CARS Quiz
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REASONING WITHIN THE TEXT
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The Arbitrary Word
Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern linguistics, argued that the relationship between a word (the signifier) and the concept it represents (the signified) is arbitrary. There is no logical or natural reason why the four-legged barking animal is called a dog in English and a chien in French. In Saussure's view, language is not a nomenclature - a simple list of labels for pre-existing things. Instead, language actually creates our reality by carving up the world into distinct categories.
To illustrate this, Saussure used the analogy of a game of chess. The physical material of a knight - whether it is made of ivory, wood, or plastic - is irrelevant to its function. What defines the knight is its relationship to the other pieces and the rules of the game. If you lose the ivory knight and replace it with a button, the button becomes the knight as long as the players agree on its role. In language, as in chess, value is derived not from the thing itself, but from the internal system of differences.
The author's comparison of a chess piece to a button serves to emphasize that:
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