Sign Theories: Ferdinand de Saussure

Saussure’s sign theory, to the mainstream public, is only bound to the diagram vulgarized by the CGL edition, but this alone is not enough in order to illustrate the form, content and evolution of the theory, and indeed may be misleading. For this reason, I will rst develop a sketchy history of the sign (and sign-related) diagrams; then, I will present a description of the internal and external structure of the sign in Saussure’s mature sign theory; nally, I will come to the topic of arbitrariness, whose explanation must be two-sided: from a formal/abstract perspective, it is the result of complexity, but from a social/ institutional perspective, it is related to the speaking subject’s awareness about the“social product” that circulates within a community of speakers one belongs to.