Saussure's 'theory of the sign' defined a sign as being made up of the matched pair of signifier and signified.
Signifier
The signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image.
A word is simply a jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star. It is in the interpretation of the signifier that meaning is created.
Signified
The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers.
The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them. Whilst we share concepts, we do so via signifiers.
Whilst the signifier is more stable, the signified varies between people and contexts.
The signified does stabilize with habit, as the signifier cues thoughts and images.
A signifier, an element of language, is a material representation of a linguistic sign. In psychoanalysis, it is a phonemic sequence of the discourse that intervenes in conscious and unconscious processes to determine the subject engaged in the discourse. A signified is the idea or concept associated with a signifier, which together constitute the linguistic sign.
These elements, which come from Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic theory, were introduced and problematized in the field of psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan during his "return to Freud" phase in early 1950s. Lacan relied on the following main points of Saussure's structural model. The linguistic sign, which belongs to language, establishes a relationship between an acoustic wave form, or signifier, and a concept, or signified (Figure 1).
4.2 the Structural approach
The STRUCTURAL approach to the analysis of language was started by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the beginning of the twentieth century. In a sense, all the Linguistic theories after him are structural in that they all regard linguistic units as interrelated with each other in a structure (or system), not as isolated bits. Un this section, however, we shall only discuss one of Saussure's main ideas and the American structuralist model of sentence analysis. Two of the other important theories will be presented in the later sections.
4.2.1 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations
In saussure's view , the language is a system of signs , each of which consists of two parts: SIGNIFIED ( concept ) and SIGNIFIER (sound image). And the relationship between these two parts is arbitrary. Therefore the linguistic cannot attempt to explain individual signs in a piecemeal fashion. Instead he must try to find the value of a sign from its relations to others its position in the system.
The two principal types of relations which Sauusure identified are SYNTAGMATIC and P
ARADIGMATIC relations. The former is a relation between one item and others in a sequence, or between elements which are all present , such as the relation between weather and the others in the following sentences.
e.x. 4-1
If the weather is nice, we will go out.
There are syntactic and semantic conditions the words in a syntagmatic relation must meet . For example, e.x. 4-2a below is an acceptable sentence, but B) and C) are not.
e.x. 4-2
a. The boy kicked the ball.
b. *Boy the ball kicked the.
replaceablec. *The ball kicked the boy.
The words in (b) are arranged in a way which violates syntactic rules. First, the countable noun boy cannot occur without a determiner before it. Second, the words in boy the or boy the ball are not in any grammatical relations with each other. They are neither in subordination like boys there or in coordination like boys and girls. Lastly, the is an article and cannot function as the object of kicked. And in (c), the ball is inanimate while the verb kick requires an animate subject.
The order of words is also influenced by semantic considerations. Whether (a) or (b) in ex. 4 -3 will be used depends on the meaning.
Ex.4-3
(a) The boy chased the dog.
(b) The dog chased the boy.
The PARADIGMATIC relation , Saussure originally called ASSOCIATIVE, is a relation holding between elements replaceable with each other at a particular place in a str
ucture, or between one element present and the others absent. For example, in the context The _______ is smiling, there are constrains on the possible elements occurring here. As is obvious, verbs definitely cannot be used in this place. The most likely candidate is a noun. But there are also strict constrains on the possible type of nun occurring here. First, it must be an animate noun, nouns like book, desk are not possible choices. Second, even within the type of animate nouns, only those which have a semantic component of human are most naturally used with the verb smile. Trees, cats only smile in children's stories. Thirdly, the noun must be in the singular to occur with is smiling, so nouns like boys, men are excluded. In other words, only singular human nouns like boy, girl, man, woman, student are capable of occurring in this con text. And these words are said to be in a paradigmatic relation here. They can substitute for each other without violating syntactic rules.

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