Questions: Saussure's Sign System: Signifier and Signified

Question 1

A linguist argues that the word 'crash' is a natural sign because its sound mimics the thing it describes. How would Saussure respond?

• A. Saussure would agree — onomatopoeic words demonstrate that some signifier-signified relationships are grounded in nature
• B. Saussure would point out that even sound-mimicking words are conventionalized — different languages render the same sounds differently, showing the relationship remains arbitrary
• C. Saussure would say 'crash' is a symbol rather than a sign, and symbols operate differently from signs in his system
• D. Saussure would concede that onomatopoeia is a genuine exception to the arbitrariness principle

Answer: (B)

Onomatopoeia is the most tempting challenge to Saussure's arbitrariness principle, but Saussure addresses it directly: even sound-mimicking words vary across languages (e.g., a dog's bark is 'woof' in English, 'ouaf' in French, 'wan wan' in Japanese). The specific phoneme sequence that 'represents' a sound is still a convention, not a necessary connection. Arbitrariness does not mean random — it means there is no natural bond, no intrinsic reason why those sounds must correspond to that concept.

Question 2

In Saussure's framework, what is the 'signified' component of the linguistic sign?

• A. The actual physical object in the world to which the word refers (e.g., a real cat)
• B. A mental concept or idea — the psychological impression evoked by the sound-image
• C. The written letters that spell the word on the page
• D. The acoustic sound waves produced when the word is spoken aloud

Answer: (B)

Saussure insists on keeping three things distinct: the sign (signifier + signified), the referent (actual thing in the world), and meaning. The signified is a mental concept, not a real-world object. The actual cat is the referent and lies outside the linguistic system entirely. This is Saussure's decisive break from the 'naming' theory of language: language does not attach labels to pre-existing things; it constructs conceptual categories through a system of differences.

Question 3

According to Saussure, 'cat' refers to a feline because the sounds c-a-t have acoustic properties that naturally and universally evoke images of cats.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is precisely what Saussure's arbitrariness principle denies. There is no inherent connection between the sound-image 'cat' and the concept of a feline — the connection is an established convention of the English language. The same concept is expressed as 'chat' in French, 'Katze' in German, 'gato' in Spanish. If the relationship were natural, all languages would converge on the same signifier for the same signified. The diversity of languages is itself the evidence for arbitrariness.

Question 4

For Saussure, meaning is relational and differential — 'cat' means what it does partly in virtue of how it differs from 'bat,' 'mat,' and 'rat' within the same sign system.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Saussure's claim that there are 'no positive terms in language, only differences' means that signs do not carry meaning intrinsically but acquire it through contrast with other signs. 'Day' is meaningful partly because it is not 'night,' 'dusk,' or 'dawn.' This differential structure is the foundation of structuralism: the unit of analysis is not the individual sign in isolation but its position within the relational system. Without the contrasts, the individual sign has no determinate meaning.

Question 5

Saussure claims there are 'no positive terms in language, only differences.' What does this mean, and why does it follow from the arbitrariness of the sign?

Model answer: Because the signifier-signified relationship is arbitrary — not grounded in any natural property of the sound or the concept — a sign cannot carry meaning by itself. 'Cat' does not mean anything through its own inherent content; it means what it does because it differs from 'bat,' 'mat,' 'rat,' and every other sign in English. The same logic applies to the signified: the concept 'tree' is not a natural carving of reality but is defined by what it excludes (it is not 'shrub,' 'bush,' or 'plant'). Meaning arises entirely from differences between signs within a system — there is no positive, self-sufficient meaning anywhere in the chain.

This is the most radical and generative of Saussure's claims, and it directly leads to structuralism: if meaning is differential, then to understand any sign you must map the whole system of contrasts, not study individual signs in isolation. It also destabilizes the idea that concepts carve nature at its joints — different languages carve the same reality differently (e.g., color terms, kinship terms), showing that conceptual categories are constructed by the linguistic system, not discovered in the world.