Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English
Why theory?
Gopa B. Caesar:
The SIGN, as union of a SIGNIFIER and a SIGNIFIED, has two main characteristics.
This principle dominates all ideas about the STRUCTURE of language. It makes it possible to separate the signifier and signified, or to change the relation between them.
The second characteristic of the SIGN is that the signifier exists in TIME, and that time can be measured as LINEAR.
Gopa B. Caesar:
II: LINGUISTIC VALUE
Thought is a shapeless mass, which is only ordered by language. One of the questions philosophers have puzzled over for centuries is whether ideas can exist at all without language. No ideas preexist language; language itself gives shape to ideas and makes them expressible.
The VALUE of a sign is determined, however, not by what signifiers get linked to what particular signifieds, but rather by the whole system of signs used within a community. VALUE is the product of a system or structure (LANGUE), not the result of individual relations (PAROLE).
Gopa B. Caesar:
III.SYNTAGMATIC AND ASSOCIATIVE RELATIONS
The most important kind of relation between units in a signifying system, is a SYNTAGMATIC relation. This means, basically, a LINEAR relation. In spoken or written language, words come out one by one .Because language is linear, it forms a chain, by which one unit is linked to the next.
An example “â€The cat sat on the matâ€â€
ҠThe mat sat on the cat “â€
English word order :SVO
Japanese word order:SOV etc.
Gopa B. Caesar:
SYNTAGMS
Combinations or relations formed by position within a chain are called SYNTAGMS.
The terms within a syntagm acquire VALUE only because they stand in opposition to everything before or after them. Each term IS something because it is NOT something else in the sequence.
SYNTAGMATIC relations are most crucial in written and spoken language, in DISCOURSE, where the ideas of time, linearity, and syntactical meaning are important.
Gopa B. Caesar:
ASSOCIATIVE
Signs are stored in your memory, for example, not in syntagmatic links or sentences, but in ASSOCIATIVE groups.
"Education" "-tion":education, relation, association
Similar associations: education, teacher, textbook, college, expensive.
Random set of linkages: education, baseball, computer games, psychoanalysis
ASSOCIATIVE relations are only in your head, not in the
structure of language itself, whereas SYNTAGMATIC relations
are a product of linguistic structure.
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