The diffusion of Saussure’s speech circuit model throughout the discipline of linguistics

3. The Code Model Decoded 53 La parole est […] un acte individuel de volonté et d’intelligence, dans lequel il convient de distinguer: 1º les combinaisons par lesquelles le sujet parlant utilise le code de la langue en vue d’exprimer sa pensée personnelle; 2º le mécanisme psycho-physique qui lui permet d’extérioriser ces combinaisons. Saussure 1985 :[30–31] 31 One might assume that Saussure’s use of the word would come to play a significant part in the development of the code model. As shall be discussed, however, its use did not become commonplace in linguistics until linguists began adopting concepts gleaned from Shannon’s work in electrical engineering. Indeed, the appearance of the word in Cours would seem insignificant were it not for its later reappearance in post-Shannon linguistics.

3.2.2.3. The diffusion of Saussure’s speech circuit model throughout the discipline of linguistics

Models of communication offered in linguistic literature prior to the publication of Shannon’s information theory 1948 often demonstrate conceptual similarity to the code model, but they do not employ the information theoretic terminology characteristic of the code model. They tend, rather, to rely upon Saussure’s speech circuit. Referencing Mauro 1972 :366, Harris notes that “Saussure had already become compulsory reading for linguists within five years of the publication of the Cours, which was widely reviewed” 1987 :xi. However, at the time Cours was posthumously published, Saussure was better known for his work in historical-comparative linguistics and in particular for his writings on the topic of Indo-European vowels. 32 Accordingly, it was several more years before the full impact of Cours began to be felt. In light of this delay, Harris comments: “These attested cases of historical myopia go to reinforce the thesis that Saussure falls into that Shakespearian category of those who, retrospectively, ‘have greatness thrust upon them’” Harris 1987 :xii. 31 With the exception of this passage, all other quotations from Cours are from Harriss English translation, cited as “Saussure 1983.” The page numbers provided in square brackets refer to the standard pagination of Cours, adopted since the second edition. For English translations of this passage, consider the following: “Speaking […] is an individual act. It is willful and intellectual. Within the act, we should distinguish between: 1 the combinations by which the speaker uses the language code for expressing his own thought; and 2 the psychophysical mechanism that allows him to exteriorize those combinations.” Saussure 1988 :14, translation by Baskin “Speech […] is an individual act of the will and the intelligence, in which one must distinguish: 1 the combinations through which the speaker uses the code provided by the language in order to express his own thought, and 2 the psycho-physical mechanism which enabled him to externalize these combinations.” Saussure 1983 :14, translation by Harris 32 Within his lifetime Saussure was most famous for a landmark philological treatise he published at the age of 21, entitled Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes. Dissertation upon the original vowel system of the Indo-European languages. See Saussure 1983 :[8]; Harris 1983 :xvii, n. 1. 54 3. The Code Model Decoded Joseph reports that “the full implications of Saussure’s view of langue were realized in Prague” by Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, while “strikingly similar projects were underway in other quarters:” in the USA with Bloomfield, in Denmark with Hjelmslev, and in France with Meillet, who in turn passed the Saussurean perspective to Martinet, Guillaume, and Benveniste. “All the lines of the affiliation among these ‘schools’ are not yet clear. But their work came to define the mainstream of linguistics in the twentieth century, and all of it assumes the conception of langue set out in the Cours” Joseph 1994 :3669. Within American linguistics the pattern of Saussure’s influence may seem less obvious than it does in some European traditions. At least in part, this may stem from the fact that Cours was not translated into English until 1959. Even so, Joos 1957 :18, in editing a set of papers representing “The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America” from 1925–1956, could write, “At least half of these authors had read the Cours. The others got it second-hand: in an atmosphere so saturated with those ideas, it has been impossible to escape that. The difference is hard to detect, and it is generally unsafe to accuse a contemporary linguist of not having read the Cours ….” In regard to Joos’s findings, Harris comments, “In other words, by the late 1950s the experience of reading Saussure seems to have been so thoroughly absorbed as to make a distinction between Saussureans and non-Saussureans meaningless” 1987 :xiv. Accounts of communication published in American linguistics prior to the advent of information theory often do demonstrate Saussure’s influence. As Joos suggests, the environment so created affected even those who may not have read Saussure for themselves. Within that age of American linguistics, few scholars had as much longstanding influence as did Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield. Consider here a description of communication by Sapir, who offered the following unmistakably Saussurean statement in his 1921 volume, Language: An introduction to the study of speech: Communication, which is the very object of speech, is successfully effected only when the hearer’s auditory perceptions are translated into the appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both combined. Hence the cycle of speech, in so far as we may look upon it as a purely external instrument, begins and ends in the realm of sounds. The concordance between the initial auditory imagery and the final auditory perceptions is the social seal or warrant of the successful issue of the process. Sapir 1921 :18 Bloomfield’s regard for Saussurean principles changed somewhat throughout his career. The first half of his career demonstrates a strong appreciation for Saussurean principles, while that appreciation is less obvious in the later, behaviorist period. 33 33 Leonard Bloomfield’s affinity for Saussure varied through his career. For example, in 1923 Bloomfield published a review of Cours, praising Saussure’s innovative focus on the general aspects of human speech, particularly in an academic context which was consumed with study of the history of Indo-European languages. By the 1935 publication of Bloomfield’s Language, however, he had changed his position regarding Saussure, giving him only brief mention Bloomfield 1935 :19. Harris rightly notes that the difference between the two views lies in the pre- behaviorist versus behaviorist periods of Bloomfield’s career Harris 1987 :xii–xiv. The pre-behaviorist Bloomfield, “in effect, acknowledges Saussure as the founder of modern general linguistics, even though Bloomfield’s earlier 3. The Code Model Decoded 55 Accordingly, Bloomfield’s comments regarding communication in Language 1933 are less obviously Saussurean than are Sapir’s 1921 . Saussure’s influence is nevertheless present. Bloomfield writes: The reaction mediated by speech can take place in the body of any person who hears the speech; the possibilities of reaction are enormously increased, since different hearers may be capable of a tremendous variety of acts. The gap between the bodies of the speaker and the hearer—the discontinuity of the two nervous systems—is bridged by the sound-waves. … Man utters many kinds of vocal noise and makes use of the variety: under certain types of stimuli he produces certain vocal sounds, and his fellows, hearing these same sounds, make the appropriate response. To put it briefly, in human speech, different sounds have different meanings. To study this co-ordination of certain sounds with certain meanings is to study language …. Bloomfield 1984 :26–27 [orig. 1933 ]; italics in original The particular speech-sounds which people utter under particular stimuli, differ among different groups of men; mankind speaks many languages. A group of people who use the same system of speech-signals is a speech-community. Obviously, the value of language depends upon people’s using it in the same way. Every member of the social group must upon suitable occasion utter the proper speech-sounds and, when he hears another utter these speech-sounds, must make the proper response. Bloomfield 1984 :29 [orig. 1933 ] Elsewhere Bloomfield expounds upon the social function of language: The persons in a speech community coordinate their actions by means of language. Language bridges the gap between the individual nervous systems: a stimulus acting upon any one person may call out a response action by any other person in the community. Language unites individuals into a social organism. Bloomfield 1942 :173; also see Bloomfield 1984 :28 [orig. 1933 ] The Saussurean concepts Sapir and Bloomfield support do contribute to development of the code-model view of communication. However, these descriptions are not themselves code-model based accounts. These descriptions provided sufficient metatheoretical content for use by their authors, but they were largely prose descriptions and lacked heuristic qualities that may have given them greater longevity and influence. Sapir and Bloomfield were working only with the first two of the three constituent models described above, the conduit metaphor and Saussure’s speech circuit; information theory had not yet made its debut. With the advent of Shannon’s theory, information theoretic terminology quickly supplanted that offered by Sapir and Bloomfield, providing the heuristic analogy needed for broad dispersal. book An Introduction to the Study of Language had come out in 1914, thus preceding the original publication of Cours by two years” Harris 1987 :xii–xiii. In contrast, the behaviorist Bloomfield opposed the remnant of psychologism he regarded in Cours. As Harris notes, “That later Bloomfieldian reading was to dictate the relationship between American and European versions of structuralism for the next quarter of a century” 1987 :xiii. Again referencing Mauro 1972 :371, Harris comments, “It would be a mistake to infer from the way in which Bloomfield’s Language deliberately ignores Saussure that Saussurean ideas left no trace in American academic linguistics of the interwar period. Bloomfield himself admitted to Jakobson that reading the Cours was one of the events which had most influenced him” Harris 1987 :xiii–xiv. Similarly, Joseph notes a 1945 letter in which Bloomfield “described his major work Language as showing Saussure’s influence ‘on every page’” Joseph 1994 :3669. 56 3. The Code Model Decoded

3.2.3. Information theory

In 1948 electrical engineer and mathematician Claude E. Shannon published a landmark paper discussing a theory of probability for evaluating the success of electronic transmission of information. Shannon’s approach to communication became known as information theory sometimes also called communication theory. Shannon and his theory will be discussed in detail below. For now, suffice it to say that his theory provided a heuristic and analogic model for linguistics. It also came to serve as a key component of the model now identified as the code model. In viewing the problem of communication through the lens of electrical engineering, Shannon was primarily concerned with the mechanics of accurately transmitting and receiving a signal, and with statistical measures which may be used to evaluate the accuracy of that mechanical process. He writes: The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design. Shannon 1948 :379, 1949 :3 34 Shannon’s account of a communication system consisted of essentially five parts, which he described as follows: 1. An information source which produces a message or a sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal. … 2. A transmitter which operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel. … 3. The channel is merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver. … During transmission, or at one of the terminals, the signal may be perturbed by noise. … 4. The receiver ordinarily performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal. … 5. The destination is the person or thing for whom the message is intended. Shannon 1948 :380–381, 1949 :4–6 These five parts will be discussed in section 3.2.3.1 . To facilitate discussion of these parts, Shannon provided a diagram, a schematic of sorts, which illustrates the electronic components in generic engineering terms see figure 3.6 . Readers familiar with linguistic literature or at least section 2.4 of this study will recognize certain elements of Shannon’s description and diagram as having common application in linguistics. 34 As shall be discussed, Shannon’s original 1948 paper was preprinted in Shannon and Weaver 1949 , which in turn was published as a reprint in 1978. Unfortunately, the reprint reversed the order of the two articles by Shannon and Weaver, which makes page referencing somewhat difficult. The present review cites the first edition.