Today I was reading a bit of Saussure, the father of modern linguistics, and saw an interesting alignment with Hegel, especially his criticism of sense-certainty. I am referring to Hegel's statement that if we are unable to express a concept in determinate language, it is untrue.
The parallel with Saussure is in his ideas about how we perceive language. Essentially, he claims that when we think about something like a tree, we have two components of our object. First we have the signifier that is the sound-image, the sensory aspect of an object. This could be anything from a picture of a tree to the literal word "tree" or arbor or what have you. The second component of tree, the signified, is our concept of it. This one is more difficult to articulate, because this part is usually what happens in our head. The evidence that concepts exist is that we can think them without using our lips or tongues to make any sounds. (the sound of thinking?) So, the sound-image and the concept, signified and signifier respectively, are united to become what we consider a sign. Languages are made up of signs, forming the structure for any kind of communication.
It seems like Saussure is in agreement with Hegel because the inherent bondage of language and concepts is apparent in both works. Objects without concepts cannot be true just as sound-images without concepts cannot exist. When you think about it, language can be broken down to the simplest of symbols representing concepts or sounds of their own. Of course, our mind is the machine that creates the shortcuts so that we never really have to sound out each individual letter when reading a word (aloud or to ourselves) and our mind is also the mediator of our sound-image and our concept. We have to view language as an interdependent system continuously changing, growing, being controlled by those who use it. Just like the mind, our languages must remain flexible because our language can never really be tamed. In my days of learning Chinese, I realized that I could never truly be fluent simply because it isn’t my first language (or the easiest to learn, by any means.) So many things like humor, idioms and syntax are largely culturally perpetuated in our language acquisition, but I digress…
One thing that Saussure and Hegel both surprise me with is their perpetual optimism about the capacities of the human mind. I guess they were both tackling such incredibly intellectual fields, so they had to have faith in their own capacity to reflect on the complex ideas that inevitably pop up. An issue that arose in Saussure’s work was his claim that sign systems (languages) are based on binary oppositions. This is the Achilles heel that the proceeding literary movement post-structuralism chose to strike. Should have seen that one coming.
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The ideas of sound-image and concept in language you bring up are very interesting, Allie. Recently I had been thinking about how language is essentially signals to our brain to think of a certain concept, and that seems to be right in line with what you are talking about. It's amazing how language can be thought of as simple shortcuts for our brain.
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