10/02/2026
Ferdinand de Saussure reshaped the study of language by challenging the idea that words are naturally connected to the things they describe. In Course in General Linguistics, compiled from his lectures after his death, he proposed that every linguistic sign contains two parts: the signifier, or the sound and form of a word, and the signified, the idea or concept associated with it. The relationship between the two is largely arbitrary. There is nothing naturally connected to a tree in the word “tree” itself. Instead, words gain meaning through the shared conventions and differences that exist within a language.
Saussure also encouraged scholars to look beyond individual words and examine language as an interconnected system. He distinguished langue, the shared rules and structure of a language, from parole, the individual ways people use that language in speech. He also separated the study of language at a specific point in time from the study of how it changes historically. These ideas became highly influential in linguistics and later shaped semiotics, anthropology, literary theory, and structuralism. At the heart of Saussure’s thinking was the idea that signs do not carry meaning independently; we understand them through their relationships and differences within a larger system.
