On The Interpretation Of Signifier And Signified As Form And Meaning

Fawcett (2010: 33):

Saussure's central concept is the 'linguistic sign'. As is well known, he emphasises that a 'sign' consists of a 'signifier' and a 'signified', and we shall interpret this as saying that a sign has both a form and a meaning. And to this we can add the important concept — which is long familiar to functionally oriented linguists — that form and meaning are mutually defining. 

Consider, as an analogy, the type of simple traffic control system that has just two 'forms' of display — a red disk and a green disk. It also has just two 'meanings' — which are, in crude terms, 'stop' and 'go'. A human language is of course very much more complex than this in both its forms and its meanings — and indeed in the relationships between the two. But it is nonetheless helpful to recognise that the two primary levels of a language — as in any semiotic system — are those of meaning and form.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Saussure's distinction between signifier and signified is the general distinction between lower and higher levels of symbolic abstraction, as between:

• expression and content
• form and function
• wording and meaning
• sounding and wording.

[2] To be clear, the relation between two levels of symbolic abstraction is realisation, which is a relation of intensive identity between a Token and a Value.  In terms of coding, the identity encodes a Value by reference to a Token, and decodes a Token by reference to a Value.  For example, the identity of expression and content encodes content (e.g. 'go') by reference expression (e.g. green traffic light), and decodes expression (green) by reference to content ('go').  This is the sense in which they are 'mutually defining'.