Why borrow from Locke?
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?
Considering the differences between Locke’s and Saussure’s theories of language, one might wonder why Saussure, working at the advent of the twentieth century, would
have resuscitated Locke’s late seventeenth century model in developing a new science of linguistics. After all, Locke’s model seemed to be particularly interested in the parole
30
The qualities are spoken of as being active here, because in the corpuscularian ontology the corpuscles were thought to impact the senses, rather than the senses being activated by the human agent.
52 3. The Code Model Decoded
and it did not include any counterpart to the langue. Harris suggests that in using Locke’s model, which he knew to be inadequate, Saussure created an opportunity to develop the
notion of langue and then argue for its theoretical necessity. Thus Saussure built into his model “a double guarantee of autonomy: i autonomy of linguistics among the
disciplines dealing with human speech behavior, and ii autonomy of the study of la langue
within linguistics” Harris 1987
:212–213. While this autonomy did in fact follow the adoption of Saussure’s theory and model,
it is not likely that Saussure intentionally adopted a model he considered flawed just so that he could argue for the patch with which to repair it. While such a rhetorical approach
is occasionally employed in argumentation, there is no indication in Cours that Saussure intended such an approach in his account of the speech chain. The fact that Saussure
gives so much energy toward developing a theory of langue clearly indicates that he did, indeed, recognize certain inherent weaknesses in Locke’s account, and that he considered
the speech circuit with langue intact to be theoretically superior to Locke’s model; however, Saussure likely adopted Locke’s model as a starting point for the simple reason
that it was the starting point for his generation.
Harris also addresses the related question of why Saussure’s critics did not object to his resuscitating a seventeenth century model of communication
1987 :213. He suggests
that the major reason for this lies in technology. Saussure envisioned communication to function via a energy-conversion process. Accordingly, he retrofitted Locke’s model with
stylish technological terminology. Harris writes:
Why, it may be asked, should energy-conversion strike a linguist of Saussure’s generation as a plausible exemplar for explaining speech communication? To answer this, we need look
no further than the major technological innovations in communication which transformed everyday life in western industrial society during the course of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. They were telegraphy, telephony and broadcasting: all forms of energy- conversion applied to the transmission of verbal messages. It can hardly be a coincidence that
the illustration of A and B talking in the course shows them schematically linked by what look suspiciously like telephone wires [see again figure
3.3 ]. Nor is it a coincidence that the
misapplied term circuit which Saussure borrowed for his own model of speech communication comes from the technical vocabulary of the electrical engineer. By representing speech as a
closed, casually determined process in every way analogous to the energy-conversion processes of physics and chemistry, linguistics was provided in advance with a forged carte
d’entrée
to the prestigious palace of modern science. Harris 1987
:215–216
In describing the model as a circulating loop, or circuit, Saussure recast the basic model in electromechanical terms. This terminological adjustment would later contribute
to the integration of the speech circuit with the electrical engineering-based model of communication as introduced by Claude Shannon.
Finally, it is interesting to note that in retrofitting Locke’s model with technological terminology, Saussure also made use of the term “code.” However, it was only in passing
and without elaboration. In a discussion contrasting language langue and speech parole,
we read:
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.