Daily Archives: August 31, 2017

Structuralism: Saussure’s “arbitrary” nature of the sign

de Saussure, Ferdinand, Gloss, Saussure's "arbitrary” nature of the sign

Saussure says that the nature of the relationship between the constituents of the sign, the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.  Consider what Saussure means by this “arbitrary” nature of the sign.

 

What Saussure is getting at when he uses the term “arbitrary” is that the word we use to signify, say “car” is, is just the sound wave we use to represent that personal vehicle in my driveway. The word “car” isn’t actually The Car Itself, it’s just an agreed upon soundwave we use to signify The Car Itself.

Of course we have to keep in mind that this word, “car”, is something we are all agreeing to use so in that sense it is not completely arbitrary since both you and I have been taught this word and agree to continue to use it. Saussure says the words we are using are not “left entirely to the speaker,” but rather the word “has no natural connection with the signified,” (79).

However, there is nothing to stop us from agreeing to use a different word, such as in the 1985 episode of The Twilight Zone, “Wordplay” where society decides to change what every word means, much to the frustration of the main character who never got the memo and winds up having no idea how to speak the new language.

Also when confronted with something that as yet does not have a name, while a new word to signify this new object can be picked quite arbitrarily (such as the infamous “Boaty McBoatface”), the person or people giving the name often draw upon established language as guidance, such as using Latin to name a new biological species. In such a case there is a naming convention agreed upon to deal with new discoveries in order to maintain consistency rather than being completely arbitrary.

Saussure goes on to explore onomatopoeia and interjections as being possible exceptions to the rule, but even in these cases we see in comparing languages there is a large degree of variance: in English, when we hurt ourselves we say “ouch”, in French it’s “aie”, and when a dog barks we mimic it in English by saying “bow-wow”, whereas in French “oua-oua” is used. These examples sound quite different, even though they are supposedly mimicking the typical sound of a dog’s bark.

page 39 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

Aditi and the Birth of the Gods

7- “you drew forth the sun that was hidden in the ocean.” I love this image of the sun being born out of the sea. It makes sense, too since you’d see a sunrise come up out of the water. This is coupled with the image of a milk swollen breast and so the aspect of life giving is ripe here.

page 39 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

Aditi and the Birth of the Gods

6- The footnotes try to explain the importance of mist as being both water and air, matter and spirit – all things connected. Creation is in this imagery, like a stellar nursery of atoms that create solar systems. The image mist rising like dust from dancers is beautiful, feminine, too.

page 37 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

Aditi and the Birth of the Gods

3- The first line repeats the final line of (2). This repetition is repeated again at the end of (3) and beginning of (4). Musical effect?

This is a very female image of a woman giving birth to the quarters of the sky. I always had the impression that sexuality has been far less taboo as imagary in this part of the world as opposed to others. I wonder why that is?

page 37 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

Aditi and the Birth of the Gods

2- The lord of sacred speech is like a manual laborer, a smith, working the bellows to create the universe. It’s magical but also workmanlike, too – effort went into this creation.

There is the paradox of “existance was born from non-existance”. The early Greek philosophers would not have liked this idea.

page 33 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The Creation of the Sacrifice

7- Harmony, wisdom are apparant in the final stanza. Tradition is established with the wise men looking to those who came before and taking up the tradition as if like a charioteer taking up the reins. Order is good, rituals are passed down generation to generation, thus is wisdom.

page 33 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The Creation of the Sacrifice

3- Questions again asking what was the butter (the fat drained from the acrifical victim), what is the enclosing wood (the green tigs) – is this reptition analogous to chanting itself where everything is repeated? Or are the question real and there are no solid answers?

page 31 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The hymn of man

15- Order has been established which is represented by the green twigs that keep the fire from spreading, but there is also plenty of fuel, too. The Man is now a sacrifical beast. Is this becuase the Man is everything and so anything we sacrifice to the Man is, in effect, the Man being sacrifices to the Man? Order is maintained through this system?

page 31 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The hymn of man

12- His arms were made into the Warior – seems straightforward, arms=armed=war. His thighs were the People, which again seems sensible sinec that is the largest muscle in the body and it must labor. His feet the Servants were born = servants are trodden on but support the whole structure = necessary, but not glamorious work.

page 30 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The hymn of man

6- So the gods are now born and they spread the sacrifice with the Man. Were they making the sacrifices and now it’s being distribuited? There is hint of seasons being created (spring butter, summer fuel, oblation in fall). Harvest, perhaps? Does feel like distribuition and order being imposed on the world.

page 30 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The hymn of man

5- This part is confusing: From the Man, Viraj (female) is born and from Viraj the Man is born. Is this a transference rom a purly spirtual being into something physical through the use of Viraj? Incorporal to corporal? Reminds me of God creating Mary and then being born (as Jesus) through Mary.

page 30 of 352 of The Rig Veda

Anonymous, Rig Veda, The

The hymn of man

2- He is the ruler of immortality. Would that make him immortality, or just its ruler?

He grows beyond eveything through food. The footnotes say this could mean through sacrifice, but he transcends all food and sacrifice. So he doesnt need it, or we need the sacrifices to keep him going?

page 39 of 443 of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

This all realates to myth in that we are seeing the importance of fictions as a social necessity to maintain order and allow humans to work as a team consisiting of far more people than we could ever hope to be socialy active with. Our imagination allows our tribe to be of indefinte size because we’ve reduced the risk that goes along with trusting strangers.

page 34 of 443 of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

As the author demonstratd earlier, we humans can only deal socially in groups no more than 100-150 people. After that it’s too many and problems arrise. However, because we can create these fictions, we can trust that people we’ve never met, whom otherwise we would be at war with, we enter into agreements of commerce and for other services, even though they are not part of our “tribe” of 150.

page 30 of 443 of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Interesting juxtaposition between conjuring up a LLC and a priest turning water and wine into Christ’s blood and body. There is a lot of convincing going on in both cases and the stronger the argument the more likely we’ll buy into the idea. “Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulity lies not in telling the story, but convincing everyone else to believe it.”