ABSTRACT
The subtitle of this chapter is intended as an allusion to an important theme in the writings of Roman Jakobson. In speaking of the ‘unity of the sign’, Jakobson was, of course, developing the Saussurian conception of the sign as a two-sided entity (‘une entité à deux faces’). For Saussure, the linguistic sign was constituted by the association of a form with a meaning; these two elements ‘sont intimement unis et s’appellent l’un l’autre’ (Saussure 1922: 98–9). 1 As Jakobson puts it, elaborating on the terse passages in Saussure’s Cours:
The essential property of any sign in general, and of any linguistic sign in particular, is its twofold character; every linguistic unit is bipartite and involves two aspects – one sensible and the other intelligible – or, in other words, both a signans (Saussure’s signifiant) and a signatum (signifié). These two constituents of any linguistic sign (and of any sign in general) necessarily presuppose and require each other.
