ABSTRACT
There is a schema which is so powerfully reiterated both in academic (written) and in commonsense (spoken) accounts of the linguistic situation that today it passes for that situation itself. According to the schema, linguistic communication consists in the transmission of immaterial ideas or concepts from one person (speaker or writer) to another (hearer or listener) by means of material signs such as marks on paper or vibrations of the air waves. Ferdinand de Saussure (1974, pp. 11-12) pictures the situation as shown in Figure 1.
