Re: Saussure’s idea of language (Lehman 1991).

--- mkelkar2003 <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:

> "Saussure conceived of language as a system of signs
> rather than an
> orderly procession of meanings. One of his key
> insights is that the
> word dog has no intrinsic meaning: nothing in the
> word, its sound or
> its shape on the page suggests a barking animal, any
> more than does
> hund in German or chien in French. Language
> consists of signs, and
> signs are not independent entities that can be
> studies in isolation:
> signs can only be understood in relation to one
> another within a
> larger linguistic system. The meaning of a sign is
> a function of its
> difference from the others. Dog means what it does
> in English because
> it is not hog or bog. And this is true for concepts
> as well. The
> terms we use have meaning, Saussure reasoned, not
> because they
> correspond to an external reality and not because
> they reflect ideas,
> but because of their differentiation. It follows
> that the pairs of
> any culturally determined binary opposition define
> themselves in
> relation to one another (Lehman 1991, p. 94)."
> Thus the internal consistency of Rig Veda does not
> matter to
> comparative linguists. Word like ratha and chakra
> can be pulled out
> and compared in isolation with objects found
> thousand of miles away in
> completely different contexts.
> Lehman, D. (1991). Signs of the times:
> deconstruction and the fall
> of paul de man. New York: Poseidon Press. ISBN:
> 0-671-68239-3
> M. Kelkar
>
>
>

David: You asked me why guys like this are annoying.
This is why. It's the same reason biologists find
creationists and fabricators of "intelligent design"
annoying. They twist a smidgen of theory into a cloth
of irrational nonsense.
Tell me what Saussure dichotomy of the signified and
signifier have to do with historical linguistics?
Does Kelkar even have a clue that he's proposing that
historical linguistics is purely arbitrary.
Does he know thatt Saussure has been dead for 95
years, that binary structuralism has been passé since
1968 and that de Man dealt a death blow to
structuralism?
Does he understand that arbitrary nature of signs is
completely irrelevant to historical linguistics?
I doubt it.
Does he care?
Only if it serves to obfuscate.