The Protean Nature of Language: Structuralism, Poststructuralism, and the déchet of Linguistics
— Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
The Problem of Delimitation
Every science begins with a question that is often forgotten once the discipline has become established: what exactly is its object of study? Before a science can explain anything, it must first determine what it is trying to explain. This task may appear straightforward, but it is rarely so. The world does not arrive already divided into neatly bounded objects waiting to be investigated. On the contrary, phenomena tend to appear as complex, interconnected, and resistant to clear classification. The constitution of a field of inquiry is therefore not the discovery of a pre-existing entity but the result of a methodological decision.
No example illustrate this problem more clearly than Ferdinand de Saussure's attempt to establish linguistics as a science. The opening chapters of the Course in General Linguistics are not primarily concerned with the nature of language itself but with a prior difficulty: how can language become the object of a distinct scientific discipline? At first sight the answer seems obvious. Linguistics studies language. Yet as soon as one attempts to define what language is, the domain begins to dissolve into a network of interconnected phenomena.
The difficulty, for Saussure, is that these dimensions cannot easily be separated. Sound presupposes articulation. Articulation presupposes auditory perception. Language depends upon speech, while speech depends upon language. Historical development and present structure constantly intersect. Wherever one looks, one encounters not isolated elements but relations. Every attempt to isolate a single aspect of language immediately reveals its dependence upon others.
This situation creates a methodological dilemma. If all these dimensions are studied simultaneously, the object of linguistics risks becoming what Saussure describes as "a muddle of disparate, unconnected things." The discipline would expand indefinitely, borrowing methods and concepts from neighbouring sciences without ever establishing its own domain. Yet if one focuses on a single aspect of language, one risks neglecting other dimensions that are undeniably important. Linguistics therefore confronts a problem that extends far beyond the study of language itself: how does one establish a coherent conceptual domain without denying the complexity of the phenomenon under investigation?
It is this dilemma that gives rise to one of the most influential methodological decisions of the twentieth century. Faced with the heterogeneity of language, Saussure does not attempt to study everything at once. Instead, he seeks a principle capable of organizing this complexity. The object of linguistics, he argues, must be constituted rather than merely assumed. The consequences of that decision would extend far beyond linguistics itself.
Saussure and the Constitution of the Linguistic Object
Saussure's discussion begins with a striking observation. No matter how one approaches language, it appears divided into complementary aspects that depend upon one another. Sound cannot be separated from articulation, yet neither can be reduced to the other. A speech sound exists only because a physiological movement produces a corresponding auditory impression. One cannot define the sound solely by what the ear hears, nor solely by the movements of the vocal organs. Each side presupposes the other.
The same pattern reappears at every level of linguistic analysis. A sound is never merely a sound. It becomes meaningful only through its association with an idea. Here again language presents itself as a dual phenomenon, at once physiological and psychological. Nor does the problem stop there. Language possesses both an individual and a social dimension. It exists in the speech acts of individuals, yet no individual can create a language alone. Every act of speaking presupposes a system shared by a community. Finally, language appears both as an established system existing in the present and as the result of a historical evolution extending through time.
The remarkable feature of these discussions is that Saussure repeatedly emphasizes the impossibility of drawing absolute divisions between these dimensions. Again and again he stresses their interdependence. Speaking of language and speech, he writes that "these two objects of study are doubtless closely linked and each presupposes the other." Similar observations appear throughout the opening chapters of the Course. The problem is not that one side matters while the other does not. The problem is that their connection is so intimate that it becomes difficult to separate them analytically.
At this point Saussure confronts a difficulty that remains familiar to every discipline. If the entity under investigation presents itself as a complex unity of interrelated dimensions, how can it become the object of a coherent science? One possibility would be to attempt a comprehensive study embracing all aspects simultaneously. Yet Saussure rejects this solution. Such an approach would leave linguistics without a clearly defined object and would open the field to an indefinite number of neighbouring disciplines. Psychology, anthropology, philology, history, physiology, and other sciences would all be entitled to claim language as part of their domain.
The famous distinctions associated with Saussure emerge from this methodological impasse. They are not primarily attempts to divide reality into separate compartments. Rather, they are analytical tools designed to make a scientific investigation possible. The distinction between language and speech, synchrony and diachrony and individual and social aspects of language does not deny their interdependence. It establishes a point of entry into an otherwise overwhelming complexity.
For this reason, Saussure's project is often misunderstood when it is described as an attempt to exclude certain phenomena from linguistic inquiry. The opening chapters of the Course suggest something more subtle. Saussure does not deny the importance of speech, history, writing, physiology, psychology, or social institutions. On the contrary, he repeatedly acknowledges their significance. What he denies is the possibility of making all of them the primary concern of a single science at the same time.
His solution is stated with characteristic clarity: "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 importance of this statement can hardly be overstated. Linguistic structure becomes the primary concern not because it exhausts the phenomenon of language but because it provides a stable and definable object around which the discipline can organize itself. Saussure is establishing a hierarchy of methodological priorities, not an ontology of what is and is not real. The distinction is crucial. Speech, history, writing, social and psychological dimensions, all of these remain real, what changes is the perspective from which they are approached.
This is the context in which one of Saussure's most famous remarks should be understood: "the point of view creates the object." The statement is not a declaration that objects are arbitrary inventions. Rather, it acknowledges that scientific fields emerge through acts of methodological selection. The linguist does not discover an already isolated aspect waiting in nature, it becomes visible because a particular point of view grants priority to certain relations while temporarily placing others in the background. Once the object had been constituted, it became possible to investigate relations that had previously remained invisible.
Seen from this perspective, the founding gesture of modern linguistics was not an act of exclusion but an act of delimitation. Faced with a phenomenon whose dimensions appeared inseparable, Saussure established a methodological centre capable of organizing the field. The consequences of this decision would prove extraordinarily productive. Once linguistic structure had been constituted as an object of study, new forms of analysis became possible. It is from this decision, and from the intellectual possibilities it opened, that structuralism would emerge.
The Fertility of Purification: Structuralism
Saussure's decision to grant methodological priority to linguistic structure did far more than establish the foundations of modern linguistics. It created a model of inquiry that would soon travel far beyond the study of language itself. Once language had been reconceived not as a collection of isolated elements but as a system of relations, scholars working in other fields began to wonder whether a similar approach might illuminate their own sciences. The result was one of the most influential intellectual movements of the twentieth century: structuralism.
What made Saussure's approach so attractive was its explanatory power. Instead of seeking the essence of a phenomenon or tracing its historical origins, structural analysis asked a different question: what system makes this phenomenon possible? Meaning no longer resided in individual elements but in the relations that connected them. A linguistic sign possessed value not because of an intrinsic property but because of its position within a network of differences. A signifier acquired meaning only through its relation to other signifiers and to the signifieds associated with them. Once this principle was established, it became possible to apply it far beyond language.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was among the first to recognize the implications of this shift. If language could be understood as a system of relations, perhaps myths, kinship structures, and social institutions could be understood in similar terms. Rather than treating cultural practices as the products of individual intentions or historical accidents, structural anthropology sought to uncover the underlying systems that organized them. The task was no longer to explain why a particular myth existed but to reconstruct the network of relations that made that myth intelligible within a given culture.
What emerged was a new intellectual sensibility. Structuralism directed attention away from isolated facts and toward the systems that connected them. The visible phenomenon became less important than the structure that made it possible. In this sense, structuralism represented a remarkable extension of Saussure's original gesture. The point was not simply to describe objects but to understand the relations that constituted them.
Roland Barthes quickly became one of the most creative representatives of this approach. In works such as Mythologies, he explored the possibility that cultural phenomena could be studied as systems of signification. Advertisements, photographs, wrestling matches, fashion magazines, tourist guides, and popular myths could all be approached as forms of language. Beneath their apparent diversity lay structures capable of analysis.
For Barthes, the attraction of semiology was not merely methodological. It offered a new way of making the familiar appear strange. The concepts inherited from linguistics—signifier, signified, system, relation, contrast—made it possible to examine aspects of everyday life that had previously appeared self-evident. Cultural meanings that seemed natural could now be understood as products of underlying systems. Semiology transformed the obvious into something requiring explanation.
This expansion of structural analysis depended entirely upon Saussure's original act of delimitation. Had linguistics attempted to embrace every aspect of language simultaneously, it is difficult to imagine how such a transferable method could have emerged. Precisely because Saussure established a clearly defined object of study, linguistics developed a conceptual apparatus that could be adapted to other domains. Structuralism was not a limitation imposed upon thought. It was an extraordinary multiplication of intellectual possibilities.
For this reason, it is important to resist the temptation to describe structuralism primarily in terms of what it left aside. Every method leaves something aside. The more significant question is what becomes visible as a result. Structuralism revealed patterns, relations, and systems that had often remained unnoticed. It offered powerful tools for understanding meaning as a relational phenomenon rather than an intrinsic property of things. The movement's success was not accidental. It was the consequence of a methodological decision whose productivity far exceeded the boundaries of linguistics itself.
Like many successful intellectual projects, structuralism eventually encountered a difficulty generated by its own success. The concepts that had originally functioned as methodological instruments could gradually begin to appear as features of reality itself. Categories introduced in order to make certain phenomena visible risked becoming naturalized. In a sense familiar from Barthes's own analysis of myth, a historical construction could begin to present itself as nature. The problem was not the act of delimitation itself but forgetting that a delimitation had taken place. Once the methodological instrument began to appear as nature, attention could be redirected toward what that instrument had left in the background. What about those dimensions of meaning that had remained secondary while structure occupied the centre of attention? What about the aspects of language that scientific linguistics could acknowledge without making them its primary concern? It was this question, arising not outside structuralism but from within its own development, that would occupy Barthes in the final decades of his career.
Barthes and the Return of What Remained in the Background
By the time Roland Barthes delivered his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1977, the intellectual landscape had changed considerably. Structuralism had become an established presence within the humanities. Many of the concepts that had once possessed the power to transform perception had become part of an academic orthodoxy. Barthes, however, had never been entirely comfortable with intellectual orthodoxy, even when he had helped to create it. The same thinker who had enthusiastically promoted semiology in the 1950s and 1960s now began to redirect his attention toward a different set of questions.
What makes this shift particularly interesting is that Barthes did not abandon semiology. Nor did he reject Saussure's project. The movement is subtler than that. Rather than turning away from the structural analysis of signification, he began to ask what dimensions of signification had necessarily remained in the background while that analysis was being developed.
This change can be observed with remarkable clarity in Leçon. Reflecting on the future of semiology, Barthes writes:
"La sémiologie serait dès lors ce travail qui recueille l'impur de la langue, le rebut de la linguistique, la corruption immédiate du message : rien moins que les désirs, les craintes, les mines, les intimidations, les avances, les tendresses, les protestations, les excuses, les agressions, les musiques, dont est faite la langue active."
The passage is striking not only because of what it includes but because of the vocabulary Barthes chooses to describe his task. Much attention has been devoted to terms such as impur, rebut, and corruption. Yet the most important word may be the verb recueillir.
The verb is difficult to translate with complete precision because it combines several meanings at once. It can mean to gather, to collect, to receive, to retrieve, to assemble, or to bring together. What matters is that none of these meanings imply destruction. Barthes is not presenting himself as a critic who demolishes linguistics. He is describing an activity of collection. He gathers what had not been gathered before. He attends to what had not occupied the centre of attention. He turns toward dimensions of language that had remained secondary within a scientific approach to signification.
This distinction is essential. A superficial reading might suggest that Barthes is opposing linguistics and semiology, purity and impurity, structure and experience. But such a reading would miss the continuity that links his later reflections to the very problem Saussure confronted at the beginning of the Course in General Linguistics. Saussure never denied the existence of those dimensions that Barthes now highlights. He repeatedly acknowledged that language possessed psychological, social, historical, and physiological aspects. His claim was simply that a science could not make all of them its primary concern simultaneously.
Barthes's intervention becomes intelligible precisely at this point. Once the structural analysis of signification had demonstrated its explanatory power, it became possible to direct attention elsewhere. The desires, fears, seductions, hesitations, melodies, and emotional inflections that Barthes lists in Leçon had not disappeared. They had simply not occupied the methodological centre around which linguistics had organized itself.
Seen in this light, Barthes's later semiology appears less as a rejection of structuralism than as a displacement of attention. The object remains language, signification, and meaning. What changes is the point of view. Structuralism had asked how systems make meaning possible. Barthes now asks what becomes visible when we attend to the active life of language itself, to those dimensions that resist reduction to formal structures while nevertheless participating in every act of communication.
The significance of this shift extends beyond Barthes. It illuminates a broader transformation that would later be described as the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism. The latter did not emerge because structuralism failed. In many respects, it emerged because structuralism succeeded. The analysis of systems had become so productive that thinkers could begin to explore phenomena that those systems had necessarily left in the background. The focus moved from the centre toward the margins, from the constituted domain toward the conditions and consequences of its constitution.
What remains remarkable, however, is the continuity linking these different moments. Barthes's later work presupposes the structuralist achievements that preceded it just as speech presupposes language in Saussure's account. The two gestures are less opposed than they first appear. One establishes a methodological centre. The other investigates what that centre leaves in the background. One constitutes an object. The other expands our understanding of it.
In this sense, Barthes's later semiology may be understood as the continuation of a problem that had been present from the beginning. The heterogeneity that Saussure confronted never disappeared. It was organized, provisionally, around a particular subject matter. Decades later, Barthes returned to some of those dimensions that had remained secondary—not because they had been forgotten or deemed unimportant, but because no point of view can illuminate everything at once. The object remained richer than the perspective through which it had first become visible.
From Structuralism to Poststructuralism
At this point it becomes possible to return to a distinction that has often generated more confusion than clarity: the distinction between structuralism and poststructuralism. The terms are frequently presented as the names of two opposed intellectual camps, separated by a dramatic rupture. Structuralism is said to believe in systems and structures, whereas poststructuralism supposedly dismantles them. Although this characterization contains a grain of truth, it obscures as much as it reveals.
The historical trajectory examined in the preceding pages suggests a different interpretation. Structuralism and poststructuralism may be understood not as incompatible doctrines but as different ways of directing attention toward the same phenomenon. Both emerge from the same intellectual problem. Both inherit the same fundamental question: how does meaning become possible? What distinguishes them is less the target they investigate than the perspective they adopt toward it.
Structuralism begins with the constitution of an object. Faced with the complexity of language, Saussure grants methodological priority to linguistic structure. Meaning becomes intelligible because it can be analyzed as a system of relations. This gesture is subsequently extended by structural anthropology, literary theory, semiology, and other disciplines. Structuralism asks what becomes visible once an domain has been constituted and a methodological centre has been established. Its attention is directed toward systems, relations, and the conditions that make signification possible.
The achievements of this perspective were considerable. Structuralism revealed forms of organization that had often remained invisible. It demonstrated that meaning does not arise from isolated elements but from the relations that connect them. It provided a powerful set of conceptual tools for analyzing language, culture, literature, and society. Without this methodological decision, many of the most influential developments in twentieth-century thought would have been inconceivable.
Yet the very success of structuralism created the conditions for another question. Once the object had been constituted and the structure described, attention could begin to shift toward dimensions of the phenomenon that had not occupied the centre of analysis. What becomes visible when we attend not only to the structure but also to what remains in its background? What happens when we turn our attention toward the aspects of language that scientific linguistics acknowledged but could not make its primary concern?
This displacement of attention is what, in broad terms, came to be known as poststructuralism. The term does not designate a unified school, nor does it necessarily imply a rejection of structuralism. Rather, it marks a change in emphasis. Structuralism asks what becomes visible once an object has been constituted. Poststructuralism asks what becomes visible when attention shifts toward what that constitution necessarily left unexamined. The first investigates the methodological centre; the second explores its margins. The first seeks the principles of organization; the second examines dimensions that exceed or complicate that organization.
Seen from this perspective, the relationship between the two becomes less antagonistic than complementary. Structuralism and poststructuralism are doubtless closely linked and, in a sense, each presupposes the other. One cannot investigate what remains in the background without first having established a foreground. Nor can the constitution of an object-field eliminate the possibility that other perspectives may later illuminate aspects that initially remained secondary. The difference lies not in the phenomenon itself but in the point of view from which it is approached.
No Point of View Exhausts Its Object
The argument developed in these pages began with a problem that confronted Ferdinand de Saussure at the beginning of the twentieth century. How can a science establish its dominium without denying the complexity of the phenomenon it seeks to understand? Saussure's answer was neither to embrace that complexity in its entirety nor to deny it. Instead, he granted methodological priority to one aspect of language and organized the discipline around it. The point of view created the object.
The consequences of that decision were immense. Structuralism emerged from the intellectual possibilities opened by this act of delimitation. Linguistics, anthropology, literary criticism, and semiology all benefited from a perspective that made systems and relations visible in unprecedented ways. Far from impoverishing thought, methodological purification proved extraordinarily productive.
Barthes's later reflections remind us, however, that no methodological decision can illuminate every aspect of a phenomenon simultaneously. The object always remains richer than the perspective through which it is approached. The dimensions of language that he gathers in Leçon—desires, fears, seductions, and countless other forms of signification—had never ceased to exist. They had simply occupied a different position within the field of inquiry.
In this respect, the history traced here possesses a certain reflexive character. We have ourselves performed an operation similar to the one described by Saussure. Faced with a vast and complex intellectual landscape, we selected a small number of relations and granted them methodological priority. Many other figures, debates, and developments could have been included. They were not ignored because they lacked importance, but because an argument requires boundaries if it is to become visible.
Saussure's famous statement remains as relevant at the end of this discussion as it was at the beginning: the point of view creates the object. The history of structuralism and poststructuralism suggests a necessary complement to that proposition. The point of view might create the object, but no point of view exhausts it.
References
Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies. Éditions du Seuil.
Barthes, R. (1964). Éléments de sémiologie. Communications, 4, 91–135.
Barthes, R. (1977). Leçon: Leçon inaugurale de la chaire de sémiologie littéraire du Collège de France prononcée le 7 janvier 1977. Éditions du Seuil.
Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.; P. Meisel & H. Saussy, Eds.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916)
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