Edited by Christina Behme and Martin Neef
[Studies in Language Companion Series 196] 2018
► pp. 271–296
Undoubtedly, F. de Saussure is among the founders of modern linguistics and ‘semiology’/semiotics – though, strangely enough, his success mainly resulted from a book he did not write in the strict sense. Since the publication of the Cours, edited by his disciples in 1916, his notion of ‘arbitrariness’ has become one of the main canonical catchwords of linguistics that are hardly ever called into question. After a reconstruction of the Saussurean concept of the linguistic sign and its arbitrariness the attempt is made to work out its shortcomings and partly correct them. It is argued that instead of arbitrariness motivation must be taken as the central semiotic feature of linguistic signs which, after their formation, may be subject to a continuous historical process of increasing arbitrarization, possibly leading to complete arbitrariness in the end. In the final section the question of whether and to what extent the Geneva linguist may be considered a realist is tackled.