Ferdinand de Saussare's Linguistic Theory

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1966) came up with the theory that states that social life is governed by a series of codes. These codes that are type of working language essentially provide how people interpret and understand both aspects of their personal everyday life and the role of governments, media, firms and other organizations. These codes, learnt through growing up in a culture. They are the frames for social action.

An important feature of de Saussure's approach is his interest in synchronic, rather than diachronic, studies of language. De Saussure argues that, at any particular point in time, language must exist as a system a series of related parts that are inseparable and form a system of linguistic communication. This system is not necessarily closed or inflexible as language conventions change over time. Yet at any point in time language can be analyzed as a communicative system.

De Saussure argues that scholars must understand these linguistic structures as: (i) irreducibly psychological; (ii) intrinsically contoured by social-communal codes; and, above all, (iii) as a system. Thus language is a social institution, whose structures must be understood on their own terms 'in itself', and as a system of relations.

De Saussure further distinguished between langue and parole to emphasize the 'systemness' of linguistic phenomena. Langue is referred to language, while parole refers to speech. De Saussure has referred to Langue as the underlying rules and principles that govern the use of language refer to its systemic quality for example, the order in which we combine words to make sense. On the other hand, parole refers to the phonic and psychological manifestations of language talk, utterances and sounds that comprise the surface of language.