“F. de Saussure o nevozhmosnosti yazykovoy politiki.” Yazykovedenie i materialism 2 (1931): 91-104. (The majority of the quotes from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (1916), edited by Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye, can be found on pages 104-108 of the original.)
In a certain sense, one can speak both of the immutability and the mutability of the [linguistic] sign.
Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye, the editors of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, comment on this remark as follows—ironically, destroying its seeming dialectic in the process:
It would be wrong to accuse Saussure of being illogical or paradoxical in ascribing two mutually contradictory features to language. In juxtaposing these two striking terms (immutability and mutability), he merely wished to underscore the truth that although language transforms itself through time, this transformation cannot be effected by speakers. One could also say that language is inaccessible [intangible] but not inalterable [inaltérable].
How interesting: the most prominent representatives of west European linguistics go out of their way to ‘whitewash’ their teacher of the possible criticism that he ascribes two contradictory qualities to language.
The editors’ observation, meanwhile, perfectly captures Saussure’s position: he first proposes that it is impossible for speakers to transform language and then suggests that language does change through time.
In this essay, I will be concerned with the first proposition.
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There can be no doubt as to what Saussure means to say on this subject. He states that “language is entirely dominated by the fact of its historical transmission, which excludes any general or sudden linguistic changes [exclut tout changement linguistique général et subit],” and claims that “the linguistic sign eludes our will [échappe à notre volonté].”
At the very beginning of the chapter entitled “Immutability and Mutability of the Sign,” Saussure writes:
If the signifier [le signifiant] appears to have been freely chosen in regard to the idea which it represents, in regard to the linguistic community by which it is employed it is not free at all, it has been imposed. The social mass has never been consulted, the signifier chosen by language itself could not be replaced by another … Not only would an individual—even if he wanted to—be utterly incapable of changing the choice that has been made by language, but the social mass, too, has no power over a single word [ne peut exercer sa souveraineté sur un seul mot]; it is tied to language as it is [liée à la langue telle qu’elle est] … the sign is immutable, which is to say, it resists any arbitrary substitution … In fact, no society has ever known language other than as a product inherited from previous generations to be taken as is [à prendre tel quel].
Saussure’s thinking here is crystal-clear: not only does he deny the individual “power over a single word,” but he also denies this power to the “social mass,” the collective. (In our own domestic linguistic literature these and similar passages in Saussure’s Course are sometimes interpreted to the effect that Saussure opposes language as a system of arbitrary signs created by the collective to the individual and his individual utterances. As we can see, that’s not the case.)
Saussure’s view can be summed up as follows: language changes through time as a result of objective conditions, but the subject of language—both the individual speaker and the collective of speakers—does not participate in this process of transformation. The role of the subject of language, who is “tied to language as it is” and cannot step outside the inherited system, is merely passive.
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Saussure’s argument concerning the speakers’ powerlessness vis-à-vis language—one of the cornerstones of his entire linguistic system, and closely tied to such other major Saussurean postulates as the “impossibility of a revolution” [l’impossibilité d’une révolution]” in language and the inappropriateness of the question of the origin of language in linguistics—is significant not only as a contribution to theoretical linguistics; it is significant also because, if Saussure is right, then any organized intervention in the linguistic process, any organized societal attempt at impacting the direction of this process, that is, any language politics become impossible. (The reason, by the way, that Saussure considers the question of the origin of language inappropriate for linguistics has to do with the fact that for him “the only real object of linguistics is the normal and regular life of a language already constituted.”)
Here a purely theoretical, philosophical problem turns (as is only natural) into a problem of general socio-political relevance.
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To us, the very question “Is language politics possible?” appears misguided. For us, the impossibility of language politics would signify the nugatoriness and methodological impossibility of the very science of language. If Saussure is right, then Marx’s sound advice to philosophers—“not only to interpret the world but to change it”—would not be applicable to linguistics. In vain would we “set down the laws” of linguistic evolution if these laws could not be implemented in concrete practice. The question posed to every scientific discipline by our youth—“What is it for?”—is, in its philosophical essence, the most legitimate and necessary of questions. Saussure’s response to it is: “For naught”—not, in any case, for changing, transforming, and reorganizing the “inaccessible,” concrete reality of our language. The fifteen lines or so that Saussure devotes to the “use of linguistics” at the beginning of his three-hundred-plus-page Course are so revealing in this regard that I would like to quote them in full here:
What, then, is the use of linguistics [l’utilité de la linguistique]? Very few people have a clear idea about this; and this is not the place to try to pin it down. But it is obvious, for example, that linguistic questions interest all those—historians, philologists, etc.—who deal with texts. Even more obvious is its importance for culture in general [pour la culture générale]: in the life of the individual and in the life of society, language is the most important factor. It would be unacceptable were its study to remain the affair of a handful of specialists; in fact, everybody has a stake in it one way or another [tout le monde s’en occupe peu ou prou]. But—and this is a paradoxical consequence of the very interest that attaches to it: no other area of knowledge has been the breeding ground for so many absurd ideas, prejudices, mirages, and fictions. From a psychological viewpoint, these errors are not negligible; but the linguist’s task is, above all, to denounce and debunk them as completely as possible.
Is it necessary for us to prove the possibility of language politics? No. Is it necessary to disprove Saussure’s postulate that it is impossible? It is imperative.
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Saussure’s claim that language is inaccessible to its speakers could easily be refuted by simply referring to fact—as aptly captured in Pushkin’s famous poem “Motion”:
Motion does not exist—a bearded sage surmised.
Without a word, another simply began to move.
That’s all he had to do the first one wrong to prove
Receiving praise from all for his astute reply …
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The history of many “literary” languages offers examples of the transformation of language on the initiative of philologists, literary professionals, etc.
To take a well-known, and fairly typical, case: the redaction from literary Czech of words of German origin (or words suspected of being of German origin), which had far-reaching consequences. As Antoine Meillet notes in The Languages of the New Europe (1928):
The Czech vocabulary has become artificial to a large extent, with derivative and compound words made up of Slavic elements having systematically replaced German words or words resembling the latter. This has isolated Czech not only from all other European language but from the Slavic languages as well. While Polish has to this day retained many words borrowed from German, which have been organically assimilated and polonized, Czech has only retained the Slavic elements in terms of borrowed linguistic material, and, owing to its exclusively Slavic character, its vocabulary has, in a whole range of instances, no more parallels with Polish, or any other Slavic language. To the point where a widely accepted European word such as theater, which is also common in Russian and Polish, has been replaced by divadlo, which has no parallels anywhere in Europe.
However, Meillet’s examples of the transformation of literary languages may not necessarily be in line with Saussure’s approach (even though both are brothers in linguistic spirit), insofar as Saussure considers literary languages artificial in contrast to natural, spoken language:
Any literary language, which is a product of culture, ends up detaching its sphere of existence [arrive à détacher sa sphère d’existence] from the natural sphere, the sphere of spoken language … Is it possible to distinguish the natural, organic development of a language from its artificial forms—such as literary language—which are due to external and, thus, inorganic factors?
(What a muddle! As if spoken language were not a product of culture and did not owe its existence to external factors!)
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But let’s keep in mind the many well-known examples from natural, spoken language that point to the massive significance in this domain of the speakers’ conscious and intentional transformation of speech.
These examples could be gleaned from the actual linguistic practices of various social classes. A good number can also be found in the literature dealing with the language of the peasantry (which Saussure would probably consider particularly “natural”). As it turns out, even for the peasant, language reveals itself as far from “inaccessible”: the peasant consciously changes his pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and phraseology in light of the dictates of metropolitan speech. This conscious departure from the local, rural idiom, in fact, is characteristic of the development of the language of peasantry more generally as it gradually dissolves under the encroachment of evolving capitalism.
In other words, throughout the evolutionary process of the ordinary language of the masses, language has been far from inaccessible to its speakers. Facts, though, are not only stubborn, they may also be deceiving. Pushkin, for one, accuses his second “sage” of blind empiricism, even though the latter winds up “receiving praise from all for his astute reply”:
But, gentlemen, this curious incident
Brings yet another, related case to mind:
Before our very eyes, the sun each day declines,
Still Galileo’s right one hundred ten percent.
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Perhaps, then, and contrary to the facts, Saussure is right after all? Let’s take a look at how, according to Saussure, language “eludes our will.”
First, Saussure posits that in any age, irrespective of how far we go back in history, language is always something handed down to us from the previous generation. What sacred truth!—And like all sacred truths, this one, too, has a flaw: language is not simply something passed down to us, which is the rub precisely!
Yet this ‘sacred’ truth proves nothing yet: “… to say that language is an inheritance explains nothing,” Saussure rightly points out, “if we don’t go further.” And “further” Saussure does go indeed: “Isn’t it possible to change [modifier], from one moment to the next, existing and inherited laws [lois existantes et héritées]?”
This remark enjoins Saussure to “put language back into its social framework [cadre social] and to pose the question the way we would pose it in regard to other social institutions” (ibid.). Having thus embarked on the ‘sociological’ method—and by the way, this is a teaching moment for all those who would applaud any would-be ‘sociological’ method and consider Saussure the father of sociological linguistics—Saussure is now forced to “appreciate the greater or lesser freedom enjoyed by the other institutions [apprécier le plus ou moins de liberté dont jouissent les autres institutions]” in terms of their amenability to change through “the free agency of society [l’action libre de la société].” His ensuing train of thought can be boiled down to a complete separation of language from other social institutions and to proving that language cannot be viewed as a model for them, being “entirely dominated by the fact of its historical transmission, which excludes any general or sudden linguistic changes.”
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Saussure adduces four arguments, which he considers the “most essential, the most straightforward, and on which all others depend.” I would like to examine these arguments now. In order to forestall misconstrual and confusion, my own observations on each argument will be preceded by the full text of each of Saussure’s four points.
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1. —The arbitrary character of the sign. Earlier, it forced us to admit the theoretical possibility of change; but digging deeper, we can see that, in fact, the very arbitrariness of the sign shelters language from any attempt at modifying it. The social mass—even it were operating at a much higher level of consciousness than it actually does—would not be capable of discussing language. For an issue to be subjected to interrogation, it must partake of a rational norm. We can, for example, debate the question of whether monogamy is more reasonable than polygamy and adduce reasons for one or the other. We could also discuss a system of symbols, because there is a rational connection between the symbol and the thing symbolized. But in the case of language, which is a system of arbitrary signs, this rational foundation is lacking, and with it any solid ground for discussion as well. There is absolutely no reason to prefer soeur to sister, Ochs to boeuf, etc.
Let’s agree with Saussure, for the sake of argument, that the linguistic sign is arbitrary, that there is no “rational” connection between the sign’s concept—the “signifié”—and its signifying sound combination—the “significant”; that there is no necessity for the concept ‘sister’ to be represented by the sound combination ‘soeur’ in French, or for the concept ‘bull’ to be represented by the sound combination ‘Ochs’ in German, etc. (I should note, however, that the true nature of the connection between the concept and its corresponding sound combination is completely different from Saussure’s description of it, and that it is not at all captured by the formula of the “arbitrariness of the sign.” This formula as well as Saussure’s theory of the verbal sign as a whole are misguided. The connection between a word and its meaning is historically conditioned, and any attempt at clarifying this connection ultimately leads the question of the origin of language in general and spoken language in particular. Having banned the question of the origin of language from linguistic inquiry, Saussure is obviously incapable of understanding the nature of the word.)
Is it true, though, that discussing the individual linguistic sign and replacing it with another presupposes a “rational” connection between its signifier and its signified? No, it is not. For, its arbitrary character notwithstanding, the linguistic sign does, in fact, get discussed and can be—and, in fact, is—subject to transformation by speakers.
Meillet extensively deals with the question as to which sound combination (significant) is more “suitable” for the concept (signifié) ‘theater’ in Czech; he reaches the conclusion that it is definitely not ‘divadl’o—the contemporary Czech word for ‘theater’. Much more suitable would be the sound combination that corresponds to the German ‘Theater’, the French ‘téâtre’, the English ‘theatre’, the Russian ‘teatr’, etc. As it turns out, the word ‘divadlo’ was chosen by the Czech to replace the Czech word that morphologically corresponded to the Russian ‘teatr’, etc., as a result of elaborate “discussion.”
Isn’t the question as to which signifier is more “suitable” for the Russian concept ‘techyet’ [flows/is flowing]—‘techyet’ or ‘tekyet’—amenable to discussion, and isn’t it, in fact, being discussed? Isn’t it possible and not at all unnecessary to discuss and decide on what’s better in Russian: ‘ikh’ or ‘ikhny’ (variants of the possessive pronoun ‘their[s]’), ‘mólodezh’ or ‘molodyézh’ (variants of ‘youth’), ‘mestov’ or ‘mest’ [variants of the genitive form of ‘places’: ‘of places’ or ‘places’’]. Don’t we have idiosyncratic debates about and decisions on our own local idioms whenever the speakers of any given dialect or local idiom begin to depart from the latter and adapt to more widely accepted speech and pronunciation. It is true that in such cases we certainly don’t have discussions in print or at public gatherings with arguments presented and votes cast, but Saussure doesn’t necessarily have this type of public discussion in mind to begin with.
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Saussure could not have been ignorant of facts analogous to the ones I have provided. Why, then, didn’t he take them into account? (Did he simply forget or intentionally ignore them?) Clearly, in doing so, he was merely living up to the standards of his own abstract formal-logical thinking: in positing the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, and claiming from this abstract formal-logical vantage point that there is no good reason to prefer the French ‘boeuf’ to the German ‘Ochs’, Saussure completely lost sight of the fact that just as real bulls the words designating them do not exist somewhere between heaven and earth, cut off from the rest of the world. Saussure does not consider the linguistic sign in its relation to other things and phenomena; he does not take into account that in existing within the dynamic system of evolving language, the linguistic sign enters into a plethora of rational and irrational relations—both linguistic and non-linguistic—and is very much subject to discussion and debate. Saussure does not take into account the inherent contradictoriness of the linguistic sign: it is arbitrary, fortuitous, and neutral if considered in light of its discrete internal structure; but it is anything but arbitrary, fortuitous, and neutral in its emplacement in the dynamism of the ever-evolving system of language and society as a whole.
The peasant transforms his system of linguistic signs in conjunction with the transformation of technology, his way of life and thinking, striving to attain the standards of the next higher social class or group. Similarly, at some point, the Czech bourgeoisie began using the word ‘divadlo’ to refer to ‘theater’ because it was struggling against its Germanized feudal lords. And the Russian ‘techyet’ is preferable to ‘tekyet’ because it is a better grammatical fit within the overall system of the Russian language; or, some might say, it is better because that’s how educated, cultured people speak and great writers write. And perhaps for someone the French bull might be preferable to the German bull because his wife happens to be French.
But all jokes aside, it is blatantly evident that there may be a plethora of reasons to prefer one signifier to another. Certainly, not all reasons will be instrumental in contributing to the transformation of language; but the very dynamic of its practical existence renders language inseparable from its concrete historical content, which, in turn, reveals the linguistic sign as anything but neutral to the speakers and very much the subject of possible “discussion.” (Which yet again underscores how mistaken Saussure is in suggesting that “linguistic facts do not in any way elicit criticism” and that “each people tends to be satisfied with the language it has received.”)
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2. —The multitude of signs necessary for the constitution any language. The consequences of this fact are considerable. A system of writing made up of twenty to forty letters could, if need be, be replaced by another. The same would apply to language if it were made up of a limited number of elements; but the linguistic signs are infinite.
Let me first note that this point squarely contradicts the previous one. Here, Saussure actually admits the possibility of transforming, and even replacing, a system of written sings; that is, he suggests that the written sign is not at all inaccessible to the “social mass.” It being obvious, though, that the internal structure of the written linguistic sign is the same as the internal structure of the spoken (phonic) linguistic sign—insofar as in the written linguistic sign, too, the connection between signifier and signified is arbitrary—and given that, according to Saussure himself, systems of arbitrary signs are subject to transformation by their users after all, this means that the entire previous argument concerning the impossibility of the intentional linguistic transformation of language by its speakers owing to the arbitrariness of the sign crumbles before our very eyes.
If we consider the second point on its own merits, then the argument appears to rest on the distinction between the presumed potential infinity of spoken signs as opposed to the limited number of written signs, whereby it is precisely the potential infinity of spoken signs that presumably makes the transformation of language by its speakers impossible.
It’s not at all clear, however, how the alleged infinity of (spoken) linguistic signs bears on the question of the mutability or immutability of language in the first place, and why it should make a partial transformation of language by its speakers impossible, for instance? Keeping in mind that it has never been a question of replacing an entire linguistic system by another, but merely of the possibility of transforming a linguistic system, of its accessibility to its speakers.
Furthermore, Saussure is completely wrong in opposing spoken to written language based on the difference in the number of signs each allegedly has—infinite and limited, respectively. As far as the number aspect is concerned, both systems are categorically identical. If, in speaking of an infinite number of signs, Saussure actually had individual speech (“parole”) in mind, one might agree with him—barely, though, since in written language, too, the individual written utterance implies an infinite number of signs (including the writer’s singular hand, etc.). But Saussure cannot possible mean “parole” here (if he did he would stop being Saussure); what he must mean here is not “parole” but language as a system—“langue.” And can the number of signs in “langue” qua system of linguistic signs be infinite? Of course not! For can’t we say that the actual system of language consists of twenty to forty sounds, in analogy with Saussure’s observation that the system of written language consists of twenty to forty letters? How can the number of grammatical signs be infinite? And if Saussure means the infinite number of words in spoken language, then the number of words in written language must also be infinite—but in this case, too, there’s no point in speaking of infinity.
Chasing arguments, Saussure ascribes qualities to language that language does not possess and tries to fob us off with muddled hyperboles instead offering compelling proofs.
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3. —The overly complex character of the system. A language constitutes a system. If, as we shall see, this is the aspect on account of which it is not completely arbitrary [n’est pas complètement arbitraire] and governed by reason—relatively speaking [il règne une raison relative]—it is also the aspect that reveals the inability [l’incompéptence] of the mass to transform it. For this system is a complex mechanism; it can only be grasped through reflection [réflexion]; even those who use it daily are profoundly ignorant [l’ignorent profondément] in its regard. One couldn’t conceive of such transformation other than effected by specialists, grammarians, logicians, etc. But experience shows that such attempts have, thus far, had absolutely no success.
(Interestingly, remembering that language is a system, Saussure disavows, if cautiously, its complete arbitrariness. Unfortunately, he didn’t remember this when making the first of his four cardinal claims, which would have—had he remembered it—wilted before its prime.)
Two moments need to be distinguished in Saussure’s third point: 1. the impossibility of transforming language by the “mass”; 2. the impossibility (or improbability) of such transformation by specialists as well.
The “mass” cannot transform language because it is “profoundly ignorant” of its “complex mechanism” and can never know it. Why? Because the common man, Saussure implies, does not engage in “reflection” on language. Saussure’s mistake consists in assuming that knowledge necessarily implies contemplation and reflection. Certainly, the “mass” is not made up of academics and philologists who contemplate language, thereby cognizing its “complex mechanism.” But the “mass” may very well ‘cognize’—if not exhaustively—the “complex mechanism” of language in action: for it is the “mass” that concretely realizes language.
It is crucial to note that the coexistence of diverse language systems, or rather, the coexistence of collectives with different language systems, greatly facilitates opening up the complexities of these systems to their speakers and, thus, also to their transformation by them.
As far as the impossibility of linguistic transformation by specialists is concerned—i. e., the impossibility of language politics in the true sense of the term—Saussure’s only ‘proof’ consists in pointing out that any “such attempts” have so far been unsuccessful (as experience shows!). Leaving aside the question whether “such attempts” have or have not been successful, by the same token it could have been argued in the past that reaching the north pole or flying in apparatuses heavier than air would remain impossible, etc. (Of course, “such attempts” have been successful in a number of cases.)
For his reliance on experience to be more than fatuous and anecdotal, Saussure would need to show that the conditions under which the experience referred to has been gained will always remain the same—something he neither does nor even considers, viewing the once-established social situation as a static given.
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4. —The resistance of collective inertia to all linguistic innovation. Language is—and this aspect trumps all others—the business of all, all the time [à chaque moment l’affaire de tout le monde]. Spread across a mass and handled by it, it is something everybody uses all day long. In this respect, it cannot be compared with any other institution. The prescriptions of a code, the rites of a religion, maritime signals, etc. never concern more than a certain number of individuals at a time [à la fois], and for limited periods. Language, by contrast, is something everybody takes part in all the time, and that is why it is constantly subject to the influence of all. This cardinal fact suffices to prove the impossibility of a revolution [l’impossibilité d’une revolution] in language. Of all the social institutions, language is the one that offers the least openings for initiatives. It constitutes a single whole with the life of the social mass, and the latter, being naturally inert [étant naturellement inerte], appears, above all, as a force of conservation.
Saussure’s first observation is: language is the business of all; it constitutes a single whole with the life of the “social mass”; everybody takes part in language all the time.
Saussure’s second observation is: the “social mass” is naturally inert and reveals itself, above all, as a force of conservation.
The conclusion being … but there’s no point in speaking of a conclusion here, given that the second observation is obviously completely wrong. Ascribing inertia to the “social mass” as though it were an immutable quality means understanding nothing about the dialectical process of social evolution. The mythical “mass” constantly invoked by Saussure is neither monolithic nor undifferentiated—far from it: it is divided into classes, whose “activity” and “inertia” vis-à-vis possible “initiatives,” including those in the domain of language, vary greatly at any given point in time.
Thus, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Czech bourgeoisie was so not inert that the “initiatives” of “specialists” to transform the Czech language were widely able to take hold and generate lasting results.
Insofar as Saussure’s claim concerning the inertia of the “social mass” is misguided, his concomitant claim that “language is the business of all, all the time” reveals itself as meaningless. In fact, the latter appears to undermine Saussure’s very argument here: for the fact that language is the business of all make its transformation in any given situation all the more possible. This, then, is the sorry state of Saussure’s fourth—and most important—point in his overall argument.
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Thus, neither the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, nor the number of signs necessary to constitute any language, nor the overly complex character of the system, nor, finally, the opposition of social inertia to any form of linguistic innovation prove in any way that language is “inaccessible” to its speakers. Far from it: language is very much accessible to its speakers and does, in fact, get transformed by them. Saussure’s attempt to prove the impossibility of language politics fails.
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What are the methodological roots of Saussure’s failure and what is its sociological equivalent? Why did Saussure go wrong?
Because he approaches his object formally-logically, without considering the skein of concrete social relations in which it actually exists.
Because he thinks that language can only be known through reflection, contemplation from the sidelines, so to speak, all the while forgetting about the subject of language, the collective.
Because in taking account neither of the class divisions in society nor of the dialectical process of social and linguistic evolution, he views the social structure as a whole in squarely abstract, ahistorical terms, ascribing qualities to the mass of speakers as a whole that only apply to some of its parts, to this or that social class at a particular moment in its historical evolution.