The Meaning of Signal and Signification in Saussure's Theory

Exploring the Significance of Arbitrary Signs in Communication

Please choose one of the two  topics below.  Each topic takes a passage from one of the readings in the course as a starting point for your essay.  We have provided some suggestions, but you are NOT required to follow them all.  You are invited to approach your chosen topic in whatever way is most useful to you, as long as you engage with the issues raised both by the particular materials cited in each topic and also by the course and course materials more generally. Put differently, any and all thoughtful connections you can make between the different course materials (including lectures, seminar discussions, readings, and visual or auditory examples) will be welcome.  Bear in mind that writing a short paper like this is in some respects harder than writing a long one, so think through your approach, argument, and strategy carefully beforehand. “The link between signal and signification is arbitrary. Since we are treating a sign as the combination in which a signal is associated with a signification, we can express this more simply as: the linguistic sign is arbitrary.” (Saussure) Explain what Saussure means by the terms signal (or signifier), signification (or signified), and sign, and discuss why it matters to Saussure, and to us, whether or not the sign is arbitrary.  Please provide examples from the readings and/or the film we have been discussing.  [Helpful hints: the case of Victor in The Wild Child is obviously helpful to you here, but you are also encouraged to think about Berger’s arguments about “ways of seeing” the history of art or the nature of art in the age of reproducibility. You may also want to link this to our section on “Sight and Sound.” Does Saussure help you to understand what Sacks means by stressing the idea of “incessant experience” as the basis for “normal” sight. Does the idea of semiotics (the study of signs) shed light on the stories Padden and Humphries tell about early childhood comprehension of the words “deaf’ and “hearing” as these relate to their experiences of spoken and sign language?] OR “Now, at last, Virgil is allowed to not see, allowed to escape from the glaring, confusing world of sight and space, and to return to his own true being, the touch world that has been his home for almost fifty years.” (Sacks, “To See and Not See” (41). Oliver Sacks apparently considers Virgil fortunate, in the end, to “escape” from the visual world, but he calls the situation of Dr. P. (in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”) “tragic” (13). Discuss the possible reasons for these different conclusions, bearing in mind the discussions we have been having about sight, the senses, nature, and culture.