ABSTRACT
Early in the Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure defines the ‘object’ o f linguistic science as phenom enon which ‘always has two related sides, each deriving its values from the other’. (1959: 8) As exam ples, Saussure lists different aspects o f the dualities o f language: the duality o f vocal organs and ear, o f sound and idea, o f individual and social m anifestation, o f the synchronic system o f language and its history (‘at every moment it is an existing institution and a product o f the past’) (1959: 8). But what is most striking about Saussure’s conception o f language — what governs all the oppositions Saussure describes in language and leads to the possibility, realised throughout twentieth-century linguistic studies, o f the analysis o f language into structures o f signification — is the duality in language between contrast and combination. This duality is what Jonathan Culler describes in his study o f Saussure as ‘the basic structural principle, that items are defined by their contrasts with other items and their ability to combine to form higher-level item s.’ (1976: 50) That is, the elements o f language, Saussure perceived, are the product o f linguistic opposition, o f contrast, yet its elements combine to create com plex units which, in turn, constitute contrasting, differential elements on a different level o f language. ‘In effect,’ A .J. Greim as has written, ‘in linguistics units are defined as “constituents,” that is, solely by the fact that they
enter into the constitution o f other, hierarchically superior units or that they decom pose themselves into inferior units.’ (1976d: 16; see SL 17) ‘Language, in a m anner o f speaking,’ Saussure notes, ‘is a type o f algebra consisting solely o f complex term s.’ (1959: 122)
This ‘com plexity’ is the m ode o f existence o f m eaningful language; as such, as Roman Jakobson has argued (1963), it is hierarchic and thus articulable into structural relationships on all levels. For exam ple, ‘distinctive features’ combine in ‘bundles’ to constitute phonem es; distinguishable words combine to form sentences; sentences combine in discursive utterances. In each instance, the whole is greater than the sum o f its parts. ‘A linguistic unit,’ Elm ar Holenstein writes, ‘can be identified only in terms o f its two-fold dependence upon the elements o f which it is constituted and upon the larger context into which it is integrated.’ (1976: 167)
T he dualities o f language create what Greim as calls the essentially ‘bi-isotopic’ nature o f discourse, the superposition o f two ‘m essages’ (SS : 286); they create what Jakobson calls the ‘duplex structure’ o f language, the fact that its elements ‘may at once be utilized and referred to (= pointed at).’ (1957: 130) T hat is, language, in a ‘duplex ’ m anner, both communicates a m essage and also communicates its own code: in this way we can learn language (i.e. the ‘code’ o f a particular language) by listening to m essages inscribed in that code; and, in a larger context, we can learn about a speaker from what he says, even when he isn’t speaking ‘about’ himself. T he implications o f this ‘duplex ’ conception o f language — and especially the possibility, created by this structure, o f integrating its elements into ever-widening contexts — are issues I will exam ine in this chapter. What is most im portant here is that the ‘duplexity’ o f language, as Jakobson describes it, is another version o f the combination (its ‘utilization’) and contrast (its existence as a referent) o f language. Its elemental ‘wholes,’ which can be ‘pointed at’ in any discourse, are functions o f contrasting oppositions, while its communicative function, the sum o f its elements conceived as ‘parts,’ is a function o f its combinations.
