Ferdinand Saussure - Narrative Theory

Ferdinand Saussure was a structuralist work of Swiss linguist(1857- 1913) who promoted the idea of semiology. Cultural Creation and innate how things are represented. 

• He was born 26 November 1857 in Geneva.
• He died 22 February 1913.
• He was a Swiss linguist.
• He is one of the founding fathers of semiotics.
• His most influential work was Course in General Linguistic Published in 1916.
• He studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and variety of courses at the university of Geneva.
• He published a book entitled ( Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages).
• He lectured on Sanskrit and indo-European at the university of Geneva for the remainder of his life.
• He said " language is no longer regarded as peripherals to our grasp of the world we live in, buy as central to it; words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things.
• They are collective products of social interaction ,essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world.
• This typical twentieth century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human science.
• It is particularly marked in linguistics ,philosophy , psychology, sociology and anthropology ".

An example of Saussure's theory of semiotics:

 

This example is showing how signifier and signified are used in saussure's theory.

 This diagram shows the language and myth being positoned in to the two catergories.

Semiotics, which is also called semitiotic studies or semiology. this is the study of signs an sign processes. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics which for its part the studeis structure and the meaning of language more specifically. Since Saussure is on of the founding fathers of linguistics which is also referred to as semitoics. 

He has the concept of the sign/ signifier/signified/referent forms which are the core of the field. equally crucial as this is oftern overlooked or misapplied. this is the dmiension of the syntagmatic and paradigimatic axis of linguistic description.

So basically i think that Saussure it trying to say that signifier is the denotation of something and the signified is the connotations it gives out.

Saussure begins his theory by proposing that language is composed of “signs”; he says the linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.

Science which studies the roles of signs as part of social life.

He defined a sign as being composed of:

a 'signifier’ - the form which the sign takes; and

the 'signified'  - the concept it represents.