Ferdinand de Saussure

Saussure’s posthumous Course in General Linguistics defined the sign as a two-sided unit (signifier/signified), distinguished langue from parole, and treated language as a system of differences with no positive terms.

¶Core ideas

• Signifier and signified: the sign as the arbitrary union of an acoustic image and a concept
• Langue vs parole: the social system vs individual speech acts
• Value through difference: linguistic units have value only by contrast with other units

¶Key works

• Course in General Linguistics (1916, posthumous)