Glenda B. Claborne
Soc 500b
March 22, 1999
Saussure, de F. (1959 ). Course in General Linguistics. New York, NY:McGraw-Hill

If social identities were Saussurean signs, what conclusions can we draw from them?

If social identities were Saussurean signs, their fundamental characteristic would be arbitrariness. Arbitrariness implies the following:

  1. fixed by rule, conventions and norms of a collectivity, not by any intrinsic value of the elements making up the unit of a system; as such,
  2. an arbitrary system has a life of its own, apart from any individual or the collectivity that uses it: it follows the laws of tradition; therefore,
  3. neither the individual nor the collectivity has the power to create nor change any of the elements of the unit within an arbitrary system (immutability/synchrony); but,
  4. because an arbitrary system perpetuates itself not on the basis of any natural relation between the elements of its units and hence limited by nothing in the choice of means, it is open to alteration from a shift, through time, in the relationships between the elements of its units (mutability/diachrony); furthermore,
  5. because the elements making up a unit in an arbitrary system do not have intrinsic positive value and are therefore negative, the units that these elements make up exist only in opposition to each other and to the whole of which they are a part; therefore,
  6. the value or strength of the relationships between units in an arbitrary system derives out of the oppositions or distinctions between units; moreover,
  7. the unity or integrity of the whole arbitrary system is held by these oppositional or differential values.

What we cannot conclude from Saussure's ideas

To generalize the above implications of arbitrariness from the system of language to the system of social identities, we must deal with the problem of specifying the unit of the system, the concrete elements or reality of these units and the value of these units and elements. Saussure has emphasized both the necessity and the problem of delimiting the concrete units of language as a system. Any elaboration of the system must start and go back to the unit and yet the unit is hard to grasp because it blends with the whole system. Likewise in an analysis of any social structure, one must specify the unit and yet one is faced with the problem of just where the individual ends and society begins and vice versa.

Saussure argued for making the distinction between the practical difficulties of delineating units with regard to the speakers and the necessity of delimitation with regards to methodical and theoretical analysis. Saussure was able to do this because he made a clear delineation of his area of study from all the other interrelated areas that constitute or affect language. In contrast, the appropriation of Saussure's ideas into semiotic Marxism (Bergesen, 1993) started not from a clear delineation of spheres within the social system but from an absorption of these spheres into each other. Lack of clear delineation of the area of study in theoretical analysis leads to a very poor specification of either the unit or of the whole from which to start a systemic analysis. Thus, Althusser failed to specify the appropriate unit that truly corresponds to Saussure's "sign" and those who extended Althusser's theory increasingly lost sight of both the unit and the interdependent whole. To make this point clearer, I will illustrate the anomalous analogy between "sign" and "subject."

Saussure repeatedly emphasized that the elements (concept and sound image) that make up a "sign" do not have any intrinsic value in and of themselves. That is, signifier and signified, taken separately, have negative values. Their combination, however, results in a sign that is positive in its own class. We can illustrate the relationship of Saussure's signifier, signified and sign compared to Althusser's social position, individual and subject in terms of their values with the following illustrations:

[not to be thought of algebraically]

Saussure:   Sign = signified (concept) + signifier (sound-image)

Althusser:   Subject = concrete individual + social position

Althusser's analogy of the "subject" with its elements of "individual" and "social position" can never be illustrated as two negative elements combining to form a positive unit without totally destroying the social system that one is trying to explain, even in purely theoretical terms. A "social position" can be totally negative and differential in value but a living human individual always brings in a positive value and therefore a value external to the social system. One does not have to consider a "language instinct" or the subjective self (although these are significant considerations) of the individual to explain its a priori positive value. One only has to consider the corporeality of the living individual to conclude that no matter how abstract we may think of the individual, it has a body that either lives or dies independent of any social position it occupies. Moreover, the corporeality (if nothing else) of living individuals denotes commonalities more than differences, a fact which departs from the purely differential existence of either signifier or signified. All human individuals are made of the same basic constitution and organization of genes, cells, tissues, and organs, all subject to aging and mortality, a fact which limits the analogy of social institutions with the individual as one of its elements with a game of chess. (Unless, of course, science succeeds in rewiring people into robots.)

What we can conclude from Saussure's ideas

To the extent that most people are not conscious of the workings of their mind and of the dynamics of their relationships, the assumption that people are tabula rasa, hollow subjects for manipulation and domination of a hegemonic class or ideology, may hold true. But one must clearly specify the extent to which that may hold true and proceed from there. If we are to make conclusions about social identities from Saussure's ideas, we must recognize that the individual is not one indivisible identity but one of multiple identities in the same way that we must recognize that the social structure is not one hegemonic, monstrous entity but one of diverse entities. Most importantly, we must recognize that the multiplicity of identities is wedded to the concrete body (again, if nothing else) of the individual just as larger social entities are "sutured" or wedded to the concrete reality of the natural environment (people including).

It may be helpful to take "social identity" as a unit instead of "subject" and break down social identity (sign) into the elements of role (signifier) and task (signified). To make the illustration:

Within a social system, roles and tasks do not have intrinsic value in and of themselves. It is when these two elements are associated together to make up a social identity that they gain positive value. That social identity exists only in opposition to other social identities along a scale or hierarchy of values recognized by the collectivity. Contrary to the denial of class struggles in modern societies, people continue to assiduously distinguish themselves from other people. The often cited example is the "cultured" class whose members quickly dissociate themselves from objects of status that the "lumpen mass" can quickly and easily possess to heighten their status. Here, we might make a more up-to-date representation of social identity by taking as its elements objects (signifier) and status (signified) thus: