The principles of modern linguistics followed in original writing

Saussure's "General Linguistics Course", the founding work of modern linguistics, did not come out in a complete Chinese translation until 1980 (published by the Commercial Press), but in the past 42 years, it can never be said that the domestic academic circles have thoroughly studied it, and its important value has yet to be deeply explored. Many readers just look at the text and think that it is just a simple linguistic work, but in my opinion, scholars in the field of humanities and social sciences should seriously study this book, and its value lies in the fact that language is the direct reality of thought.

Usually, we say empty words that seem valuable, such as: "Independent spirit, free thought" - this is a good thing to say, but it is only a statement, a position, a desire. If this wish is to be fulfilled, it is necessary to continue to speak, to learn to think. Going on, "Thought is a lonely act" (Heidegger)—this sentence may be thought, but after hearing it, just as after hearing "the spirit of independence, the mind of freedom," the listener still does not think, because it remains on the surface of thought, in the suspended state of thought, it has not yet entered the empirical details. The detail of this is that they can think = they can use language.

That is, you have to learn how to think, and how to think = how to use language. A scholar can't say something like this: "I'm very thoughtful, but I don't care to say it or write it out." "If you don't say it or write it out, how do we judge — the quality of your thinking?" For scholars, speaking should be especially implemented into writing, and learning to write, which in this case refers to original writing, which is closely related to the modern linguistic principles proposed by Saussure.

Often, we forget that we are using language when we think. It seems that language is only a tool for expressing ideas, a bridge across the river. We rarely think about what is going on as a tool or as a bridge itself. Saussure's "General Linguistics Course" is an empirical study of language itself. This kind of research is neutral, it is a factual factor of language, and therefore it is scientific, it is different from political ideological positions or values, and it has no class character.

First of all, it is necessary to clarify the basic terminology of Saussure's linguistics: he distinguishes between language and speech. Speech refers to the use of everyday speech in various mother tongues. What is a language? "Language is speech activity minus speech. It is the whole language habit that enables a person to understand and be understood. Oh, Saussure's sentence is very thick, easy to misunderstand, his so-called linguistics, specifically refers to the living language, refers to the real language pronunciation (signifier) and the referent (concept, concept) relationship of synchronic investigation. He did not examine philology. He believed that words were only shadows of spoken language.

However, we note that Saussure's discussion of linguistic signifiers also applies to words. As a shadow of speech or speech itself, it is entirely possible for the script to leave the spoken language and become a relatively independent language (the difference between speech and writing also exists in Western languages, but in terms of severity, it is not as good as Chinese, so it is difficult to imagine that the West will have the "vernacular" movement of China in the early 20th century). It is not difficult to understand that every word, word, and sentence written also contains what Saussure called signifier and signifier phenomena.

Now let's get into it, that is, let's see how original writing fits into Saussure's linguistic principles: language, whether it speaks or writes, must conform to the mandatory norms of language, which is the sociality of language. At this time, the person who uses the language is not free. This is not due to the lack of a social system or social environment for free speech, but to make clear communication possible, when we say "mao", we can not mean "dog" (gou) at the same time This is very simple, needless to say.

But Saussure discovered a very important phenomenon within language, which is also the cornerstone of the book, and that is the paradox in the actual use of language: on the one hand, the signifier and the relationship between signifier and signifier of words are conventional, it is coercive, it is unfree. But on the other hand, according to the principle of primordial arbitrariness of the relationship between signifier and signifier (when different languages refer to "cat", the speech is arbitrary and distinct), and thus "the signifier appears to be freely chosen for the idea it represents." (p. 112) And in the actual writing process, we will find that this free choice of word signifiers is that in the process of original writing, we always try to destroy the certainty of the original "meaning relationship", to break through the boundaries of this fixed relationship, and to achieve some new signification. Although it is not quite in line with Saussure's original intention of "signifier arbitrariness", it is a real original writing, such as the first person to write "chair legs", which refers to the wood that supports the chair as "legs", which destroys the original fixed relationship between the signifier and the signifier. For example, although people have spoken of "man" and "dog" countless times in the generations, someone must have coined the term "dog leg" for the first time, which does not refer to "dog legs", but to a person of a certain moral character. "Dog leg" thus became a living metaphor, but once the word was universally accepted and popularized, it became part of everyday language, and its meaning became conventional, so that we can no longer see that it comes from a living linguistic innovation. In this sense, original writing is also the process of creating living metaphors, which shifts the relationship between symbols and the ideas they refer to.

All the thought-provoking writing processes, like the first person to write "chair legs" or "dog legs" above, destroy the original agreed signifier and referential relationship, and choose freely—to regard so-and-so as so-and-so as something else. In other words, A is no longer equal to A, but equals the process of B, C, and D. The word itself did not change, but the meaning of the word changed. There is no longer any reference that must be obeyed, thus realizing the above-mentioned "independent spirit, free thought", that is, the process of learning to think. Linguistic innovation resists inertia from the linguistic collective. In the case of philosophical writing, it is the process of inventing and creating concepts.

Above, the original writing process destroys the old norm of the relationship that words refer to, it does not follow the old principles of language use, it is a clever move that occurs now, even a kind of arbitrariness. In other words, in the process of original writing, the readiness of all words, the idiomatic usage inherited from the past, and the origin of language are no longer as important as people think. From the perspective of modern linguistics, the historical evolution of language is no longer important, and the relationships that are taking place between words and sentences become important, which is called "synchronicity".

Some people may stubbornly think that original writing is a very difficult thing, but it is not necessarily. The written language is a direct realization of the flow of thought, but the flow of thought is not necessarily the result of deliberate choice of contemplation—for which, if it is not well understood from philosophical works, can be used as an example in modern literature. There is a major change between modern literature and classical literature: classical literature, and even until the 19th century, Western literature, Balzac type works, mainly from intentional conception and active choice before writing, but this situation does not fully explain the full meaning of free writing, and if you look at the details, it is not fully in line with the real writing process.

The real writing process is like our real self-talk, the real monologue process, the real dream process — such a process is not hard to talk about, because it is like it is automatically secreted. Modern writing calls it "stream of consciousness," which appeals to the involuntary discovery and even invention of similarities between words, sentences, and situations, and these similarities connect seemingly unrelated relationships, destroying the original order of time and space, and not conforming to the true sequence of historical events and causal relationships. This is how Proust's Remembrance of the Watery Years and Joyce's Ulysses were written.

In linguistics, a word originally had a fixed pronunciation or meaning, but the person who spoke was tired, and in the living world of life, people deformed the old word, or changed its pronunciation, or invented a different pronunciation, or only the voice was uncertain, but there were many people who spoke, the listener was conventional, and the listener understood. For example, "bragging" is said to be "flickering", and "free will" or yearning for freedom is said to be "love". Although the meaning is similar, this substitution is not entirely equivalent or equivalent, and it also embodies the principle of arbitrariness of symbols. I will talk about this later.

Above, whether the language of proust or Joyce's novels, or purely from the spontaneous invention of the phonology of ordinary folk people, as Saussure summed up: "Language is simply powerless against the factors that at any time promote the transfer of the relationship between signifier and signifier." This is one of the consequences of symbol arbitrariness ... Language is not limited in choosing its means, for we see nothing that prevents us from associating any idea with any series of sounds. (p. 118)

This arbitrariness of word symbols is precisely the principle of modern linguistics that original writing follows. "On the one hand, language is in the mass and at the same time in time, and no one can change it in any way; on the other hand, the arbitrariness of linguistic symbols theoretically gives people the freedom to establish any relationship between sound materials and ideas. As a result, these two factors combined in the symbol each maintain their own life to a unique degree, and language develops and changes under the influence of all possible motions of sound or meaning. (p. 119)

The above also explains why artificial language is difficult to succeed, for example, in 1887, the Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof invented Esperanto, which was a sensation, but now people's enthusiasm for Esperanto has been greatly weakened, because although it has the advantages of easy to grasp and clear and accurate, and overcomes the shortcomings of natural language. However, in daily life, the disadvantages of natural language become the advantages of enriching and developing language. It is precisely because of the confusion of language and even the phenomenon of polysemy of words that it is conducive to the creation of new ideas. If man-made Esperanto succeeds, and humans forget their mother tongue and switch to Esperanto to achieve so-called barrier-free communication, which may lead to the demise of nations and the death of human nature, it will have terrible and catastrophic consequences just like the victory of intelligent robots over humans - but this is impossible, because any fixed artificial language cannot defeat natural language, just like a flawed person is a real and lovely person. A never-make-a-mistake robot is unlovable, as Saussure put it: "To make an immutable language that will make future generations accept the past as it is, like a hen hatching a duck's egg: the language he creates, whether he likes it or not, will eventually be swept away by the current that sweeps through all languages." (pp. 119-120)

Words can refer to the relationship between what they mean, such as when I make the sound of "tree" and the form or idea of a tree emerges in my heart. But this kind of paused static thinking is not the real situation in the actual use of the language principle of Sossure's so-called "synchronicity" language. In other words, if we compare the relationship between signifiers and signifiers of words, to the relationship between money and commodities. It stands to reason that in both cases, it should be some kind of equivalent exchange. However, since the actual situation in the process of language use, or the fluctuation of money and commodity markets from moment to moment, the situation of absolute equal exchange exists only in the theoretical ideal state, and in the process of language or money-commodity exchange, it cannot exist. What really exists is the unequal exchange of words between words or between money and goods within the language system. In these two permutation processes, as far as language is concerned, as in the process of translation, certain meanings are added or decreased, and the addition and decrease occur at the same time, that is, the effect of translation will enrich the language itself. And once money becomes capital, as Marx said, it lies in the process of commodity exchange, which produces profit or surplus value, which constantly circulates between demand and satisfaction, and promotes social development.

Saussure uses a cross-sectional tree to represent the synchronicity state of language, which breaks away from history and simultaneously shows the different word positions of the cross-section, showing their connection to each other. This is like the juxtaposition of "different epochs of the same era", which can more realistically show the whole picture of current language or social life, rather than just being partial and comprehensive in isolation, or not saying that we are currently in an era with a simple and transparent statement. This cross-sectional tree, corresponding to the book of the "cross-section" of modern language, is Joyce's novel "Ulysses", which is a huge work, but its entire content only tells the story of what the characters in the book experience in dozens of hours, as if it were a social encyclopedia without history for contemporary people, which delicately describes the trivial things and psychological fragments of life, and then connects them.

In contrast, Saussure uses the longitudinal growth of a tree to express the linguistic attitude of the past that traces the origin of language and the historical development and change. It is temporal, consistent with the causality of the development of the plot between people and events constructed by classical novels with temporal cues. This grand narrative also dominates the so-called historical narrative method, which discusses and observes history according to a certain narrative main line, and its subjective will is extremely strong, but this linguistic or historical research method is unreal, because both will miss a lot of trivial details of language or character events, and will not observe the "different epochalities of the same era" (establishing an unrelated relationship, there is a horizontal logic, an intertextual logic, and even it is a fashionable method of contemporary art creation) - in short, This linear view of language or history has no sense of presence and no sense of space. It sifts out the occasional, involuntary elements with the sieve of grand narrative, but fun and even true happiness and meaning of life are often in language and small events in life.

Below, we transcribe a few wonderful passages from Saussure:

"Of all the analogies we can conceive of, the most telling is to compare the functioning of language to chess. Both expose us to systems of value and see their changes firsthand. Language presents the situation before us in a natural form, and playing chess seems to be artificially embodied.

First, the state of playing chess is comparable to the state of the language. The respective values of the pieces are determined by their position on the board. Similarly, in language, each element has its value because it is opposed to the others.

Second, the system is always only temporary, changing from one state to another. It is true that value is also determined first and foremost by the unchanging statute, the rules of playing chess. This rule exists before the next move and continues to exist after the next move. Language also has this rule that exists forever once acknowledged, that is, the eternal principle of semiotics.

Finally, to transition from one equilibrium to another, or, in our terminology, from one synchronic to another, it is enough to move a piece, and there will be no big moves of the box. Here, the facts of the time and all their details can be corresponded. (pp. 1133-134)

Saussure argues that there is no analogy between playing chess and using language at one point: a person who plays chess is always thoughtful when he moves a piece, and every time he moves a piece, it is an autonomous choice, or intentional. But "language is not premeditated, its pieces (referring to the elements that make up language) move spontaneously and by chance (Saussure here uses spontaneous changes in speech as an example)... For chess to function exactly the same as language, one must envision an unconscious or silly chess player. (p. 135)