Saussure
points out that the value of signs is culture-specific. The French mouton
may have the same meaning as the English sheep, but it does not have the
same value. Why? Because English has the terms mutton and sheep,
a distinction which is not available in French. He emphasizes that a sign gains
its value from its relation to other similar values. Without such
a relationship signification would not exist
SYNTAGM
This is a very useful
insight in the analysis of signs. Language is linear: you produce one sound
after another; words follow one another. When we think of signs interlinked in
this way (for example she+can+go), then we are thinking of them in terms
of what Saussure calls a syntagm. There is a syntagmatic relationship
between them.
PARADIGM
However, at the same time
as we produce these signs linked to one another in time, we also do something
which is outside that temporal sequence: we choose a sign from a whole range of
alternative signs. So, when a journalist writes:
IRA terrorists overran an
army post in Londonderry in Northern
Ireland
s/he chooses each sign
from a range of alternatives. S/he could say:
'IRA active units', 'IRA
paramilitaries', 'IRA freedom fighters', 'IRA lunatics'
S/he could refer to
Londonderry as 'Derry', the name more commonly used by nationalists; s/he could
refer to Northern Ireland as
'Ulster ', the 'Six Counties
When we look at this range
of possibilities, we are examining a paradigm. We are examining the
paradigmatic relationship between signs. Not uncommonly, syntagm and paradigm
may be conceived of as two axes:
The signs signify because
of their value, which derives from the relationship between them. How
can you say that repeated occurrences of the same word are in fact the same
word? Saussure gives the example of two 8.45pm expresses from Geneva
to Paris
We can examine the syntagms
and paradigms in any medium. In Advertising as Communication Gillian
Dyer takes the example of a photographic sign, namely the use of a stallion in
a Marlboro ad. The paradigm from which the stallion is drawn includes ponies,
donkeys, mules, mares. The connotations of stallion rely, on the reader's
cultural knowledge of a system which can relate a stallion to feelings of
freedom, wide open prairies, virility, wildness, individuality, etc.. Why were
these choices made? What is communicated by them?
One way to examine the ideological
meaning suggested by the signs in the message is to see how the message would
differ if another were chosen from the relevant paradigm.
For more on the nature of the sign an de Saussure's thought:
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