Conventionality of a Linguistic Sign as a Social Factor in Language Development

By Krystyna Poluektova

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I – Introduction Statement of the problem and purpose……………………………………………3

CHAPTER II

Literature review, definition of terms and main ideas………………………………………………………………………………………………….5

CHAPTER IV – Conclusion…………………………………………........................14

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………….15

Introduction
Statement of the problem and purpose The idea of the linguistic sign, which is today asserted or implied in most works of general linguistics, came from Ferdinand de Saussure. Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics. Saussure's ideas had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century. Two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions of Saussurean thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics.

Saussure posited that linguistic form is arbitrary, and therefore all languages function in a similar fashion. According to Saussure, a language is arbitrary because it is systematic in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Also, all languages have their own concepts and sound images (or signifieds and signifiers). Therefore, Saussure argues, languages have a relational conception of their elements: words and their meanings are defined by comparing and contrasting their meanings to one another. For instance, the sound images for and the conception of a book differ from the sound images for and the conception of a table. Languages are also arbitrary because of the nature of their linguistic elements: they are defined in terms of their function rather than in terms of their inherent qualities. Finally, he posits, language has a social nature in that it provides a larger context for analysis, determination, and realization of its structure.

And it was as an obvious truth, not yet explicit but nevertheless undeniable in fact, that Saussure taught that the nature of the sign was arbitrary. The formula, immediately commanded attention. Every utterance on the essence of language or the modalities of discourse begins with a statement of the arbitrary character of the linguistic sign. The principle is of such significance that any thinking bearing upon any part of linguistics necessarily encounters it. That it is cited everywhere and always … obvious are two good reasons for seeking at least to understand it in the sense which Saussure took it and the nature of the proofs which show it. In this research I would like to investigate the conventionality of a linguistic sign as a social factor in language development. This topic has always been important and relevant, it has enough problems for consideration and research.

Literary review, definition of terms and main ideas Saussure’s concept of a linguistic sign as a two-sided entity consisting of the signifier and signified was an innovation that had a revolutionary consequence: by defining language as a system of signs understood as two-sided entities Saussure delineated a new object of study. He was aware of this consequence and indeed it is a crucial insight that in language a concept is the quality of the phonic substance just as a particular segment of sound is the quality of the concept, so that sound and meaning only in their unity constitute the object of linguistics. Sebastian Shaumyan (Signs, mind and reality: the theory of language as the folk model of the world) states: “The linguistic sign is not merely s sequence of sounds. The linguistic sign can be a change of stress (‘convict and con’vict), alternation (“take” and “took”), a change of a grammatical context (“I love” and “my love”), or a change in word order (“Tom killed John” and “John killed Tom”)”. Danial Chandler (Semiotics: basics) noted: “We seem as a species to be driven by a desire to make meanings: above all, we are surely Homo significans - meaning-makers. Distinctively, we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'”. Indeed, according to Peirce, 'we think only in signs' (Peirce). Signs take the form of words, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. 'Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign', declares Peirce (Peirce). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself. We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions.
The two dominant models of what constitutes a sign are those of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. These will be discussed in turn.
Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: • a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes; and • the 'signified' (signific) - the concept it represents.
The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification', and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. The horizontal line marking the two elements of the sign is referred to as 'the bar'.
If we take a linguistic example, the word 'Open' (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of: • a signifier: the word open; • a signified concept: that the shop is open for business.
A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified (SaussureSaussure). A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier (the word 'open') could stand for a different signified (and thus be a different sign) if it were on a push-button inside a lift ('push to open door'). Similarly, many signifiers could stand for the concept 'open' (for instance, on top of a packing carton, a small outline of a box with an open flap for 'open this end') - again, with each unique pairing constituting a different sign.
Nowadays, whilst the basic 'Saussurean' model is commonly adopted, it tends to be a more materialistic model than that of Saussure himself. The signifier is now commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign - it is something which can be seen, heard, touched, smelt or tasted. For Saussure, both the signifier and the signified were purely 'psychologic’ (Saussure). Both were form rather than substance: A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a 'material' element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept. (Saussure)

As for the signified, most commentators who adopt Saussure's model still treat this as a mental construct, although they often note that it may nevertheless refer indirectly to things in the world. Saussure's original model of the sign 'brackets the referent': excluding reference to objects existing in the world. His signified is not to be identified directly with a referent but is a concept in the mind - not a thing but the notion of a thing. Some people may wonder why Saussure's model of the sign refers only to a concept and not to a thing. An observation from the philosopher Susanne Langer (who was not referring to Saussure's theories) may be useful here. Note that like most contemporary commentators, Langer uses the term 'symbol' to refer to the linguistic sign (a term which Saussure himself avoided): 'Symbols are not proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects... In talking about things we have conceptions of them, not the things themselves; and it is the conceptions, not the things, that symbols directly mean. Behaviour towards conceptions is what words normally evoke; this is the typical process of thinking'. Whereas Saussure emphasized the arbitrary nature of the (linguistic) sign, most semioticians stress that signs differ in how arbitrary/conventional (or by contrast 'transparent') they are. Symbolism reflects only one form of relationship between signifiers and their signifieds. Whilst Saussure did not offer a typology of signs, Charles Peirce was a compulsive taxonomist and he offered several logical typologies (Peirce).His divisions and subdivisions of signs are extraordinarily elaborate: indeed, he offered the theoretical projection that there could be 59,049 types of signs!(Sturrock) However, one of Peirce's basic classifications (first outlined in 1867) has been very widely referred to in subsequent semiotic studies (Peirce). He regarded it as 'the most fundamental' division of signs. It is less useful as a classification of distinct 'types of signs' than of differing 'modes of relationship' between sign vehicles and their referents (Hawkes). Note that in the subsequent account, I have continued to employ the Saussurean terms signifier and signified, even though Peirce referred to the relation between the 'sign' (sic) and the object, since the Peircean distinctions are most commonly employed within a broadly Saussurean framework. Such incorporation tends to emphasize (albeit indirectly) the referential potential of the signified within the Saussurean model. Here then are the three modes together with some brief definitions of my own and some illustrative examples:

| |
|[pic] |Symbol/symbolic: a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or |
| |purely conventional - so that the relationship must be learnt: e.g. language in general (plus specific languages, |
| |alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words, phrases and sentences), numbers, morse code, traffic lights, national |
| |flags; |
|[pic] |Icon/iconic: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified (recognizably looking, |
| |sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) - being similar in possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, a |
| |cartoon, a scale-model, onomatopoeia, metaphors, 'realistic' sounds in 'programme music', sound effects in radio drama, a |
| |dubbed film soundtrack, imitative gestures; |
|[pic] |Index/indexical: a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or |
| |causally) to the signified - this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke, thunder, footprints, |
| |echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms (pain, a rash, pulse-rate), measuring instruments |
| |(weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level), 'signals' (a knock on a door, a phone ringing), pointers (a pointing |
| |'index' finger, a directional signpost), recordings (a photograph, a film, video or television shot, an audio-recorded |
| |voice), personal 'trademarks' (handwriting, catchphrase) and indexical words ('that', 'this', 'here', 'there'). |
| | |

The three forms are listed here in decreasing order of conventionality. Symbolic signs such as language are (at least) highly conventional; iconic signs always involve some degree of conventionality; indexical signs 'direct the attention to their objects by blind compulsion' (Peirce). Indexical and iconic signifiers can be seen as more constrained by referential signifieds whereas in the more conventional symbolic signs the signified can be seen as being defined to a greater extent by the signifier. Within each form signs also vary in their degree of conventionality. Other criteria might be applied to rank the three forms differently. For instance, Hodge and Kress suggest that indexicality is based on an act of judgement or inference whereas iconicity is closer to 'direct perception' making the highest 'modality' that of iconic signs. Note that the terms 'motivation' (from Saussure) and 'constraint' are sometimes used to describe the extent to which the signified determines the signifier. The more a signifier is constrained by the signified, the more 'motivated' the sign is: iconic signs are highly motivated; symbolic signs are unmotivated. The less motivated the sign, the more learning of an agreed convention is required. Nevertheless, most semioticians emphasize the role of convention in relation to signs. As we shall see, even photographs and films are built on conventions which we must learn to 'read'. Such conventions are an important social dimension of semiotics.
Peirce and Saussure used the term 'symbol' differently from each other. Whilst nowadays most theorists would refer to language as a symbolic sign system, Saussure avoided referring to linguistic signs as 'symbols', since the ordinary everyday use of this term refers to examples such as a pair of scales (signifying justice), and he insisted that such signs are 'never wholly arbitrary. They are not empty configurations'. They 'show at least a vestige of natural connection' between the signifier and the signified - a link which he later refers to as 'rational’ (Saussure). Whilst Saussure focused on the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign, a more obvious example of arbitrary symbolism is mathematics. Mathematics does not need to refer to an external world at all: its signifieds are indisputably concepts and mathematics is a system of relations.
For Peirce, a symbol is 'a sign which refers to the object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object' (Peirce). We interpret symbols according to 'a rule' or 'a habitual connection'. 'The symbol is connected with its object by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using animal, without which no such connection would exist'. It 'is constituted a sign merely or mainly by the fact that it is used and understood as such'. It 'would lose the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant'. A symbol is 'a conventional sign, or one depending upon habit (acquired or inborn)'. 'All words, sentences, books and other conventional signs are symbols' Peirce thus characterizes linguistic signs in terms of their conventionality in a similar way to Saussure. In a rare direct reference to the arbitrariness of symbols (which he then called 'tokens'), he noted that they 'are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary'. A symbol is a sign 'whose special significance or fitness to represent just what it does represent lies in nothing but the very fact of there being a habit, disposition, or other effective general rule that it will be so interpreted. Take, for example, the word "man". These three letters are not in the least like a man; nor is the sound with which they are associated'. He adds elsewhere that 'a symbol... fulfills its function regardless of any similarity or analogy with its object and equally regardless of any factual connection therewith' but solely because it will be interpreted as a sign.
Turning to icons, Peirce declared that an iconic sign represents its object 'mainly by its similarity' (Peirce). A sign is an icon 'insofar as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it'. Indeed, he originally termed such modes, 'likenesses'. He added that 'every picture (however conventional its method)' is an icon. Icons have qualities which 'resemble' those of the objects they represent, and they 'excite analogous sensations in the mind'. Unlike the index, 'the icon has no dynamical connection with the object it represents'. Just because a signifier resembles that which it depicts does not necessarily make it purely iconic. The philosopher Susanne Langer argues that 'the picture is essentially a symbol, not a duplicate, of what it represents'. Pictures resemble what they represent only in some respects. What we tend to recognize in an image are analogous relations of parts to a whole. For Peirce, icons included 'every diagram, even although there be no sensuous resemblance between it and its object, but only an analogy between the relations of the parts of each' (Peirce). 'Many diagrams resemble their objects not at all in looks; it is only in respect to the relations of their parts that their likeness consists'. Even the most 'realistic' image is not a replica or even a copy of what is depicted. We rarely mistake a representation for what it represents.
Semioticians generally maintain that there are no 'pure' icons - there is always an element of cultural convention involved. Peirce stated that although 'any material image' (such as a painting) may be perceived as looking like what it represents, it is 'largely conventional in its mode of representation' (Peirce). 'We say that the portrait of a person we have not seen is convincing. So far as, on the ground merely of what I see in it, I am led to form an idea of the person it represents, it is an icon. But, in fact, it is not a pure icon, because I am greatly influenced by knowing that it is an effect, through the artist, caused by the original's appearance... Besides, I know that portraits have but the slightest resemblance to their originals, except in certain conventional respects, and after a conventional scale of values, etc.'.
Guy Cook asks whether the iconic sign on the door of a public lavatory for men actually looks more like a man than like a woman. 'For a sign to be truly iconic, it would have to be transparent to someone who had never seen it before - and it seems unlikely that this is as much the case as is sometimes supposed. We see the resemblance when we already know the meaning' (Cook). Thus, even a 'realistic' picture is symbolic as well as iconic.
Iconic and indexical signs are more likely to be read as 'natural' than symbolic signs when making the connection between signifier and signified has become habitual. Iconic signifiers can be highly evocative. Kent Grayson observes: 'Because we can see the object in the sign, we are often left with a sense that the icon has brought us closer to the truth than if we had instead seen an index or a symbol'. He adds that 'instead of drawing our attention to the gaps that always exist in representation, iconic experiences encourage us subconsciously to fill in these gaps and then to believe that there were no gaps in the first place... This is the paradox of representation: it may deceive most when we think it works.
The linguist John Lyons notes that iconicity is 'always dependent upon properties of the medium in which the form is manifest’. He offers the example of the onomatopoeic English word cuckoo, noting that it is only iconic in the phonic medium (speech) and not in the graphic medium (writing). Whilst the phonic medium can represent characteristic sounds (albeit in a relatively conventionalized way), the graphic medium can represent characteristic shapes (as in the case of Egyptian hieroglyphs). We will return shortly to the importance of the materiality of the sign.
Indexicality is perhaps the most unfamiliar concept. Peirce offers various criteria for what constitutes an index. An index 'indicates' something: for example, 'a sundial or clock indicates the time of day' (Peirce). He refers to a 'genuine relation' between the 'sign' and the object which does not depend purely on 'the interpreting mind”. The index is connected to its object 'as a matter of fact'. There is 'a real connection’. There may be a 'direct physical connection'. An indexical sign is like 'a fragment torn away from the object'. Unlike an icon (the object of which may be fictional) an index stands 'unequivocally for this or that existing thing'. Whilst 'it necessarily has some quality in common' with it, the signifier is 'really affected' by the signified; there is an 'actual modification' involved. The relationship is not based on 'mere resemblance': 'indices... have no significant resemblance to their objects'. 'Similarity or analogy' are not what define the index. 'Anything which focusses the attention is an index. Anything which startles us is an index’. Indexical signs 'direct the attention to their objects by blind compulsion'. 'Psychologically, the action of indices depends upon association by contiguity, and not upon association by resemblance or upon intellectual operations.(Peirce)

Conclusion
If we reflect on the nature of the language, its development, the linguistic sign, we come to realize that the fact that the sign is arbitrary holds the key to the understanding of how the language operates. This fact belongs to the fundamental principles of the semiotics of language: “The link between a sign and its meaning is arbitrary”. The notion that the sign is arbitrary doesn’t mean that the individual is free to choose any sign to express the idea. Signs are not arbitrary in the sense that they depend on the free choice of the individual. The whole language community could not change the sign because it is imposed on it by the evolution of language.
There is no necessary connection between a thing and a sign that referes to it, say between the thing ‘table’ and the sound sequence /teibl/ that refers to it. This aspect of the sign is taken care of by the Principle of the Arbitrariness of the Sign. With respect to the linguistic community, however, which chooses signs, they are not chosen freely – signs are imposed as the necessary means of communication. The link between the sign and meaning is imposed by the tradition: in every period of its existence, a language is always inherited from the previous period. Hence, immediate consequence of the Principle of the Arbitrariness of the Sign is the Principle of Conventionality: “ The link between the sign and meaning is conventional: the existence of language signs is possible solely due to social contract of the members of a linguistic community to establish and maintain the links between signs and meanings”. A convention establishing links between signs and meanings is necessary because they are arbitrary. Conventionalized relations are a habit of a society.

List of References 1. D.Chandler. Semiotics: the basics//. Routledge, 2007 2. G.Cook. Applied Linguistics//. Oxford University Press, 2003 3. T.Hawkes. Structuralism and Semiotics//. University of California Press, 1977 4. C.S.Piers. Collected Papers//. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1933 5. S. Shaumyan. Signs, mind and reality: the theory of language as the folk model of the world//. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006 6. F.Saussure. Writings in general Linguistics//. Oxford University Press, 2006 7. J. Sturrocks. Structuralism//. John Wiley and Sons 2008 8. T.Hawkes. Structuralism and Semiotics//. University of California Press, 1977