It's all relative man

"the bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary" (35).

According to Saussure, the signifier is a concept or an idea and the signified is a sound image.  The term signification denotes the bonding of a signifier and a signified (a liaison that is inseparable), resulting in a sign.  This sign becomes a part of a language, which is ultimately a system of signs used to represent ideas (through a collaboration of sound images and mental concepts) agreed upon by a community. 

Essentially, Saussure says that the sign of an idea has no relevance or connection to the phonic substance; it is selected with no rationale (which in itself is impossible to do, and further exemplifies how vague and arbitrary words and articles are).  When trying to comprehend what language does, Saussure proposes that it has a role to serve as a link between thought and sound, resulting in form and not substance. (35).  This statement explains that a sign does have a logical structure, but that the substance of that sign is not a result of the link between thought and sound, rendering it nonessential and random.  Take the word tree for instance; at some point, a community decided that “tree” was going to be what we call that huge plant-like tower of wood with leaves on it growing from the ground.  Calling it a “flog” wouldn’t change the concept we have of that image, nor would it change the image itself, it would only change what we refer to the image as.  The fact that words vary in meanings depending on the language they are spoken in is evidence that words do not represent pre-existing concepts.

For a practical understanding of Saussure’s proposition that language is arbitrary of meaning, a comparison of the meaning of words between other languages at any one time (concerning synchronic linguistics) can be an effective analysis.  The verb “regard” in English emphasizes “to consider”, “to think” or “to gaze”, “in a specific way”.  “Regarder”, en français, solely means “to look at” or “to gaze”.  The difference between the values of both words is the additional “in a specific way” for English’s “regard”, whereas “regarder” is the normal “to look at” in French. 

A further elucidating example of how the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary is the universal understanding that language has been vastly altered over the course of three hundred years.  However, that understanding refers to diachronic linguistics, a post-structuralist view.

"you can't use a bulldozer to study orchids”

The Magnetic Fields - The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure

This lyric is from the Magnetic Fields’ “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure”, in which the songwriter asks Ferdinand Saussure about love.  If you were to conjure the image of a bulldozer and an orchid trying to do what they do simultaneously, whatever that may be, would you not already have created a separation between the two?  Think of the adjectives you would use to describe the characteristics of each noun.  There is a high contrast between the two in each and every adjective being used to demonstrate their relations.  One is beautiful whilst the other is ugly, just as one is bright and the other is dark.  These binary oppositions can be translated into social, political, and familial relations through the concept of hierarchy, or domination.  If you’d like a more simple explanation, there is a relative difference present between the nouns.  This difference may also be regarded as applicable to all aspects of linguistic studies and semantics. 

The song itself is sung with a slight French accent in order to emphasize the phonetic influence of a signifier on the signified.  For example, the rhyme of three words in the first verse, “Saussure”, “so sure” and “closure” are additional to the slight accent that manages to fool the listener into thinking of “Saussure” when really “so sure” is being sung.  This concept delves more so into the material influence of phonic differences. 

Another apparent analysis of the song is the chorus about our (that is, “you” and “I”)’s relation to love:

“He said…
So we don’t know anything
You don’t know anything
I don’t know anything
about love
But we are nothing
You are nothing
I am nothing
Without love”

The Magnetic Fields ingeniously include Saussure’s proposition concerning the bond between signifier and signified as arbitrary by saying that although “you” and “I” don’t know anything about the idea of “love”, we are all considered to be “nothing” without “love”, exemplifying the interdependence of these ideas needed in order to produce the value of each one.  It further demonstrates Saussure’s notion that signs are arbitrary through the necessity that social community is needed to fix values.  The unity of a random sound and a random concept is not enough to formulate the term.  (35).  Saussure mentions the seemingly paradox propositions that a concept appears to be the counterpart of the sound image, while on the other hand, the sign itself is the counterpart of other signs of language.  Therefore it follows, validly, that language becomes a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of others.  (36).  Language is constitutive.

Moreover, the lyric relates to Saussure because the study of love cannot be understood scientifically the way language can be studied.  It is in opposition to his theory about language, which looks at its structure and not the content.  In order to understand love, we need to study content, love is not structured.