Ferdinand de Saussure

Swiss linguist (1857–1913), founder of structural linguistics, author of the Course in General Linguistics (posthumously compiled from lectures, 1916). In *Signs*, especially "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" and "On the Phenomenology of Language," Saussure is the source of Merleau-Ponty's theory of language as a system of diacritical differences without positive terms.

Key Points

  • Diacritical signs: Saussure's fundamental thesis, as MP states it: "Language is made of differences without terms; or more exactly... the terms of language are engendered only by the differences which appear among them" (Signs, p. 39). Each sign has its meaning only by differing from other signs, not by corresponding to a positive signified.
  • The "langue"/"parole" distinction: Saussure's distinction between language as system (langue) and language as living act (parole), which MP takes up but reworks: the "speaking language" envelops the "spoken language," and vice versa (see indirect-language).
  • Synchrony and diachrony: Saussure's distinction between the synchronic study of a language as a present system and the diachronic study of its historical development. MP argues (Signs, pp. 87–88) that Saussure's strict separation of the two is incorrect: synchrony envelops diachrony, because the past was once a present system; diachrony envelops synchrony, because the synchronic system always contains fissures where brute events can insert themselves.
  • Absence as sign: MP's example, built on Saussure's diacritical principle: the relative pronoun "que" in "l'homme que j'aime" is expressed in English by the absence between "man" and "I love" ("the man I love"). "The absence of a sign can be a sign" (Signs, p. 43). This is one of MP's most cited illustrations of Saussure's thesis.
  • Structural anthropology: Through Lévi-Strauss, Saussure's diacritical principle becomes the model for structural analysis in anthropology generally. MP endorses this extension (Signs, "From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss," pp. 117–118): "When Saussure used to say that linguistic signs are diacritical... he was making us see the unity which lies beneath a language's explicit signification."

Details

The Diacritical Principle in MP's Hands

MP takes Saussure's diacritical principle as the ontological key to expression. Because signs signify only differentially, no sign has a positive content; because no sign has a positive content, expression cannot be correspondence; because expression is not correspondence, meaning is produced only by the whole system of differences acting on itself — "an operation of language upon language" (Signs, p. 44).

This is why Saussure is foundational for MP's late theory of expression, not merely illustrative. Without the diacritical principle, MP's whole argument for indirect-language and coherent-deformation would lack its linguistic warrant.

The Most Extended Engagement: The Prose of the World (1950–52)

The Prose of the World ch.2 is MP's most extended engagement with Saussure — more detailed than Signs. PW develops the diacritical principle through an accumulation of concrete linguistic examples not found elsewhere in MP's work: French/Latin phonetic shifts, Peul negation, Hebrew tenses, and other cases that demonstrate the differential structure of language empirically. Most strikingly, PW draws the parallel between "I speak" and "I think" — the Saussurean speaker inhabits language the way the Cartesian thinker inhabits thought, never grasping the whole system but operating within it through a pre-reflective competence. PW also develops the synchrony-as-existential argument more fully: synchrony is not the instantaneous cross-section the linguist constructs but the speaker's lived coexistence with the language as a whole — synchrony as existential, not instantaneous (ch.2, pp.22-40).

The Correction of Saussure

But MP does not accept Saussure uncritically. Two corrections:

  • Against strict synchrony/diachrony separation: Saussure's linguistic method rigidly separates the study of a language as a present system from the study of its historical development. MP argues this is a methodological convenience that distorts language's actual mode of being: "the present diffuses into the past to the extent that the past has been present" (Signs, p. 88). Language is "incarnate logic" — a system in which past contingencies continue to operate and present stability is always provisional.
  • Against the passivity of the speaker: Saussure's model tends to treat the speaker as a user of an already-constituted system. MP argues that every act of speech is a coherent deformation of the system — that the speaker does not merely use the language but reshapes it with each utterance (Signs, pp. 90–92). This is MP's own contribution, drawing on Husserl's notion of the significative intention.

Connections

  • foundational for indirect-language — the diacritical principle
  • provides the linguistic model for coherent-deformation — every speech act is a lateral shift in the diacritical system
  • influences Lévi-Strauss and structural anthropology (see lateral-universal)
  • corrected by MP on synchrony/diachrony — see indirect-language for the "mutual enveloping" thesis
  • cited by Husserl not at all, though his late theory of language moves in a parallel direction (see "The Philosopher and Sociology")

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1973-prose-of-the-world — the most extended Saussure engagement in MP's oeuvre; "I speak" as parallel to "I think"; detailed linguistic examples; synchrony as existential, not instantaneous; ch.2 pp.22-40
  • merleau-ponty-1964-signs — "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" (pp. 39–45): diacritical principle, "the man I love" example; "On the Phenomenology of Language" (pp. 84–97): the mutual enveloping of synchrony and diachrony; "From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss" (pp. 117–118): Saussure as the model for structural anthropology.