Which is the most important of the Saussurean dichotomies?
Saussure was unhappy with the manner in which language, and the study of language, were dealt with in his time. As a result he refused to publish anything of his own, his legacy was brought to us through the work of his students. Saussure’s principle complaint with how language was studied was that it was not in any way structured. It his work that has changed that and has resulted in present day linguistics. To understand the relationship between the structure of language and its use, we must explore some of the dichotomies that are characteristic of Saussure’s work. The most well known, and perhaps most misunderstood, are langue and parole. Briefly, langue is the system of a language where parole is the actual speech that takes place. In parole, the speaker selects and combines elements from langue to manifest concepts. Saussure says that langue is the more important of the two, and is in fact very important to the formalisation of language and its study. The emphasis on langue has allowed for the creation of whole new disciplines. Examples are phonetics and phonology which study the physical act of sound production and the distinction between sounds respectively. In addition Saussure’s work has been built upon by countless other linguists, such as Chomsky.
