Thursday, March 29, 2012

Saussure

It's true: the words we assign to objects have nothing to do with the objects. I've often wondered why we call a candle "a candle," but Spanish-speakers call it "una vela" and French-speakers call it "une bougie." Obviously none of these are cognates to each other, and honestly the real reasons why they are called what they are probably has something to do with etymology, but we aren't getting into that. Saussure's point is:

Signifier (Sound-Image)
+Signified (Concept)
Sign

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