Saussure and sound

Tallis is Not Saussure about post-structuralism, but that’s partly because he things posts distort the original structuralism of Saussure. Even if Saussure is correct that there no ideas before language links a sound with a concept, that doesn’t mean that there is no differentiation in the world that wasn’t put there by language. He challenges post-structuralism at a couple of points:

First, sound is differentiated in language differently than it is differentiated elsewhere. That is, even if I speak with my mouth full, and the sounds are not intelligible, they are recognizable as language. But the sounds that we hear when we open our windows on a sunny morning are not recognizable as language. Understanding language depends a great deal on expectations that are related to semantics and syntax and grammar.

And the idea that sounds function differently in language shows that language and extra-linguistic reality are distinguishable: “The fact that we cannot map the manner in which sounds are naturally differentiated on to the manner in which they are correlated with meaning and in which they operate within the system of language is itself an indirect reminder that there is an extra-linguistic reality and that it is independent of language – so much so that it can be compared with language.” Thus “there is nothing . . . in Saussure’s theories to oblige us to subscribe to the idea that reality is differentiated only through the medium of language”

Second, he argues that were post-structuralism true, it could say nothing. If language makes reality, where does the meta-language come from that allows us to describe the relationship of language and reality. This is an example of post-structuralism’s “pragmatic self-refutation.”