Langue and Parole
The major contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure
to linguistics can be summed up as providing the basic groundwork of
fundamental concepts; his definition of the ‘linguistic sign’; his explanation
of the distinction between concrete and abstract linguistic units; distinction
between descriptive (synchronic) and historical (diachronic), study of
language, and so on. He was under the influence of the new scientific
temperament and followed the principles of Durkheim who said that
‘we have
social facts that can be studied scientifically when we consider them from an
aspect that is independent of their individual manifestations’.
This attitude helped the shaping of
the structuralist approach.
De Saussure put forward the concepts
of La langue, La Parole and Le Language. He concentrates on two of them.
- By langue, he meant ‘the language system’ and
- By Parole he meant the ‘act of speaking’.
- By Language he meant ‘human speech as a whole’.
This human speech or language is
composes of Langue and Parole. La
Language does not have exact equivalent in English. It embraces the faculty
of language in all its various form and manifestations. La language is the
faculty of human speech present in all normal hum being due to heredity but
which requires the correct environmental stimulus or stimuli for proper
development. It is our faculty to talk to each other. It is many side and
heterogeneous. It can be taken as whole. Because it covers several areas
simultaneously that is physical, physiological and psychology. It belongs to
the individual and to the society. We can not put it into ant category of human
traits because we can not discover its unit yet it is a universal behavior trait
more of interest of the anthropologist or biologist than to the linguist who
commences his study with Langue and Parole. Language is for us Le Langue.
According to Saussure is the totality
of Langue deducible form an examination
of memories of all language users. It is the store house, the some total of
word imagine in the minds of individuals. It is not to be confused with human speech
of which it is only a definite part although certainly an essential one. It is
both a social product of the faculty of speech of and a collection of necessary
convention that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to
exercise that faculty. Language is the lexical, grammatical and phonological constitution
of a language. It is the collective fact of a language. It is a corporate social
phenomenal. It is homogenous, it is concrete. We can study it scientifically.
It is grammar plus vocabulary plus pronunciation system of a community.
La langue is a collective pattern
which exists as ‘a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each
individual.., like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed
to each individual... it exists in each individual, yet it is common to all’.
La langue is a repository of signs which each speaker has received from the
other speakers of the community. It is passive. It is a set of conventions
received by us all, ready-made from the community.
Ultimately Langue to has to related Parole which is the actual uses of
individuals which a community manifest itself in everyday speech that the
actual concrete act of speaking on the part of and individual the controlled or
construable psychophysical activity. Parole is the set of all utterances that
have actually been produced. Parole is a
personal, dynamic, social activity which exists at a particular time and place
speech. Parole is something personal and the only object available for direct
observation to the linguist. It is constant and generalized observation of the
linguist. It is constant and generalized an ordinary speaker can neither create
it not modify it. A German scholar Ulimall has tabulated the main difference
between language and Parole in following manner.
La Parole : By contrast la parole is active and denotes the
actual speech act of the individual. We can better understand it by considering
each act of speaking as a unique event. It is unique because it reflects the
unstable, changeable relationship between the language, the precise contextual
elements triggering particular utterances, and personal factors. Thus each particular
speech act is characterised by the personality, nature and several other
external forces governing both the production and reception of a speech act.
There is a great deal that is particular, individual, personal and
idiosyncratic about la parole as opposed to la langue which emphasizes speech
as the common act of behaviour, ‘given that there is a good deal that is
idiosyncratic or not fully institutionalised, parole cannot be stable and
systematic’ (Wilkins : 34). Parole gives the data from which statements about
langue are made; parole is not collective but individual, momentary and
heterogenous.
As Francis P. Dinneen points out “when we hear la parole of
another community, we perceive the noises made, but not the social fact of
language. We cannot connect the sounds produced and the social facts with which
the other speech associates the sounds. When we hear la parole within our own
community we perceive the sounds as associated with social facts, according to
a set of rules. These rules, which can be called the convention, or grammar, of
the language are habits that education has imposed on us. They have the
property of being general throughout the community. That is why all the
speakers can understand each other.
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Langue
(Language)
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Parole
(Speech)
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1. It is stable and
institutionalised.
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1.
It is mobile and personal.
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2. It is passive.
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2.
It is active.
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3.It is a social fact and general
for the community.
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3.
It is individual and idiosyncratic.
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4.It contains the negative limits
on what a speaker must say.
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4.
It doesnot put any such limits.
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5. It is sum of properties shared
by all speakers of a community.
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5.
It contains infinite number of individual properties.
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6. A scientific study can only be
based on La langue
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6.
It is not amenable to scientific study.
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7. It is an abstraction.
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7.
It is concrete manifestation
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8. It is a collective instrument.
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8.
It is not a collective instrument.
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9. It is a set of conventions and
habits handed down to next generation readymade.
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9.
It is diverse and variegated.
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10. It is language as a speaker
is expected to use.
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10. It
is language in actual use.
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11. It is not subject to social
and individual pressure.
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11. It
is susceptible to social and other pressure.
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12. It is fixed.
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12. It
is free.
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13. It is a potential form of
language.
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13. It
is an actualised form of language
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