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According to the structuralist interpretation, Saussure's linguistics is to be credited chiefly for its influential conception of an arbitrary linguistic sign. However, the thesis of linguistic arbitrariness, according to which signification is an internal property of the language system, offers an initial and provisional understanding of linguistic signification that is, ultimately, revised in the course of Saussure's lectures. Even though a reader of the Course may glean some of the complications befalling the linguistic sign from the later chapters, the reader is unlikely to perceive them as organic developments of the initial discussion of the linguistic sign from the more influential Chap.  1. The architecture of parts and chapters suggests that each presents an element of a complete doctrine, whereas Saussure presents testable, evolving, and revisable hypotheses in his lectures. The lecture notes demonstrate that, ultimately, Saussure does not support the structuralist view of the sign. While language is arbitrary and unmotivated by natural laws, it is constrained by social conventions as they evolve over time. Language is situated in the sociohistorical world of cultural signification from the start.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-43097-9_5

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