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--- 2700:2021:2 [2021/02/27 21:39] – Ryan Schram (admin)
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 **Other reading:** Hanks (1996)
+===== The split subject =====
+Durkheim’s split subject:
+  * One part of each person is individual. One is consciously aware of this mind
+  * Another part thinks the thoughts of the collective mind and is inaccesible to the individual mind
+Social facts are just ideas, but to an individual they appear to be things.
+Society constructs (thinks) reality for people.
+===== The linguistic analogy =====
+Language gives us a way to understand the split subject.
+  * Everyone speaks a language, and they speak their first language automatically.
+  * Language is not just sound. What makes linguistic sound meaningful is what people **perceive** when they hear it.
+  * Two speakers of the same language have identical copies of the same rules for processing the speech they hear.
+**Language is a system of social facts** in the minds of the people who speak it.
+This has lead anthropologists to apply a linguistic analogy to culture: Possessing a cultural worldview is like being fluent in one’s first language.
+===== Languages are systems =====
+Much like Durkheim redefined society, Ferdinand de Saussure redefined language:
+  * There is **no good or correct** way to speak a language. Someone’s utterances either make sense or they don’t; **everything else is an opinion.**
+  * The history of a language **does not** tell you anything about why people understand each other at one moment in time.
+  * Individual variations in speaking **don’t change** the language, and don’t need to be explained.
+===== Language is a collective fact =====
+In French one can talk about “language” with several different words, so Saussure defines his words precisely:
+  * **parole**, speech, or the ways people speak, or the particular examples of people’s use of their language to communicate
+  * **langue**, language, in the sens of a system of rules that everyone shares when they speak a language.
+  * **langage**, language, encompassing both langue and parole.
+//Parole// is an individual fact, and is not interesting to Saussure.
+//Langue// is a collective fact, and we should look to the collective to understand why people have a language that works for them.
+===== Individuals cannot see langue because they exist in time =====
+To understand why people can use language to communicate, we must freeze time and look at all of the ideas and their relationships. We need a **synchronic** analysis of the linguistic //system//.
+Language //use// is **diachronic**; it unfolds in time. Speakers speak as time passes. (And, over time, variations in //parole// lead to changes in a language as a whole, but at anyone moment these changes do not explain //why communication works//.)
+===== The basic element of langue is the sign =====
+//Langue// is a system of signs.
+A sign is:
+  * a signifier, or “sound-image”
+  * a signified, an idea.
+( “horse” | 🐎 )
+( “cat” | 😹 )
+( Sr | Sd )
+===== Ceci n’est pas une pipe =====
+When we see “horse” we think 🐎. If your first language is English, you cannot //not// think about 🐎.
+And yet signs deceive us.
+There is nothing in //h//, //o//, //r//, or //s// that has anything to do with 🐎. **The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.**
+Why does “horse” mean 🐎?
+===== There is an economy of signs =====
+Sr–Sd relationships are determined by Sr–Sr’ relationships.
+c-a-t: 😹
+b-a-t: 🦇
+The only difference between these signs is the difference between the sounds //c// and //b//.
+Signs are also distinguished from each other based on where they occur in a linear chain.
+===== The system of oppositions among signifiers construct (think) the world for us =====
+In English there are two signs:
+( “sheep” | 🐑 )
+( “mutton” | 🍖 )
+but in French there’s one:
+( “mouton” | 🐑 🍖)
+English and French speakers live in the same material world, but they see different things because they each have different systems of signs.
+===== Cultures are like languages because language is a medium for culture =====
+A sign is a sound-pattern that stands for an idea.
+Signs can also stand for other signs.
+An example courtesy of Roland Barthes (1972), based on Claude Levi-Strauss (1963).
+( “rose” | 🌹 )
+===== Signs can be signifiers, a diagram =====
+Here’s a diagram of a sign that is a signifier:
+( **( “rose” | 🌹 )** | %%__%%%%__%%%%__%%%%__%%%%__%%_ )
+===== A closed economy of signs means each culture is ethnocentric =====
+( “ejeba” | 🎈 )
+( “boka” | 🧱 )
+( ( “ejeba” | 🎈 ) | 🙎🏻‍♂️ 🚀 💵 )
+( ( “boka” | 🧱 ) | 😀 )
+===== The limits of a synchronic perspective =====
+  * A synchronic perspective lets us see the collective mind of society, which is easy to ignore or deny.
+  * But a synchronic perspective is like looking at a society from 10,000 feet in the air. You only see what people have in common and what is constant.
+  * The structural perspective on signs or on cultural categories seems to imply that a culture’s conceptual structure exists in isolation from everything else in the world, but it isn’t.
+  * How do we retain the value of this perspective yet avoid the pitfalls of its limits?
 ===== References and further reading =====
+Barthes, Roland. 1972. //Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation//. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
 Bashkow, Ira. 2006. //The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World//. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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 Hanks, William F. 1996. “The Language of Saussure.” In //Language and Communicative Practices//, 21–38. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cdocument%7C1677290?account_id=14757&usage_group_id=95408.
+Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. //Totemism//. Translated by Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press.