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Introduction: The Student's Question Is a phoneme a concrete sound or an abstract entity? The question seems straightforward, but it becomes difficult as soon as we ask what we mean by phoneme . The same phoneme can be realized in somewhat different ways, while a relatively small difference between two sounds may be enough to distinguish two phonemes within a particular language. What, then, is the thing we are calling a phoneme?   Part of the difficulty is that phoneme does not designate exactly the same object in every linguistic theory. The term has a history, and its meaning changes with the theoretical system in which it occurs. This is particularly important from a Saussurean perspective. Just as the value of a linguistic sign depends on its relations to other signs, a theoretical term derives much of its value from the concepts and distinctions surrounding it. We might therefore think of a linguistic theory, for the purposes of this discussion, as a kind of “mini- langu...

Abstract Shifters such as I , here , and now have often been regarded as a special challenge to structural linguistics because their interpretation depends upon the circumstances of utterance. Roman Jakobson and Émile Benveniste used these expressions to draw attention to dimensions of language that cannot be explained solely through the internal relations of the linguistic system. This article revisits the problem from a Saussurean perspective. Returning to Saussure’s reflections on identity, value, and difference, it argues that the fundamental question is not why certain signs shift, but how any linguistic sign remains identifiable across multiple acts of speech. From this perspective, shifters do not contradict the Saussurean conception of language. Rather, they reveal, in a particularly visible form, a condition that affects all linguistic signs: identity is not secured by material continuity or fixed reference but emerges from a system of relations. Shifters and Linguistic I...