Remember semiosis; Drink Milk

Saussure made what is now a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech). Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users; parole refers to its use in particular instance.

‘Saussurean structuralist’ cultural theorists focus on the functions of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic ('the science of signs') systems.

But, does the system precedes and determines usage (structural determinism)?
Or whether usage precedes and determines or constrains the system (social determinism)?

Let's see an example:

Langue



Does the profound structure (the order of words, the syntax, for instance) brings most of the meaning? Or, on the other hand, is the cultural heritage connoted by the phrase is used determines the meaning the most?


Parole



Can you say "parole" three times without risking your one-ness into the conscious drama initialized by the first compasses of the song? Are you a computer too? Or maybe you've been advised or prevented of being emotive by the fact that you already know it's a song-sing of a feeling that you consciously decide not to walk down in the hipotetical map of actual awareness provided by some critical narrative form of being yourself?

mm, mea culpa: The prioritization of structure over usage fails to account for changes in structure.

extra: While formerly the emphasis was on studying sign systems (language, literature, cinema, architecture, music, etc.), conceived of as mechanisms that generate messages, what is now being examined is the work performed through them. It is this work or activity which constitutes and/or transforms the codes, at the same time as it constitutes and transforms the individuals using the codes, performing the work; the individuals who are, therefore, the subjects of semiosis.

Sequela: World is a sign of the past: semiosis: 'Semiosis', a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce, is expanded by Eco to designate the process by which a culture produces signs and/or attributes meaning to signs. Although for Eco meaning production or semiosis is a social activity, he allows that subjective factors are involved in each individual act of semiosis. The notion then might be pertinent to the two main emphases of current, or poststructuralist, semiotic theory. One is a semiotics focused on the subjective aspects of signification and strongly influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, where meaning is construed as a subject-effect (the subject being an effect of the signifier). The other is a semiotics concerned to stress the social aspect of signification, its practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal communication; there, meaning is construed as semantic value produced through culturally shared codes. (de Lauretis 1984, 167)

Fuente: Semiotics for beginners de Daniel Chandler.