Brooke Bumgarner - De Saussure

There have been countless times when I have asked others, and myself, where do our words come from? More specifically, why are all the words we use significant for what they are in reference to, or in essence, the word that defines said thing? Sure, there were words that “made sense”, words such as anthropology (anthro meaning human, logy meaning study of, therefore the study of humans) for these words use suffixes with origins, but still I wondered, how were the suffixes then decided?

As De Saussure points out, “Psychologically our thought – apart from its expression in words – is only a shapeless and indistinct mass” (De Saussure 2012, 5). With such thinking, I always wondered about the significance of each word. I always wondered about the word toilet. I wondered why it was that that object in the bathroom was titled a toilet. To me, a word like dishwasher made sense, for just as the name implies, it washed dishes. But toilet… why? I couldn’t understand how such a shapeless idea, or thought, had gained its name.

Reading further, the idea of how a sound becomes a sign started to make sense to me. De Saussure wrote, “Each linguistic term is a member, an articulus in which an idea is fixed in a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea… Linguistics then work in the borderland where the elements of sound and thought combine; their combination produces a form, not a substance” (De Saussure 2012, 6). So then, it wasn’t really the word that defined the thing. It was the phonetic sound paired with the idea that created the sign representing the word. Still then, he notes, “Not only are the two domains that are linked by the linguistic fact shapeless and confused, but the choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary” (De Saussure 2012, 6).  And so with his use of the word arbitrary, I began to make some connections. Language is said to be arbitrary because each word we use for each object or concept we refer to, does not necessarily have an exact rhyme or reason to it, that’s why in different languages, different signs are used to represent different things. For example, in Spanish, el baño, is the bathroom, however, it is also the word they use for the toilet. Yet in Italian the word toilet is toilette. And for us, it is simply a toilet.

This further helps me to understand the differentiation between value and significance. For as De Saussure explains, value is only relevant when there are relationships and differences that create significance for the word (De Saussure 2012, 9).  Therefore, a toilet would not be a toilet if it were not in a bathroom, for in a bathroom a toilet may be situated next to the sink, where one would wash and maintain cleanliness and would find a toilette (or cloth). The significance of the word toilet, is not the word itself, but rather what is done in the bathroom, on the toilet, to stay healthy and clean. The value of a toilet is not determined by what we call it, but by why we use it, and why it is needed (its significance) and thus has a word signifying it.