A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas...
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that language and memory create meaningful connections between words, forming associative groups based on shared characteristics.
Ferdinand De Saussure highlights the nature of language and its impact on memory and thought. He explains that when we hear or think of certain words, our minds group them based on their associations, forming a network of relationships. This associative process helps us understand and categorize the world linguistically, demonstrating how language shapes our cognitive frameworks and classifications.
Themes
LanguageMemoryAssociationsWordsMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about semiotics, this quote can illustrate the connection between language and cognition.
More from Ferdinand De Saussure
All quotes →Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.
Ferdinand De SaussureRead
Similar quotes
Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realize that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
I don’t think we can solve the outside problems until we solve the ones within.
Jon ForemanRead
I have the legacy of my father and his nocturnal automatic waking up. But I like those periods. I immediately have a different vision of humanity and my life.
Orhan PamukRead
To go from mortal to Buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings.
BodhidharmaRead
The real 'action' in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.
Pope Benedict XviRead
In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead