Some (vague-ish) thoughts connecting Johnson’s piece back: to Saussure, and Barthes

This essay by Barbara Johnson is placed in a section in our anthology labeled “Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, Post-modernism,” so some of what stuck out to me were the ways in which this piece engaged with and connected to the earlier theorists we’ve read (certainly it provided a nice overview, leading up to the midterm)—“structuralists” such as Saussure or Jakobson—and how the theories she outlines ultimately push beyond those earlier works, into the “post-“ period. One particular part that stood out was the distinction drawn between work and text. The work is described as “a closed, finished, reliable object,”: while the text is “an open, infinite process that is both meaning-generating and meaning subverting” (341). This mostly reminded me of the difference between Saussure’s langue (language, a structure; synchronic), and parole (speaking; diachronic). As a structuralist, Saussure is most interested in langue, which in its existence prior to a subject’s entry into it, reminds me of the closed, reliable nature by which the “work” is described. The “post-structuralist” quality of this split proposed seems to lie in the turn toward a greater interest in the open “text,” closer, I think, to parole. I’m not sure if they necessarily match up completely, or if maybe I’m making too generalized a connection; but I have been noticing that a lot of different concepts are mapping onto either the diachronic/synchronic split (parole/langue, metonymy/metaphor) or that of the signifier/signified (conscious/unconscious, or now, as Johnson outlines, materialism/idealism), so, here’s my attempt to keep matching up concepts…

I was also pretty interested to see that this work/text distinction was initially proposed by Barthes, and, this combined with much of Johnson’s later discussion of the relation between writing and speech led me to make another jump back to reading from earlier in the semester: The Pleasure of the Text. This wasn’t only because of the use of the term “text” (rather than, say, The Pleasure of the Work) in his title, but his comment at the very end that “if it were possible to imagine an aesthetic of textual pleasure, it would have to include: writing aloud” (Barthes 66). Johnson states that “manifestations of writing” such as the “rebus, the anagram, and the letter” are “something more than mere transcriptions of the spoken word” (343)—similar to Barthes’s claim that this “vocal writing” is “nothing like speech” (66). For Barthes this “something more” spoken of by Johnson available in this writing aloud, this breakdown of the binary opposition between speech and writing, relates to an “articulation of the body”—expressing through the “grain of the voice,” the “voluptuousness of vowels,” etc., etc. And, even though he says that this “nothing like speech,” it still seems, to me, as if it is an attempt to structure writing as speech, insofar as it’s attempting to “capture the sound of speech” in writing. Derrida’s approach to the “something else” is, inversely, defined as seeing “’speech’ as being ultimately structured like ‘writing’” (Johnson 344). Instead of trying to bring the “presence of the muzzle” into writing (Barthes 66)—which still gives immediacy to speech?—Derrida works to show that “speech, like writing, is based on a differance,” not necessarily any more immediate or present than writing.

(Finally, though, I’m still not really sure that Barthes’s idea of writing aloud—despite still seeming to focus on the importance of speech’s presence—is necessarily wholly opposed to Derrida’s project, as it too brings to light, with its emphasis on the “body,” a “materiality” in writing. To be entirely honest, I’m not necessarily sure what to make of a comparison between these two, on this particular point; I just can sort of feel some sort of connection (definitely need some more time to fully work through it, probably after I understand Derrida/deconstructuion/differance a bit more after class tomorrow). In the meantime…anyone else think back to The Pleasure of the Text when reading this, and have any thoughts on connections between theories of speech and writing?)

You Are What Your Pronoun Is

According to Ferdinand de Saussure the signified and signifier link together at the core of every language, which leads me to wonder how much language affects our perception of those who we speak to. The usage of pronouns is something that has been on my mind for a while, but didn’t realty put much though into. It was just a random realization while I was conversing with a Korean graduate student. We are in the same class together and sometimes we casually talk to each other. One day, I realized that my behavior toward her is much too casual as if we are friends of same age, even though our age gap is quite significant. Since our only common language is English, we refer to each other as “I” and “you.” I asked myself, “Is that why I don’t perceive her as an elder like I am supposed to so I can reflect respect through my behaviors?” Maybe so, when there is an established concept behind a sound-image. Since a term (signifier) links directly to a concept (a person in this case), the way I use pronouns actually influences my perception of whoever I speak to and is projected through our interactions. Unlike English, some Southeast Asian languages like Vietnamese reflects the established relationship between the speakers. When I speak to someone in Vietnamese, like an older woman, I call her “cô” (aunty) because of the significant age gap or “chị” (sister) if it is not too much. And yet when I spoke to a Vietnamese co-worker, I use the pronoun “you.” Who is he to me being “you?” He is at the age where I would have refer to as “chú” (uncle) and myself as “con” (child). Instead, I treated him in a friend category, in which our interactions reflect the casualness of it. If I spoke with him in Vietnamese and used “chú” then our interaction category would have changed drastically. I would not have viewed him as a friend; he would be an elder with boundaries that restrict the casualness friends have for each other. There is no written social rules dictating how people should interact with each other appropriately, but people in Vietnamese society still picks up social clues from pronouns to follow the embedded social norms. Even a child know which behavior is appropriate to a new person by listening to the pronouns the adults use for that person. Without realizing it before, my perception is being manipulated by pronouns that leads me to treat people differently as I switch between two languages. While using English pronouns, I forgo social hierarchy order through the anonymous “you” and categorize everyone on the acquaintance level without the kinship that Vietnamese pronouns tie each individual to each other.

Vy Do

Swing Dancing With Continental Philosophy

Deconstruction and structuralism (which is what de Saussure contributes to) both fall under continental philosophy. In addition, hermeneutics also falls under continental philosophy (as opposed to analytical philosophy). In all three, the common factor is language.

Hermeneutics basically sets the foundation that language is the fundamental basis of the humanities. Although tied to Biblical interpretations, it can also apply to the interpretation of language in general (Maas). A step further, deconstruction is a critical theory that suggests that the only way to extract an absolute truth or stable meaning is through pure presence in a text (Derrida 19; 99). However, this is impossible due to the factors that influence a man and thus his individually constructed interpretation. Therefore, nothing is pure and nothing has a stable, universal meaning that can be interpreted (neoclassical poets would not be happy with this sentiment). The archetypal critical lens would argue something very different.

I dappled with some philosophical views last semester and this summer. My conclusion: almost everything seems paradoxical in nature… and this is why writers and psychologists go crazy. The deeper one researches, the more the circles interweave. But confusion is a state of higher consciousness, or so I’ve been told.

Most of our understandings are understood through binary relations (and many systems have internal contradictions). De Saussure calls this “a two-sided psychological entity” in language comprehension or a sort of reciprocal determination that is much more complex than a “sound-image” compilation (61). He also states, “In language, there are only differences” (70). Therefore, it is often that one makes sense of something by understanding its opposite.

Even within de Saussure’s theory, he traps himself. First, he says that in the separation of language and speech, there is inherently a separation between the social and the individual (de Saussure 59). Then, he explains that both are socially influenced. If I might be so bold, I believe de Saussure’s flaw is that he sees language as separate from speech. If one is to think of language as overarching, with oral speech and written expression as branches, the study of semiotics might be clearer. He later attempts to describe language in terms of synchronic and diachronic notions (59; 65). De Saussure writes,

In a game of chess an particular position has the unique characteristic of being freed from all antecedent positions; the route used in arriving there makes no difference; one who has followed the match has no advantage over the curious party who comes up at a critical moment to inspect the state of the game; to describe this arrangement it is perfectly useless to recall what had just happened ten seconds previously. (65)

Most of us can probably see what point is trying to break free here. Language, in essence, is both socially constructed and inherited, but individually perceived and expressed (ta dah: language is synchronous (in the present) and diachronic (integral in the process)). However, cognitive psychologists, especially recent research on expertise (of which chess is a primary study), the context does matter… synchronous language then can be understood within a diachronic approach- which I think de Saussure was trying to say, but confused in his analogy. Or at least, I hope. The chess moves give clues to patterns. Patterns give insight into expertise. Expertise takes approximately ten years to develop. Hence, everyone in our class is an expert of our language (even though we may not feel like it). Furthermore, if one could recognize binary understandings and break free from the extremist tendency, there might be a lot of revelation in understanding the work of the spectrum. De Saussure had interesting thoughts and that should not be discredited. There is merit in his work. [Yet, structuralism was limited. It was not until the birth of cognitive psychology that structuralism and functionalism collaborated.]

-Kaylie Fougerousse

Works Cited

De Saussure, Ferdinand. “Course in General Linguistics.” Literary Theory, an Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 59-71. Print.

Derrida, Jacques, Alan Bass, and Henri Ronse. Positions. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1981. Print.

Maas, Anthony. “Hermeneutics.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 24 Sept. 2014 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07271a.htm&gt;.

Distinction via Opposition: Texts of Bliss. Texts of Pleasure.

“Within the same language, all words used to express related ideas limit each other reciprocally…[and] have value only through their opposition,” (67 de Saussure).

This idea interested me greatly when thinking about language, specifically about the conception behind words. I thought this related to the respective conception behind “texts of pleasure” and “texts of bliss” fairly well. Like the French synonyms redouter “dread” and craindre “fear,” as de Saussure points out, the phrase “text of pleasure” would not exist without the phrase “texts of bliss.” One comes to identify a text of pleasure as being negligent of bliss, and vice versa. One wouldn’t have a conception of “texts of bliss” if one did not have another kind of text to compare it to. If all texts were seen as “blissful” then why would they be called blissful? Without the conception of “bliss” and “pleasure” as being opposite attributes of text, we would form other attributes to compare.

Of course, we already do that. When one walks into a books store, they search for new books by going to the genre they like. Not everyone is thinking about pleasure and bliss when they read Lord of the Rings, and they probably don’t categorize it as a blissful or pleasurable read after they are done. It is only when the categories are presented before us that we actually think about the distinction.

However, even in this instance the ideas of de Saussure still apply. If all novels were fiction, for instance, we wouldn’t need a classification for “fiction.” The same goes for the genre of fantasy. Readers, and by readers I mean consumers, wish to know what they are getting into when they go to buy a book. If someone doesn’t want to read a horror novel they want something that isn’t horror. They would probably search within any other category. If they saw comedy, they would pick up a book and expect it to be void of horror. Likewise, a reader of fantasy would pick up a book expecting a certain opposition of realism while a reader of realism would want to read something in opposition of fantasy. Expectations are about what the genre is and what the genre isn’t.

-Donavan Neese

On Grammar Nazis

I hate grammar Nazis. Like, Oh you’re really cool because you just corrected me based on information we all learned in third grade. That’s how I feel about them. Fascists. When reading Saussure I realized that he would feel the same way about them. I was feeling relatively lost in this reading until a passage on page 69 made something click: “The value of letters is purely negative and differential. The same person can write t for instance, in different ways … The only requirement is that the sign for t not be confused in his (or her) script with the signs used for l, d, etc.”

I immediately thought: Grammar Nazis. So pedantic in the ways they feel that language should be so “exact,” when there’s nothing less exact and more arbitrary in the world than language. It doesn’t matter how an idea (the signified) is expressed (i.e., the specific language that is used [the signifier])—different people express ideas using much different language—what matters is the idea being expressed, which is common no matter the language.

“Language is form and not a substance,” Saussure writes on page 71. This is what grammar Nazis don’t realize. They suffer from the “involuntary supposition that the linguistic phenomenon must have substance.” There’s been some conflict in the grammar universe lately about the necessity of the apostrophe (i.e., don’t versus dont). Purists believe we should keep it, others don’t think it’s necessary. I was on the fence until this reading, but now I don’t consider it necessary. Well, really, I don’t think it matters; that’s what Saussure would say. Language is constantly adapting because it is so arbitrary, so what does an apostrophe matter? Don’t and dont can easily be understood as signifying the same idea of “do not.” Correcting other’s grammar precipitates class warfare: proving that you know “more” about something than somebody else is simply meant to show how you’re more “educated” than the other, thus, implying you are of a higher class. But, language is not a substance, so how are you really better than the other person if you’re citing something so substanceless and arbitrary as language?

–Riley Zipper

Language Then and Now

Well, after reading Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” (many times might I add), I have to say that I still struggle with some of the ideas of his theory. However, grappling over the repetitive language, I think a major problem I was having was one of the concepts he was trying to teach.

According to Saussure, a sign is the combination of a concept and sound-image, rather than just a name and a thing (61). When we encounter at a sign, like hearing or seeing the word cat, we do not instantly picture a cat in our minds, then connect it to the concept of the word. Instead we use the letters C,A,T that make up the word plus the meaning that we have with it. The word, composed of the three letters is the signifier. The meaning, which is the signified, can change. For some it means, “my cute twin cats Tarzan and Jane” and for others the word CAT may signify allergies, annoyance, and dislike. With an infinite number of meanings, the word ‘cat’ actually has no real, or original meaning, which Saussure explains is why language can be isolated from any real event or meaning.

So, my problem with the theory, involves with today’s tech-savvy world and the evolution of texting and talking through emojis or pictures. There have been a few articles on the emergence of emojis, where one writer from Slate did an experiment of only texting through the little pre-set pictures. Another article featured on WNYC radio channel interviewed a couple who conversed through emojis for 30 days to see how it would affect the relationship. With language changing to the viewing and recognition of simple computer-drawn images, does the theory of the sign still work? For example the emoji of an item of food, like a piece of pizza is presented through a text. The viewer recognizes it as food, pizza as the concept, but what is the sound-image since it is already an image? Does this pizza picture mean ‘lets get pizza?’ ‘I’m hungry?’ ‘I am eating pizza?’ Or does the presented sign not need any additional meanings and interpretations because it is a virtual sign that encompasses everything? Maybe that is why conversing through these little signs is spreading, and may be successful as the new form of conversation, because as Saussure says, language “is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself; it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community” (59).

Here is another fun website on the use of emojis:

http://bookriot.com/2014/09/20/20-classics-4-emoji-fewer/

Ferdinand de Saussure’s Dialectical Linguistics in Opposition to a Mimetic Human Condition

Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” complicates various notions many have held concerning the structural foundations of language. Some identify words as solely symbols to signify pre-determined concepts. Yet de Saussure argues “if words stood for pre-existing concepts” then “they would all have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next; but this is not true” (67). De Saussure uses examples of how the French language uses one word, louer, (“to let”) to mean two different concepts (“to pay for” and “to receive payment for”) whereas German uses two words for each concept. Concepts are differential or exist solely through “opposition to other terms within the system” (67). The semantics of words function on a materialist, dialectical level where meaning is constructed for a word through its opposition to other words. Words only have meaning through their opposition rather than all meaning existing prior to its portrayal in language.

From a mimetic perspective, all art forms symbolize some pre-existing concept (which may indirectly lead to some cosmically determined original ideal all mimetic representations strive to portray in the arts). When applying mimesis to language, all languages (as etymologically varied as they may be) still mimic some ideal form that existed prior to the word’s construction. Rather than language functioning on a solely mimetic, symbolic level, de Saussure claims that “in language there are only differences,” which we impose through the construction of opposing words (70). Does De Saussure’s theory on linguistics therefore disprove the theory of mimesis?

When I think of what kinds of “predetermined concepts in language” de Saussure could be discounting, I imagine the kinds of universal truths in idealism that we believe shape our language, such as a collective human consciousness. A collective human consciousness would be universal cognitive/experiential concepts all humans essentially have access to/possess, which is transcendent of the words we tend to articulate/confide said concepts in. For example, Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” claims the existence of transcendent pre-existing concepts on inherent suffering and perseverance all humans experience regardless of geography, socioeconomic background, culture, or language. These concepts are repeated, or mimicked, again and again in various classical mythologies, originating in geographically isolated places from one another. Would de Saussure’s belief in language as defined by constructed opposition rather than derived ideal disprove these notions of a unifying human condition transcendent of language? Or have I misapplied the microcosm of linguistic meaning to the macrocosm of a common human condition?

Chess and Language (A First Run at Saussure)

Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” looks at the characteristics of language and argues that language is not simply the process of putting a name to an object. In fact, Ferdinand argues that the name to a thing is rather a “sound-image” to a “concept” and it becomes a “psychological imprint” (61). This naturally answers the question: why are we reading this essay for class? Because as Saussure points out, words and language are sensory, and thus some parts of language are likely to be more pleasurable than others. For example, “Jabberwocky” brings us pleasure to read because saying the words is pleasurable.

In one part of his essay, Saussure chooses to focus on two types of linguistics: synchronic and diachronic, saying, “Everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that has to do with evolution is diachronic” (64).

This helps us better understand Saussure’s main point, but what are we to make of the comparison Saussure’s makes between chess and language?

Saussure’s idea is thus: “A game of chess is like an artificial realization of what language offers in a natural form” (64). He argues that like chess, “each linguistic term derives its value from its opposition to all the other terms” and “the system is always momentary; it varies from one position to the next” (64).

What can we make of this?

It seems that Saussure is arguing that, like the different pieces in chess, the different parts of language depend on each other. When Saussure says that a term “derives its value from its opposition,” he’s comparing it to the chess piece that is affected by the chess pieces on the opposing side that are working against it. Furthermore, as language changes, it affects the entire system the way the moving of a chess piece changes an entire game. To me, this makes sense. Language has many pieces that function in different ways the way chess pieces move in different ways.

However, Saussure ends on this note: “In order to make the game of chess seem at every point like the functioning of language, we would have to imagine an unconscious or unintelligent player” (65).

What is Saussure implying? Does the change of language occur without the knowledge of the speakers? If so, why is it unknown to the “player”?

On a wider scale, I would like to pose the question: How does a comparison between chess and linguistics explain the workings of synchronic and diachronic linguistics? Furthermore, how does this affect Saussure’s overall argument about language working as a “psychological imprint”?