The Order Behind Language: Saussure and the Problem of Classification II

“This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought…The monstrous quality that runs through Borges’s enumeration consists in the fact that the common ground on which such meetings are possible has itself been destroyed.”

– Michael Foucault, The Order of Things

1. The Problem: Langage Has No Single Object

What exactly is the object of linguistics? Saussure begins with a difficulty that seems deceptively simple: language, taken in its entirety, does not present itself as a single, clearly defined object. What he calls langage encompasses physical, physiological, and psychological phenomena, while belonging at once to the individual and to society and existing both as an established system and as the product of historical change. Because these dimensions overlap without forming a single homogeneous domain, langage cannot simply be placed within one category of human facts (Saussure, 1983, pp. 8–9).

His example is the French word nu, “naked.” It may appear to be an obvious linguistic object, yet different perspectives disclose different phenomena: a sound, an articulation, the expression of an idea, a form derived from Latin nūdum, and so on. The same occurrence can therefore be approached phonetically, physiologically, psychologically, or historically, with each perspective yielding something legitimate.

Saussure then broadens the problem. Linguistic phenomena involve complementary dimensions that cannot simply be detached from one another. What the ear perceives depends on vocal articulation, while the movements of the vocal organs matter linguistically only in relation to their auditory effect. Speech sounds are connected with thought; language has both an individual and a social aspect; a language exists as an established system at a given moment while also carrying the effects of its history. Each perspective reveals something real, yet none of them, taken by itself, provides the unified object that linguistics requires.

To isolate one aspect risks losing the relations that make the phenomenon linguistic, whereas taking everything together leaves linguistics with what Saussure calls “a confused mass of heterogeneous and unrelated things” (pp. 8–9).

The methodological problem is therefore to find a specifically linguistic unity within this heterogeneous field. What could give linguistics an object with an order of its own?

2. Why Langue Is a “Self-Contained Whole”

“Language (le langage) in its entirety has many different and disparate aspects. It lies astride the boundaries separating various domains.

A language (la langue) as a structured system, on the contrary, is both a self-contained whole and a principle of classification”.

– Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in general linguistics

Saussure’s answer is to give priority to langue. The term designates the socially constituted system of conventions through which members of a linguistic community can exercise the faculty of speech. By isolating this system from the wider multiplicity of langage, linguistics acquires a determinate field that can be studied in its own terms. Saussure accordingly describes langue as “a self-contained whole” (Saussure, 1983, p. 10).

“Self-contained” does not mean detached from the physical, psychological, or social conditions in which language exists. Saussure explicitly presents langue as a social product, something acquired collectively by speakers rather than created anew by each individual. Its relative autonomy comes from the organization of its elements. The system has a coherence of its own, allowing linguistic relations to be examined without reducing them to the physiology of speech, the psychology of particular speakers, or the historical processes through which individual forms have developed.

The speech-circuit helps clarify this autonomy. When A speaks to B, the event passes through several domains: a concept is associated with a sound-image, the vocal organs produce a sound, the sound reaches B’s ear, and a corresponding association takes place on the receiving side. The episode therefore involves precisely the mixture of physical, physiological, psychological, individual, and social factors that makes langage difficult to treat as a unified object. Yet A and B can participate in a common linguistic exchange because they have assimilated the same langue.

This gives langue a determinate status within langage. Parole comprises particular acts of speech, with all their individual variation, while langue is the socially shared structure that persists across those acts. Saussure describes this system as existing potentially in each speaker and fully in the collectivity (p. 14). A language at a given moment can therefore be studied as a structured whole whose internal organization remains available to linguistic analysis even though individual utterances continually vary.

The phrase “self-contained whole” thus refers to the relative autonomy of this system. Linguistics can isolate langue as its object without claiming that the broader phenomenon of langage belongs exclusively to it.

3. Why Langue Is a “Principle of Classification”

The second half of Saussure’s formulation follows from the first. Once langue is understood as an organized whole, it becomes possible to ask how its elements acquire distinct identities within that organization. This is what allows Saussure to call it “a principle of classification” (Saussure, 1983, p. 10).

Classification here concerns the distinctions that a language makes functionally relevant. A sound, for example, possesses countless physical properties, yet those properties do not all matter linguistically. What matters is whether a difference participates in an opposition recognized by the language. Two acoustically distinguishable events may belong to the same linguistic category, while a relatively small difference may distinguish one linguistic unit from another. Their linguistic status depends on the place they occupy within the system.

Saussure’s discussion of German plurals illustrates the point at the grammatical level. In forms such as Hand : Hände, the relevant fact is the relation between the forms within German. The umlaut matters because it participates in a grammatical opposition; its significance cannot be established from the acoustic alteration alone. Saussure describes such formations in terms of “the interplay of a number of oppositions within the system” (Saussure, 1983, pp. 121–22). The grammatical distinction is therefore a property of the relation rather than of either form considered independently.

The lexical level presents the same principle in a different way. French mouton and English sheep may correspond closely in signification, yet their value differs because each occupies a different position within its own vocabulary. The English distinction between sheep and mutton, for instance, contributes to the value of sheep in a way that has no exact equivalent in French (pp. 114–17). What a term is linguistically depends partly on the terms with which it stands in opposition or conjunction.

Saussure generalizes this account when he writes that “in language there are only differences.” The claim applies to both sides of the linguistic sign: signifier and signified alike acquire their linguistic character through differential relations. Hence his further statement that “Difference makes character just as it makes value and the unit” (pp. 120–21).

The significance of “principle of classification” can now be stated precisely. Langue establishes the distinctions by which its elements can be identified as linguistic units and assigned a particular value. A physical difference can become a sound distinction, a formal difference can function grammatically, and a lexical distinction can define the place of one term within a system. What counts as a relevant difference is determined by the organization of the language.

4. From Langage to Langue: What the Principle Organizes

The classificatory principle becomes clearer when we ask what it does with the heterogeneous material of langage. Saussure is not proposing that physiology, psychology, society, and history disappear once langue has been isolated. He is identifying a specifically linguistic level at which phenomena belonging to those different domains can be related without being reduced to one another, as the speech-circuit illustrates.

This also explains the relation between parole and langue. An utterance is always a particular event: it is produced by an individual speaker, in a particular situation, with a particular pronunciation and intention. Its status as an utterance in a given language, however, depends upon resources that exceed the individual occasion. The speaker draws on forms and distinctions already available within the social system, while the hearer recognizes the utterance through that same inherited organization.

The move from langage to langue can therefore be understood as a move from heterogeneous occurrence to structured relation. Langage encompasses the full range of phenomena involved in human speech; parole gives those phenomena an individual realization; langue provides the specifically linguistic organization within which such realizations can function as parts of a common language.

The individual act thus becomes intelligible as a linguistic act because it takes place within an order that precedes and exceeds it. Saussure’s achievement in identifying langue is to locate that order without making it into a separate substance existing behind speech. It is the structure of relations through which speech functions as language.

5. What “Principle of Classification” Really Means

Saussure’s description of langue as both a “self-contained whole” and a “principle of classification” can now be understood as two aspects of one structural property. La langue constitutes a coherent object because its elements are organized in determinate relations; those relations, in turn, provide the distinctions through which its elements can be identified and understood.

The importance of the formulation lies in the fact that Saussure’s problem begins before the classification of linguistic units. Langage confronts the linguist with a heterogeneous field containing phenomena that can be described in many different ways. Langue identifies the specifically linguistic organization through which some of those differences and relations become relevant to the constitution of a language.

To call langue a principle of classification is therefore to say that language possesses an order through which its elements acquire their linguistic identity. Its being a “self-contained whole” and its being a “principle of classification” are inseparable consequences of its character as a system.

Reference

Saussure, F. de. (1983). Course in general linguistics (C. Bally & A. Sechehaye, Eds.; R. Harris, Trans.). Open Court. (Original work published 1916)