Bella 1/22 Post Class

“In language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound” de Saussure (6). In class today you described sound and thought as a mathematical equation, that one cannot exist without the other. One cannot exist without the other, but without the cultural understanding of what each thought/sound expression means, the meaning cannot be expressed. I could say, I am cold, but if no one understood my word for that sensation, they wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. Without an understanding of feeling cold, my words would mean nothing, anyway.

“Choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary”-de Saussure. When I was younger, I was one of those weird kids that tried to make up their own language (after deciding Pig Latin was beneath me), and tried to teach all of my friends so we could communicate in secret code. We had a notebook covered in unicorn and puppy stickers that we kept all our “dictionary”, all the words we had come up with. Ultimately, we decided that a bunch of 8 year olds would have a hard time coming up with an entire language, so we just created funny substitutes for our words-of-choice. I love the idea that our language was completely made up over time…some dude made up words, decided they would mean something, and lucky for him, they stuck. It is a cultural phenomenon today that words can disappear just as fast as they appear. Media has an enormous influence over pop-culture and slang word uses–the word, Fergalicious, for instance. I’m not quite sure how Fergie intended it to be used in vocabulary, but I am pretty sure that it means something cool. The ‘licious’ craze has hit the streets, being added on to describe something like ‘booty-licious’ (Thank you, Beyoncé).