Tanja Säily
Take-Home Exam, Veg131
Department of English
University of Helsinki
17 January 1999
Question 4: Saussure argued that linguistic signs are arbitrary with respect to both their form and content, while Peirce classified linguistic signs into icons, indexes, and symbols. Discuss the similarities and differences between their understandings of arbitrariness.
The Saussurian sign consists of two parts: the signifier (sign vehicle), i.e. the form of the sign, and the signified (sign content), i.e. what the sign stands for. For Saussure, linguistic signs are purely arbitrary/conventional. There is no necessary connection between the sign vehicle and the sign content. The sign content is chosen arbitrarily from 'the continuum of perceived sense-impressions of the world'. The sign vehicle is just a random word, a set of sounds. The only restriction is that the sign has to be different from other signs; it gets it meaning negatively, through its relations to them. The sign does not have any value by itself. The sign is not part of the real world: the signified is an abstract mental concept, the signifier a 'sound-image', 'the psychological imprint of the sound'. Thus, rather than reflecting the world, language constructs it.
The sign for Peirce, on the other hand, is a triad consisting of the representamen, i.e. the form of the sign, the interpretant, i.e. the sense made of the sign, and the object, i.e. what the sign stands for. Unlike Saussure's signifier, the object is not just an abstract concept; it belongs to the real world. Instead of being an amorphous mass of ideas, the world has a structure. Thus, neither the categorisation/selection of the sign nor the sense made of it can be completely arbitrary; they are somehow motivated, and so the sign does have some value of its own. Peirce divides signs into three modes by their degrees of arbitrariness:
Icons and indexes are often regarded as more natural than symbols. However, to be able to understand a sign, we always have to learn the cultural conventions involved - even though the English word 'moo' and the Finnish word 'ammuu' are both considered onomatopoeic, it would be difficult for an English speaker to guess what 'ammuu' means. This takes us back to Saussure: signs get their meanings by cultural convention, and language is a set of social norms.
Chandler, Daniel. 1994. "Semiotics for Beginners." http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html (3 July 2000).
Cheyne, J. A. "Signs of Consciousness." http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/signcon.html (3 July 2000).