Page 64 - Decoding Culture

ENTER STRUCTURAUSM 57
terms of seeing the signifier as unmotivated, as having no 'natural'
connection to the signified. The idea 'cat' has no intrinsic link with
the sequence of sounds c-a-t; the connection is conventional and
has been socially established. Of course, there are systems using
signs that are to some degree non-arbitrary or 'natural'. Saussure
mentions mime as an example, and later in the Cours finds it nec­
essary to distinguish between absolute and relative arbitrariness,
conceding even that 'the sign may be motivated to a certain extent'
(ibid: 130). Interestingly, this problem was to re-emerge in later
applications of semiology in cultural studies, where, for instance,
considerable energies were devoted to considering whether and in
what degree the relation of photographic (and cinematic) signi­
fiers to their signifieds could be described as arbitrary. But the
more immediate significance of Saussure's concept of the arbitrary
sign is twofold: it again underscores the socially relative character
of signification systems, and it leads us toward a concept of lan­
guage as a relational system of differences.
On the former, this passage sums up the generality and social
significance of the claim of arbitrariness:

the main object of study in semiology will [none the less] be the
class of systems based upon the arbitrary nature of the sign. For
any means of expression accepted in a society rests in principle
upon a collective habit, or on convention, which comes to the same
thing. Signs of politeness, for instance, although often endowed
with a certain natural expressiveness (prostrating oneself nine
times on the ground is the way to greet an emperor in China) are
none the less fixed by rule. It is this rule which renders them oblig­
atory, not their intrinsic value. W e may therefore say that signs
which are entirely arbitrary convey better than others the ideal
semiological process. (ibid: 68)

This 'ideal semiological process' rests on a langue, of course, and is
composed of elements carrying meaning by virtue of their

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