Sign in Saussure's View

Ferdinand de Saussure is well-known as the father of Linguistics. In his point of view, he called semiotics as semiologhy, which is meant as a study of signs in language.

In his book Cours de Linguistique Generale, published in 1916 (Cobley and Jansz, 2002: 10-11) Saussure mentioned that sign has two sides, as follows:
1. Signifier is a material aspect from sign, such as a cat or handwriting.
2. Signified is a concept of mentality. When we mention the word ‘cat’ from signifier (/c/a/t/), what appears in our mind is not the ‘real’ cat, but a concept of the cat; such as, has four legs, mew, like eating fish, a beautiful animal, etc.

Image : http://lafondb.wordpress.com

Therefore, it can be said that according to Saussure theory, sign is divided into two sides, signifier is what we heard when it is mentioned (sound pattern) while signified is something comes up in our mind when we or someone else mentioned the thing (concept). By the existence of these two dyadic relationship, then a sign is made up.

Resource: Cobley, Paul dan Litza Jansz.1997. Mengenal Semiotika for Beginner. Inggris: Icon Books Ltd., Cambridge.

Posted by miasastra

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