Langue and Parole Since Saussure

John Hewson
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Summary

It is not possible and in fact not necessary to review everything that has been written since the publication of Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale concerning the langue / parole diachotomy. What is attempted in the present article is first of all a concrete analogy for langue and parole, so that these two notions, which have been so often misunderstood, can be presented in as concrete a manner as possible, and secondly to follow certain interesting developments of the basic Saussurian notions. The concrete analogy which is used is that of the child’s construction set, such as a Meccano set for example. The set itself is an analogy for langue, and the models, such as planes, cars, machines, etc., that the child makes are a model for parole or discourse. This concrete analogy also serves to illuminate ‘the infinite use of finite means’, the finite means being langue, and the infinite use parole. Next an examination is made of certain of the Saussurean notions that have provoked discussion over the years:

(1) langue as a pure ίοrm; (2) psychologism; (3) the sociological notions; (4) synchrony as static linguistics. Subsequent to (4) the notions of process and generation are examined, and this leads first of all to a critical examination of the terms competence and performance, along with their underlying notions, and then to a discussion of the psychomechanics of Gustave Guillaume. It is pointed out that Guillaume’s theory is an interesting development’ of the Saussurian notions and that some of the criticisms by Wunderli in HL 1:1/1974 are based upon a fundamental misapprehension of the notion of parole in Guillaume.

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