Page 173 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

162 Chapter Seven

ink on paper, of chalk on the blackboard, of sound waves in air, of current flow
in a wire, etc. 2

Von Weizsäcker’s conception of information has affinity with the sign as
developed by the Swiss linguist and founder of semiology Ferdinand de Saus-
sure (1857–1913), and it certainly is worthwhile drawing connections be-
tween the two. De Saussure maintained that signs are dual, that they comprise
both a sound presence (or, in the case of written language, a visual form)
which he termed the signifier, and a mental image (the signified) that is expe-
3
rienced by those recognizing the signifier. One hears the word C-O-W, for in-
stance, and the mind thereupon pictures an image (“concept”) that it associ-
ates with that sound. For de Saussure, both signifier and signified (i.e., both
sound-image and concept, or sound and thought) are form, not substance. De
Saussure’s linguistic sign, in other words, is “wholly immaterial.” 4
In effect, von Weizsäcker corrected, or at least extended, de Saussure’s
analysis by recognizing that a sound or a visual shape needs to be carried or
embodied by a material substrate, such as air, or ink on paper. Matter and
form, von Weizsäcker noted, are conceptual complements: “In the realm of
the concrete, no form exists without matter; nor can there be matter without
5
form.” (See figure 7.1.)
Regrettably, neither de Saussure nor von Weizsäcker had much to say about
the formation of codes—that is, about how forms come to mean. De Saussure
did insist, however, that signifieds (the mental images, or “concepts”) are
joined with signifiers (the forms or sounds) by social convention. C-O-W and
V-A-C-H-E have similar meanings (“signifieds”), albeit to different language
groups, but neither of these two signifiers bears an intrinsic relation (such as
resemblance) to either the signified or to the referent (object or class of ob-
jects in the material world).
Although de Saussure’s semiology was entirely synchronic, which is to say he
sought to explain language as a system as it exists at a given moment, irrespec-
tive of its history and abstracting from external factors that may have impinged
upon it, in his preliminary remarks he indeed acknowledged that language inter-
acts recursively with the external (nonverbal) world. As his comments in this re-
gard are seldom recounted, it is worthwhile reproducing them here:

Linguistics borders on ethnology, all the relations that link the history of a lan-
guage and the history of a race or civilization. . . . The culture of a nation exerts
an influence on its language, and the language, on the other hand, is largely re-
sponsible for the nation. Second come the relations between language and po-
litical history. Great historical events like the Roman conquest have an incalcu-
lable influence on a host of linguistic facts. Colonization, which is only one