Page 29 - Zenith 12호

INCHEON
29 FOREIGN LANGUAGE
HIGH SCHOOL

Saussure is a Swiss linguist who has achieved outstanding achievements in European linguistics and greatly
influenced the development of structuralism. He was called the founder of symbolic science, the origin of
structuralism, and today, he has created a great linguistic revolution that has called him the father of modern

linguistics.

His linguistic revolution begins with the definition of symbols as a combination of signifier and signified.
He called his vote significant and his note signifié. To put it simply, the language symbols were divided into

contents and forms. Signifier means our voice and words, and signified means the meaning inherent in the
signifier. This may sound too obvious to us today, but it was a big change in the past. In the past, people
thought symbols and sounds were the same, and thought that symbols did not mean abstract concepts, but
directly instructed things themselves. However, Saussure defined a combination of signified and signifier as

symbols, and that symbols and things were not necessarily connected, and that people simply called them that
way for no reason. For example, in Korea, the term "바다" is called "mel" in France and "playa" in Spain, but
there is no inevitable reason to call like that. Symbols form a system, and their values and meanings are not
inherently given, but are defined by differences and conflicts within the system to which they belong.

Such a view of Saussure completely changed the perspective of people looking at the world. People used to
think that the world existed first and that language was the one that named it. On the contrary, Saussure said
that a linguistic system consisting of signifier and predetermined forms the world, which means that humans

can recognize the world only through language, and the world can exist only through language and is not pre-
existing.

Saussure offered an opportunity to treat linguistics

as a single discipline, and phonology was created by
inheriting the general linguistics created by Saussure.
He reportedly did not write a single book except for
his doctor's thesis and destroyed all lecture notes. His

linguistic revolution is accessible only through books
written by his disciples, but it is easy for us to feel
what a great linguist Saussure is.

Yu Yoon Ji (2-7)
dbdbswl15@gmail.com