others disappear.
This perspective allows us to approach contemporary language debates with greater analytical clarity. Rather than asking only whether a proposed change is desirable, we can also ask what conditions would enable it to become part of the language itself.
Conclusion
We began with a simple question: why do some attempts to change language succeed while others fail?
Saussure's answer reveals that the question rests on a deeper misunderstanding. Language is neither a fixed object that resists all change nor a flexible instrument that speakers can redesign at will. It is a social institution that persists precisely because it evolves.
Every language is simultaneously inherited and innovative, stable and changing, individual in its use yet collective in its existence. Its apparent permanence reflects the fact that each generation inherits a functioning linguistic system. Its historical transformation reflects the countless acts of speech through which that system is gradually modified.
The distinction between synchrony and diachrony allows us to see these two dimensions without confusing them. Synchrony reveals how language functions as an organized system at a particular moment. Diachrony reveals how one state of that system slowly develops into another. Likewise, the mutability and immutability of the sign describe two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon: language is resistant to deliberate intervention by individuals, yet inevitably transformed by the accumulated practices of entire communities.
Seen in this light, the paradox disappears. Language survives not because it resists change, but because it changes slowly enough that each generation inherits a system it experiences as stable. What appears to us as the familiar language of everyday life is, from the perspective of history, only one moment in a continuous process of evolution.
References
Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in General Linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.; P. Meisel & H. Saussy, Eds.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916)
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