Semiotic Comparison between Saussure and Bakhtin
=================================================
Wolran Kim
January 2014
Two semioticians, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who was a Swiss linguist and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), who was a Russian philosopher, show literary theories respectively. Both their linguistic views inspired different traditions and disciplines, such as formalism, structuralism, criticism, sociology, and anthropology.
Saussure analyzed linguistic definitions in Course in General Linguistics, in which he explained the formal system of linguistic signs. Bakhtin drew his linguistic view through Discourse in the Novel and theorized literary language from the relationship between diverse social sources and other words: “The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types.” (674). Saussure and Bakhtin’s linguistic concepts have something in common, but are different views. A comparative analysis between the two opinions can be drawn after observing each theory closely.
Firstly, according to Saussure’s Course, the ordinary terms of language are divided into langue and parole. “Language is not a function of the speaker; it is a product that is passively assimilated by the individual. . . . Speaking, on the contrary, is an individual act. It is willful and intellectual” (59). In his body of theory, langue is a general abstract system, which is the logic behind speech shared between social members, thus langue is not individual utterances, but general symbols of social agreement. Parole is the actual linguistic production, which is speech.
Parole includes intonation, stress, choice, grammar, and even connections between sentences, in addition to the concept of langue. Thus, parole governs linguistic rules, and has infinite variations depending on the individual’s social situation. However, the relationship between langue and parole does not exist independently. Communication is not possible without the same language system, langue. “When we speak of the value of a word, we generally think first of its property of standing for an idea, and this is in fact one side of linguistic value,” and “But we must clear up the issue or risk reducing language to a simple naming-process” (65). Here, Saussure criticizes traditional grammar and emphasizes the study of varieties of syntax.
Saussure sees words as a kind of sign. The sign has two aspects, the signifier and signified. The signifier is a sound-image of material sense and the signified is a concept and an idea with the meaning of a word. The signifier has no natural concept or element, and is just an agreed symbol among social members. The linguistic sign is arbitrary and there is no natural connection between the signifier and signified.
For example, the pronunciation of [triː] is a signifier and the specific object of tree is the signified. The concept of ‘tree’ does not have any internal relationship with a series of sounds, auditory, or visual signifiers. As another example, onomatopoeic words are only approximate imitations of certain sounds (English dogs bark “bow-wow” and Korean dogs bark “mung-mung”). The link between the signifier and signified is an arbitrary relationship without any connection. “Since I mean by sign the whole that results from the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary” (62). Language did not have ideas or sounds that existed before the linguistic system.
Saussure’s linguistic theory is quite surprising because scientific analysis is not familiar in general linguistics. He shows that we are not the owner of our language that we are using. Language systems exist outside of the individuals or physical reality. Without language, human thought is undefined or formless, and any distinction was impossible before the appearance of language. Language development is not the process of naming that, which connects the pre-existing signifier and applicable signified.
“We have seen in considering the speaking-circuit that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological and are united in the brain by an associative bond. This point must be emphasized. The linguistic sign units, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (61). Then, it is questionable that humans can think without language. According to Saussure’s view, human thoughts cannot exist outside language, and human’s articulated thoughts are not possible without the intervention of language systematically. However, I think the whole human cognitive process is not dominated only by language. Thinking and reasoning are possible through imagery as well.
The relationship between the signifier and signified is not natural or logical, but arbitrary in nature, socially and historically. Thus, Saussure’s general linguistics theory is included in a variety of cultural phenomena such as characters, symbolic rituals, and manners. The semiotics can provide methods, concepts, or models to grasp in-depth logic and codes of culture. This aspect of Saussure’s has a tacit understanding with Bakhtin’s view of “heteroglossia.”
Next, Bakhtin introduces his linguistic view in the novel discourse compared to Saussure’s ambivalent semiotics. According to his theory, language is a collection of individual dialects. Individual languages vary depending on class, race, generation, region, and occupation. He calls this dialogic coexistence “heteroglossia.” “Authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia [raznorecie] can enter the novel” (674).
Heteroglossia defines the specific reality of conflict and struggle between social groups rather than the simple coexistence of interactive dialogue. Language is the direct reappearance of reality. Thus, language reflects a world-view, and becomes a ground for endless exchange and conflict. Bakhtin thinks that a novel is the best genre to represent this heteroglossia. Since the day of the Greeks, satire, parody, humor, and irony are good examples of heteroglossia related to the structure of the novel.
A parody is essentially a coexisting situation of two different cultures and two different languages in a state of tension. Thus, he places the roots of novels with the general public after the late medieval times or folk customs of the populace. A variety of people’s voices have been incorporated into modern novels after acquiring a realistic right to speak since the Middle Ages and meet with traditional forms of high culture.
Bakhtin says that the novel is always an incomplete form because the source of a novel is the place of conflict and conversation between diverse social languages; “there are not “neutral” words and forms – words and forms that can belong to “no one”; language has been completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents” (676). The epic and lyric have complete forms, but the novel does not have its own rule, and this is an important feature of why the novel is distinguished from other genres. Thus, a novel is hard to define. By showing the comparison between the epic, which has a similar structure to novels, and novels, his theory is proven.
The theme of the epic is a nation’s past description, and the epic basically uses ethnic history and tradition as “unitary,” not personal experience or thought. “Language – like the living concrete environment in which the consciousness of the verbal artist lives – is never unitary” (674). There are great distances between the epic world and a poet or contemporary reality. A poet is just a narrator of the past that is idealized and can never be reached.
The past of the epic is absolute and complete rather than uncertain, unresolved, and incomplete. However, the present of novels is always flexible, momentary, low-graded (as compared to the idealized epic as the distance between the ideal and the actual), and has eternal succession without a beginning or end; “Concrete socio-ideological language consciousness, as it becomes creative” (677). In the novel, the narrator himself and the conflict of contemporaries are the leading role, rather than reappearing based on a hoary, ethnic past.
Bakhtin thinks a laugh destroys the distances of class society, which is the background of classical literature; “But the primary source of language usage in the comic novel is a highly specific treatment of “common language.”” (678). Thus he is interested in comedy, and paid attention to satire, humor, parody, and irony. His point of view that the origin of novels is from culture, especially the humorous tradition, of low class in the late Middle Ages, also meets with formal realism, because it deals with a contemporary past. He thinks that the genre of novels is not possessed by a civil class, but by their culture. Novels were established when civil culture met traditions of high class after the collapse of the dominant culture of the Middle Ages in the Renaissance.
From the comparison between the linguistic views of Saussure and Bakhtin, Saussure analyzes semiotics using terms of langue and parole, and the signifier and signified. Bakhtin focuses on the heteroglossia of discourse, origin, and characteristics of novels. Saussure says that words cannot be defined in isolation, but only from other words. So, a word does not have an absolute concept and can be replaced according to necessity or situation. Also, culture is readable like a language, because language carries culture.
Structuralists analyze prose and verse, which relates the text to some larger containing structure. Bakhtin sees literature discourses through disparate social sources. Saussure and Bakhtin have a few common features: words and discourses do not exist neutrally, and they are recognized in the relationship with other words and the intertextual world. The semantic structures and language concepts are not finite, but they are open and have infinite possibilities for meaning. Also, Saussure’s linguistic analysis helps in understanding Bakhtin’s theory, because the open concept of parole has a thread of connection to “heteroglossia”; both are authorial speech.
=================================================
Wolran Kim
January 2014
Two semioticians, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), who was a Swiss linguist and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), who was a Russian philosopher, show literary theories respectively. Both their linguistic views inspired different traditions and disciplines, such as formalism, structuralism, criticism, sociology, and anthropology.
Saussure analyzed linguistic definitions in Course in General Linguistics, in which he explained the formal system of linguistic signs. Bakhtin drew his linguistic view through Discourse in the Novel and theorized literary language from the relationship between diverse social sources and other words: “The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types.” (674). Saussure and Bakhtin’s linguistic concepts have something in common, but are different views. A comparative analysis between the two opinions can be drawn after observing each theory closely.
Firstly, according to Saussure’s Course, the ordinary terms of language are divided into langue and parole. “Language is not a function of the speaker; it is a product that is passively assimilated by the individual. . . . Speaking, on the contrary, is an individual act. It is willful and intellectual” (59). In his body of theory, langue is a general abstract system, which is the logic behind speech shared between social members, thus langue is not individual utterances, but general symbols of social agreement. Parole is the actual linguistic production, which is speech.
Parole includes intonation, stress, choice, grammar, and even connections between sentences, in addition to the concept of langue. Thus, parole governs linguistic rules, and has infinite variations depending on the individual’s social situation. However, the relationship between langue and parole does not exist independently. Communication is not possible without the same language system, langue. “When we speak of the value of a word, we generally think first of its property of standing for an idea, and this is in fact one side of linguistic value,” and “But we must clear up the issue or risk reducing language to a simple naming-process” (65). Here, Saussure criticizes traditional grammar and emphasizes the study of varieties of syntax.
Saussure sees words as a kind of sign. The sign has two aspects, the signifier and signified. The signifier is a sound-image of material sense and the signified is a concept and an idea with the meaning of a word. The signifier has no natural concept or element, and is just an agreed symbol among social members. The linguistic sign is arbitrary and there is no natural connection between the signifier and signified.
For example, the pronunciation of [triː] is a signifier and the specific object of tree is the signified. The concept of ‘tree’ does not have any internal relationship with a series of sounds, auditory, or visual signifiers. As another example, onomatopoeic words are only approximate imitations of certain sounds (English dogs bark “bow-wow” and Korean dogs bark “mung-mung”). The link between the signifier and signified is an arbitrary relationship without any connection. “Since I mean by sign the whole that results from the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary” (62). Language did not have ideas or sounds that existed before the linguistic system.
Saussure’s linguistic theory is quite surprising because scientific analysis is not familiar in general linguistics. He shows that we are not the owner of our language that we are using. Language systems exist outside of the individuals or physical reality. Without language, human thought is undefined or formless, and any distinction was impossible before the appearance of language. Language development is not the process of naming that, which connects the pre-existing signifier and applicable signified.
“We have seen in considering the speaking-circuit that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological and are united in the brain by an associative bond. This point must be emphasized. The linguistic sign units, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (61). Then, it is questionable that humans can think without language. According to Saussure’s view, human thoughts cannot exist outside language, and human’s articulated thoughts are not possible without the intervention of language systematically. However, I think the whole human cognitive process is not dominated only by language. Thinking and reasoning are possible through imagery as well.
The relationship between the signifier and signified is not natural or logical, but arbitrary in nature, socially and historically. Thus, Saussure’s general linguistics theory is included in a variety of cultural phenomena such as characters, symbolic rituals, and manners. The semiotics can provide methods, concepts, or models to grasp in-depth logic and codes of culture. This aspect of Saussure’s has a tacit understanding with Bakhtin’s view of “heteroglossia.”
Next, Bakhtin introduces his linguistic view in the novel discourse compared to Saussure’s ambivalent semiotics. According to his theory, language is a collection of individual dialects. Individual languages vary depending on class, race, generation, region, and occupation. He calls this dialogic coexistence “heteroglossia.” “Authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia [raznorecie] can enter the novel” (674).
Heteroglossia defines the specific reality of conflict and struggle between social groups rather than the simple coexistence of interactive dialogue. Language is the direct reappearance of reality. Thus, language reflects a world-view, and becomes a ground for endless exchange and conflict. Bakhtin thinks that a novel is the best genre to represent this heteroglossia. Since the day of the Greeks, satire, parody, humor, and irony are good examples of heteroglossia related to the structure of the novel.
A parody is essentially a coexisting situation of two different cultures and two different languages in a state of tension. Thus, he places the roots of novels with the general public after the late medieval times or folk customs of the populace. A variety of people’s voices have been incorporated into modern novels after acquiring a realistic right to speak since the Middle Ages and meet with traditional forms of high culture.
Bakhtin says that the novel is always an incomplete form because the source of a novel is the place of conflict and conversation between diverse social languages; “there are not “neutral” words and forms – words and forms that can belong to “no one”; language has been completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents” (676). The epic and lyric have complete forms, but the novel does not have its own rule, and this is an important feature of why the novel is distinguished from other genres. Thus, a novel is hard to define. By showing the comparison between the epic, which has a similar structure to novels, and novels, his theory is proven.
The theme of the epic is a nation’s past description, and the epic basically uses ethnic history and tradition as “unitary,” not personal experience or thought. “Language – like the living concrete environment in which the consciousness of the verbal artist lives – is never unitary” (674). There are great distances between the epic world and a poet or contemporary reality. A poet is just a narrator of the past that is idealized and can never be reached.
The past of the epic is absolute and complete rather than uncertain, unresolved, and incomplete. However, the present of novels is always flexible, momentary, low-graded (as compared to the idealized epic as the distance between the ideal and the actual), and has eternal succession without a beginning or end; “Concrete socio-ideological language consciousness, as it becomes creative” (677). In the novel, the narrator himself and the conflict of contemporaries are the leading role, rather than reappearing based on a hoary, ethnic past.
Bakhtin thinks a laugh destroys the distances of class society, which is the background of classical literature; “But the primary source of language usage in the comic novel is a highly specific treatment of “common language.”” (678). Thus he is interested in comedy, and paid attention to satire, humor, parody, and irony. His point of view that the origin of novels is from culture, especially the humorous tradition, of low class in the late Middle Ages, also meets with formal realism, because it deals with a contemporary past. He thinks that the genre of novels is not possessed by a civil class, but by their culture. Novels were established when civil culture met traditions of high class after the collapse of the dominant culture of the Middle Ages in the Renaissance.
From the comparison between the linguistic views of Saussure and Bakhtin, Saussure analyzes semiotics using terms of langue and parole, and the signifier and signified. Bakhtin focuses on the heteroglossia of discourse, origin, and characteristics of novels. Saussure says that words cannot be defined in isolation, but only from other words. So, a word does not have an absolute concept and can be replaced according to necessity or situation. Also, culture is readable like a language, because language carries culture.
Structuralists analyze prose and verse, which relates the text to some larger containing structure. Bakhtin sees literature discourses through disparate social sources. Saussure and Bakhtin have a few common features: words and discourses do not exist neutrally, and they are recognized in the relationship with other words and the intertextual world. The semantic structures and language concepts are not finite, but they are open and have infinite possibilities for meaning. Also, Saussure’s linguistic analysis helps in understanding Bakhtin’s theory, because the open concept of parole has a thread of connection to “heteroglossia”; both are authorial speech.