FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE AS THE

FATHER OF MODERN LINGUISTICS

DR. ANJUM ISLAM

Associate Professor in English
Shashi Bhushan Balika Vidyalaya
Degree College, Lucknow
(UP) INDIA

Ferdinand de Saussure is usually referred to as the father of modern linguistics. His

contribution to linguistics lay in the following; firstly he made a distinction between two
approaches to the study of language: the synchronic approach and the diachronic approach.
The synchronic (or descriptive) study of a language is concerned with that language as it
exists at a particular point of time. As opposed to this, the diachronic (or historical) study of
a language is concerned with the historical development of that language through time. A
study of the history of the English language is diachronic. Secondly, de Saussure
distinguished between what he called langue and parole. Parole is the concrete manifestation
of language either through speech or through writing. As opposed to this, langue is the
abstract knowledge necessary for speaking, listening, writing and reading i.e for producing
instances of parole. It is the total set o conventions that the members of a language
community share. The aim of every linguist is to study this set of conventions (langue) and for
arriving at statements about langue he makes use of were! occurrences of speech or writing
(parole) as his data. Let us consider the Game of football. In order to play it the Players must
agree on a set of conventions regarding the number of players an a team, the function of each
player, what is counted as a goal, what is counted as a foul and so on. These rules of the
game can be compared to langue. The langue of football, the rules of the game, are an
abstract set of principles which are necessary to play concrete game. An individual game of
football can therefore be compared to parole. The distinction between langue and parole
runs parallel to the distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance as
given by Chomsky. But, the two differ as the former is sociological and the latter is
psychological.
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INTRODUCTION

In 1957, a revolutionary linguist called Noam Chomsky published his Syntactic Structures in
which he attacked the basic tenets of Structuralism and proposed a new theory which has
come to be known as Transformational Generative Grammar. An elementary account of
this method has been given by E Bach. Bach Some of the disciples of Chomsky have
proposed new theories known as Case Grammar, Generative Semantics etc. S.R. Leavis
proposed the application of transformational grammar theory of poetry Richard Ohmann was
another follower of N. Chomsky. These transformation lists have used poetic utterances to
test the efficiency of their grammatical concepts. An attempt is made to make grammar of
English adequate to describe language outside normal usage. They given special attention to
utterances of a certain type which mostly appears in poetry – “a grief ago,” “he danced his
did”, etc. Such utterances are on the borderline of poetry and nonsense, grammar and non-
grammar, lexical decorum and anarchy of diction. They have attempted to make grammar of
English adequate to describe and explain the place of any utterance within the corpus of
English sentences. Their attempt is not just to state that an utterance is ‘grammatical’ or
‘ungrammatical'; but to place it in an understandable place on the scale of grammaticalness.

In British Linguistics, the study of language, in modern terms, is supposed to have begun
with the works and contribution of J.R. Firth. There may be a dispute. Regarding the “nature
of (his contribution, but there is no doubt about the fact that he was a pioneer in the study of
language and linguistics. Perhaps it is yet too early to give an assessment of his work. But the
message spread from Firth and some of his students followed the ideas and developed his
concepts. Prof. M.A.K. Halliday is one such example. Taking the main ideas and concepts of
Firth - such as level, substance, form, concept of situation - he developed them and presented
an integrated theory of language. In the final presentation, Halliday substantially modified
Firth's ideas and notions. But the main inspiration came from Firthian inquiry. Even in the
case of Halliday, the theory has not remained the same but has undergone considerable
changes during the course of understanding and experience. But there is mo doubt that,
Halliday lays considerable emphasis on text - both verbal and written. Rhee study of
language must take into account the actual text produced in language. This fact is the
fundamental difference between Chomskian linguistics and Hallidayan linguistics. The
former is concerned with the mechanism that produces text and the latter with a mechanism
to describe the text. For this reason the Hallidayan model appears appropriate in stylistics.
Literature exists and there is a body of text known as poetry.

Stylistics is the study of the language of literature and cannot ignore a textual study. This is
the main reason for choosing largely the Hallidaian model for the present study.

DR. ANJUM ISLAM 2Page

Halliday conceives of language in terms of levels and the different levels together constitute
the meaningfulness of language. The different levels have their own organisational patterns
and therefore eve to be separately. But this does not in any way imply that each level is
independent of the others. For instance, language operates at the levels of substance, form
and situation. Substance is the physical aspect of language - the sounds or the science on a
Paper. They have their own rules and methods of organisation. A speaker or a reader knows
this aspect. Form is the basic level of organisation where words compine into a meaningful
pattern. But, Halliday looks upon the level of form as of two kinds because of the two
different kinds of constraints working almost simultaneously open in comparison to
grammatical choices which are extremely restricted. These two different kinds of choices
make the level of form. Language is a social activity and there is always a certain context or
situation in which language functions. Context or situation goes a long way in determining
the meaning in language. Halliday, therefore, recognises a level of context as well. Difficult
though it is to systematize the parameters of contexts because of their number and variability.
However, in recent years, Halliday has made certain advances and modifications in his theory
of language. Presently, he looks upon language in terms of choices - choices being crucial to
language structure. Language, Halliday maintains, is a network of choices and these choices
are finite. These choices are determined in terms of certain, mules and laws". An attempt to
determine the rules that control these choices leads to the description of language. Halliday
looks upon these choices as constituting systems, which are not arbitrary. Owing to Halliday's
emphasis on systems, the present version of Hallidayian theory has come to be known as the
“Systemic Model”. A writer/speaker operation through these systems and the reader/hearer
responds to these systems. This is the basic fact about the production and understanding of
language.

Evidently, this model is suitable to textual study where text occupies ad key position such as
poetry is given in literature and the task in stylistics is to find out the parameters or
dimensions in which the poet has made the choices that give rise to poetry. A poet makes a
Selection out of a number of possibilities and the choice of one at the same time implies the
rejection of others. For example, we can take the well known poem by Wordsworth – “A
slumber did my spirit seal, “as a case in point. The choice of “slumber” rather than sleep is
extremely significant to change them would be destroying poetry. It is this aspect of the
choices in language that needs to be investigated. Obviously, a model based on text would be
appropriate in stylistics, for that alone will provide the necessary insight into the poet’s
choice. The present study makes an attempt to study Dylan Thomas’ poems within the overall
framework of the Systemic Model.

It is neither desirable nor necessary to give a compressive, linguistic/ stylistic analysis of each
of his poems. However some poems and passage have been identified for this purpose. An

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analysis provides sufficient evidence to substantiate the feature of linguistic innovations
necessitated by the variety of themes.

We can begin with the poem ‘Light breaks where no sunshine’s’.

This poem is in regular stanza form, with a steady rhythm and occasional rhyme. Of the
various levels of meaning it communicates, I take it that the basic level is a description of the
state of existence; the theme is the process of living. In place of the usual dissonance and
rhyme, there is new assonance (shines, tides, light) i9nterwoven with tenuous consonance of
“s” in the first stanza. Later stanzas return to habitual dissonance and shades. The stanza is a
variation upon that of the “green fuse 18- almost identical is we lengthen the first line, omit
the fifth, and loosen the rythm. Similarly of form may imply similarity of subject. Certainly
the images are familiar. The monotony of thythm, the recurrence of verbal patterns the
repetition with variation in place of detectable forward movement are equally familiar.
Monotony of word and theme and repetition of pattern struk an early reviewer (in New verse,
1935) as tiresomenot functional as they could be if the theme is regular process. But the
theme is a puzzle. Is the poem about individual development from fertilised egg to maturity
and the coming of knowledge proper to each stage? Or is the poem an abstract arrangement
like a recent painting?

In the first stanza, the clue to the moment of existence occurs in the ‘warring images’ of the
last line. Since no flesh yet decks the bones, Thomas is probably referring, to the period
during or immediately after conception. Thus, the ‘light’ of prescience ‘breaks’ within the
embryo, as the blood pushes through its veins like the tides of the ocean. The phrase, ‘broken
ghosts with glow-worms in their heads’ seems to be in opposition to ‘the things of light’. The
contrast between the concrete and abstract nouns is great. More generally, the particular word
– order, ‘where no sun shines’, is established by there repetitions in the first stanza, to be
repeated with diminishing frequency in the following stanzas. Its use is both formal and
functional since it ties the poem together and permits a sharper conflict of images.

In the second stanza, the sexual symbolism of the ‘candle in the things’ is clear, and that it
‘warms youth and seed’ makes sense. The word, ‘unwrinkled’, is capable of an ironic sexual
interpretation, as well as the following phrase ‘bright as fig’ a fig may be shiny when ripe and
young, or wrinkled when dry and old. The last line varies the metaphor; ‘where no wax is’,
where there is no flash or vitality, ‘the candle shows its hairs’ the dead wick or the fleshless
bone remains. This stanza contracts the states of being young or old, virile or important.

In the third stanza, the statement that dawn breaks behind the eyes’ may refer to the arrival of
consciousness in the infant. This image is clear, but the last three lines present the jumble of
imagery. Any interpretation must hinge upon the meaning of ‘gushers of the sky’. The syntax
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is fluid and the reader is inclined to equate ‘gushers of the sky’ simply with the process of
nature and conclude that Thomas is sying that life goes on mingled with joy and sadness.

In the fourth stanza the last three lines are a variation of the preceding idea. “where no cold
is”, or “where the warmth of knowledge exists”, the “skinning glases” or the process of living
(skinning” because they flay or lay bare) loosen the winters robe “or release the cold
impulses of the unconscious. Again a sexual interpretation of skinning gales is possible. The
‘film of spring’, or the prelude to self knowledge, then becomes visible, existing just beyond
the eyelids. The contrasts in this stanza lend themselves to multiple interpretations, and the
post is in danger of loosing any precise meaning in a welter of connotations.

The last stanza is perhaps the most elusive. The process of self explorations described in
terms of the visible or conscious tips of buried thoughts which ‘smell in the rain’. The last
phrase is striking in its context but ambiguous. The next three lines, beginning with ‘when
logics die’, are a little out of key, for they appear to be an endorsement of the intuitive
existence dispenses with logic and the eye learns the ‘secret of the soil’ while life becomes
full or the ‘blood jumps in the sun’. The last line however is effective. In sudden contrast
Thomas reminds us the above the ‘wastage allotments’ of life, death is hovering ‘dawn’, a
word analgous to the words oflight with which the poem is teeming comes to end. Day may
follow, but it, tood, will held. We are born to die.

In this poem, certain of Thomas stylistics habits, such as Biblical allusions and the use of
compound words, are not represented. More central characteristic, such as the choice of
subject- matter, the method of composition, and the devices of technique are well displayed.
The poem is a good example of Thomas ‘s dialectical method in practice. The reader
sometimes find himself undergoing the discouraging experience of appearing to discover an
adequate or even thrilling meaning of a phrase, only to realize upon careful reexamination
that the phrase is more complex that he first through and rather defies interpretations. A truce
dictated by exhaustian rather than by Thomas results. Yet the effect is frequently electrical
and it may be observed that the most obscure phrases in the poem, such as ‘broken ghosts’
and ‘gushers of the sky’, owe little of their difficulty to the dialectical method. Thomas’s
obscurity seems to arise in part from his fluid syntax, although his diction and language are
seldom as simple as they appear in this poem.

He is at his best in the latter in the magnificent ‘Sonnets’; at his worst perhaps, in ‘because
the pleasure – bird whistles after the hot wires’ means ‘Because the song bird sings more
sweetly after being blinded (with red-hot needles or wires)’, drug-white shower of nerves and
food means ‘snow’, snow being seen both as the ‘snow of cocaine – addicts and as manna
from heaver; ‘a wind that plucked a goose ‘means’ a wind of fathery snow’, ‘the wild tongue
breaks its tobsm’ and the ‘red’ wagged root ‘refer to fire’; ‘bum city’ refers to Sodom, ‘bum’
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meaning simultaneously ‘bad’ and ‘given to sodomy’; the ‘frozen wife’ and ‘the salt person’
are of course lots’ wife; and so on.

1. Hasan, Ruqaiya, “Rime and Reason in Literature”, in Literary Style: A Symposim. ed.
Seymour Chatman (London : Oxford University press. 1971), p. 308.
2. Samuel R. Levin, “Deviation-Statistical and Determinate-In Poetical Language”,
Lingua, 12 (Amsterdam : North Holland Publishing Co., 1963), pp. 276-77.
3. Gewoffry N. Leech, A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (London : Longman,
1969), P. 57.
4. H.G. Widdowson, Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature (Longman, 1975) p. 5.

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