3. The Code Model Decoded 49
3.2.2.2.3. The nature of concepts: Locke vs. Saussure
As was mentioned previously, combating surrogationalism was a major thrust of Cours.
While Locke does not quite break free of the nomenclaturist tradition, he did make some important inroads, which undoubtedly influenced Saussure. As opposed to
other nomenclaturists, Locke considered the word to be linked to the idea i.e., concept, rather than to the extra-mental object see
Harris 1980 :67f.. This was a key component
in Locke’s theory, for as an epistemologist, he noted that ideas, or concepts, included subjective elements and evaluations, which were not consistent between thinkers, despite
the fact that a set of spoken vocabulary applied to a specific topic may be relatively consistent between speakers. As quoted previously, Locke writes:
The use then of Words, is to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the Ideas they stand for, are their proper and immediate Signification. … Words in their primary or immediate Signification,
stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them, how imperfectly soever, or
carelessly those Ideas are collected from the Things, which they are supposed to represent. Locke 1975
: Book III, Chapter 2, Sections 1–2
Concerning this component of their theories, the major difference between Locke and Saussure is the nature of these ideas and the strength of the link between the mental word
and the mental concept. While Locke considered the word to be linked to the idea or concept, rather than to an extra-mental object, he did not consider the idea itself to be
linguistic. Accordingly, he did not posit an especially strong link between concept and word. Harris comments:
Where Saussure’s speech circuit marks an advance over Locke is that Locke’s account is still basically a form of nomenclaturism
Harris 1980 :67ff.. For Locke, words ‘stand for’
ideas in the mind: but the mind forms its ideas independently of language. Saussure rejects this psychocentric surrogationalism in favour of giving theoretical priority to the linguistic sign
itself envisaged as an indissoluble combination of signifiant and signifié. A compromise with Locke is still visible in one feature, however. ‘Concepts’ remain, in Saussure’s account, the
prime movers in the activity which occupies the speech circuit: they ‘trigger’ a process which would have no other plausible starting point.
Harris 1987 :213
For Saussure, the indivisibility of the sign provided an essential constancy of the langue,
which he considered necessary for the ordering of thought. In Cours the position is introduced in the following manner:
Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we
should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. No ideas are
established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure.
Saussure 1983 :[155]
Accordingly, Saussure considered it self-evident that the members of a speech community, if they are to communicate, must share a system which provides order to that
vague, shapeless mass of thought. It is important to recognize that, in Saussure’s view, langue was not simply a
psychological structure in the individual human mind. It was, moreover, a ‘social fact’.
50 3. The Code Model Decoded
The emphatic quality of his position on the issue strongly impacted linguistics for several decades. With hindsight, one may conjecture that Saussure’s emphasis on the issue
reflected a rhetorical posture more so than it did a real opposition to psychological investigation. In fact, Saussure’s own approach showed more interest in the workings of
the mind than did that of his contemporaries in linguistics. But his position starkly contrasts with the psychology of his day, and that seems to have been one of Saussure’s
goals. Accordingly, in defining the place of linguistics as distinct from psychology, he strongly emphasized the social nature of language
Joseph 1994 :3665–3666.
As Saussure saw it, this social quality made communication possible not only through the systematic quality and fixed status of langue in the individual, but through its
relative constancy throughout a speech community.
All the individuals linguistically linked in this manner will establish among themselves a kind of mean; all of them will reproduce—doubtless not exactly, but approximately—the same
signs linked to the same concepts. … If we could collect the totality of word patterns stored in all those individuals, we should have the social bond which constitutes their language. It is the
fund accumulated by the members of the community through the practice of speech, a grammatical system existing potentially in every brain, or more exactly in the brains of a
group of individuals; for the language is never complete in any single individual, but exists perfectly only in the collectivity.
Saussure 1983 :[29–30]
While the indivisibility of the concept and acoustic image in the sign was an essential component in Saussure’s characterization of langue, the opposing position was similarly
important for Locke. A strong link between word and idea would have been detrimental to his argument regarding the weakness of human communication and the imperfection of
words see
Harris and Taylor 1997 :126–138. Locke recognized that words that is,
articulations employed by a community could remain relatively constant, but he noted that the ideas to which these words were supposedly linked did not have to maintain the
same degree of consistency, not between individuals and not even within the mind and usage of a single individual. This he rightly recognized as a problem for communication
as he had described it. Locke writes:
To make Words serviceable to the end of Communication, it is necessary, as has been said that they excite, in the Hearer, exactly the same Idea, they stand for in the Mind of the
Speaker. Without this, Men fill one anothers Heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby their Thoughts, and lay not before one another their Ideas, which is the end of
Discourse and Language. But when a word stands for a very complex Idea, that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for Men to form and retain that Idea so exactly,
as to make the Name in common use, stand for the same precise Idea, without any the least variation. Hence it comes to pass, that Men’s Names, of very compound Ideas, such as for the
most part are moral Words, have seldom, in two different Men, the same precise signification; since one Man’s complex Idea seldom agrees with anothers, and often differs from his own,
from that which he had yesterday, or will have to morrow.
Locke 1975 : Book III, Chapter 9,
Section 6
How was Locke able to maintain this model of communication even while seeming to argue against its adequacy? The answer again rests in his views as a corpuscularian. In
that view, all perceptions, or “ideas of sensation,” were considered to result from either
3. The Code Model Decoded 51
primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities were considered to be the real qualities of material objects, and thus the sensations resulting from the primary qualities
were considered to be objective. As Scott-Kakures, Castegnetto, Benson, Taschek, and Hurley explain, “Corpuscles are colorless, odorless, tasteless, soundless bits of matter
moving about in space. The only properties that corpuscles really have are size, shape, mass, and motion or rest—the primary qualities”
1993 :169. The secondary qualities,
however, were not thought to resemble anything in the object. These are qualities such as color, taste, texture, odor, temperature, sound, and so on
Scott-Kakures, Castegnetto, Benson, Taschek, and Hurley 1993
:168. As an experientialist, Locke considered all one might know about to result ultimately
from experience. The sensations resulting from primary and secondary qualities could then be manipulated through reflection. Finally, the resulting ideas could be assembled in
increasing levels of complexity, depending upon the nature of their construction. Those which depended upon sensation alone were called simple ideas, and these were more or
less reliable depending upon the extent to which they were generated by primary or secondary qualities.
30
Complex ideas were thought to be analyzable into simple ideas; however, they were not thought to be as reliable or consistent. This was because they
reflected an assemblage of simple ideas, including both primary and secondary qualities, and because that assembly process was the result of reflection
Scott-Kakures, Castegnetto, Benson, Taschek, and Hurley 1993
:167. The resulting assemblage of unreliable and inconsistent ideas is the epistemological stumbling block Locke addresses
when he writes:
But when a word stands for a very complex Idea, that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for Men to form and retain that Idea so exactly, as to make the Name in common use,
stand for the same precise Idea, without any the least variation. Locke 1975
:Book III, Chapter 9, Section 6
Accordingly, while Locke identified weak links in the process of human commu- nication, he did not consider his model of communication to describe or display those
weak links. Rather, he saw the weakness of human communication to be in the nature of ideas. He would have expected communication as he described it to work flawlessly to
the extent that the participants were “conveying thoughts” of a “simple” nature reflecting primary qualities. The effectiveness and reliability of the communication process would
then begin to breakdown as the thoughts being conveyed became increasingly “complex.”
3.2.2.2.4. Why borrow from Locke?
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