Synopsis:
- "parole" (a specific utterance in a language, performance) vs "langue" (the entire body of the language, competence)
- Structuralism: the phenomena of human life (e.g, language) are intelligible only inasmuch as they are part of a network of relationships
- A sign is meaningful only within the entire network of signs
- The meaning of a sign is its relationship to other signs ("Strictly speaking, there are no signs but differences between signs")
- A sign requires both a signifier and a signified (a concept in the mind)
- The relation between a signifier and a signified is arbitrary (The meaning of a sign is totally arbitrary)
- The relations between signifier and signified form a sign
- The structure of language is the negative relation among signs: one sign is what it is because it is not another sign
- Semiotics: science of signs
- Linguistic sign: the signifier is the sound and the signified is the thought
- A linguistic sign is a link between a sound and a concept (not the link between a name and a thing)
- Phoneme: the basic unit of language
- Morpheme: the basic unit of signification
- Mytheme: the basic unit of myth
- Phonemes can stand in two kinds of relationship: diachronic ("horizontal") and synchronic ("vertical")
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