Page 78 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

DIACHRONIC

See also: Globalisation, Privatisation, Regulation

Further reading: DeRosa (2001); Gayle and Goodrich (1990); Head (1991);
Kellner (1990)

DIACHRONIC

To study something diachronically is to study it as a system changing
over time. The term diachronic is particularly associated with the work
of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who set up a distinction in
linguistic study between studying language as a system of meanings at
one moment in time (synchronic linguistics) and studying changes in the
system of meanings from one temporal point to another (diachronic
linguistics). When he formulated this distinction (first made public in
his 1911 lectures) the linguistics of his day was still concerned
primarily with historical analysis. It was thus concerned with the
origins of language and families of languages; with changes in
pronunciation from one period to another; and with tracing changes
in the meaning of individual words from their origin in a source
language. Saussure regarded these endeavours as fundamentally flawed,
because they were atomistic and neglected the inter-related compo-
nents of the system by focusing on isolated elements. The proper
historical study of language depended, for Saussure, on initially
describing the overall shape of the language, synchronically, before
proceeding to the description of its change over time. Synchronic
study, in Saussure’s view, was prior to diachronic study; and the latter
became – in effect – the comparison of temporally discrete synchronic
states.
In this sense, Saussure was not, as has sometimes been claimed,
against the historical study of language. On the contrary, he was
concerned to establish the historical study of language (diachrony)ona
sounder footing. However, one effect of his Course in General
Linguistics ([1916] 1974) was to re-orient the whole direction of
linguistic research away from the study of historical change towards the
current state of the language, so that historical linguistics has, until
recently, suffered a long period of neglect.
See also: Synchronic

Further reading: Culler (1976); Saussure (1974)

63