Becoming a dominant misinterpreted source: The case of Ferdinand de Saussure in cultural sociology

Abstract

Cultural analysts in sociology typically cite the work of Ferdinand de Saussure to motivate a narrow theory of meaning. In so doing, sociologists incorrectly attribute to Saussure (1) the postulate that meaning is arbitrary; (2) the idea that signs gain meaning only through relations of opposition to other signs; (3) the view that there is an isomorphic correspondence between linguistic signs and all cultural units of analysis, ergo culture is fundamentally arbitrary; and finally (4) the idea that he offers a Durkheimian theory of culture (i.e. Saussure was a follower of Durkheim). Saussure’s project, rather, was specific to linguistics, and mainly one of theoretical and methodological clarification regarding phonology. Saussure never intended his analytical model of phonology to apply to the real operation of meaning in general, as done by contemporary interpreters and, furthermore, never argued that meaning is arbitrary.