Saussure linguistics, also known as Saussurism, is based on the distinction between language and speech, and holds that linguistics can only "study language with language", excluding any non-linguistic factors (such as society, body, speech? ) interference; As far as language is concerned, we must distinguish between * * * and diachronic. Linguistics only studies the language system of * * * and excludes any diachronic factors. As far as the study of * * * language system is concerned, only the form is studied, not the essence. The assertion that "language is form, not substance" is the concentrated embodiment of this idea.
Saussure's linguistics is the pioneering work of modern linguistics and structuralist linguistics, from which many theoretical foundations of modern linguistics come.
Language symbols have two characteristics:
① arbitrariness of symbols;
(2) Linear sequence of symbols, words can only be said one word at a time, not several words at the same time.
At the same time, Saussure added two points:
(1) Language is always a system that everyone in the society uses all the time. The speaker only accepts the ready-made language, so it has great persistence.
The things represented by language symbols and the forms of symbols themselves can change with the passage of time, so language is constantly changing and developing.