Signifier and the signified

In this week’s blog post I am going to explain and try to further critique the quote by Saussure that “The bond between the signifier and the signified is radically arbitrary”. I believe that Saussure offers an interesting and unique look at the relationship between the signifier and the signified and provides some interesting insight on the relationship between the two. To start it is important to define the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the actually word that is used to describe something whereas the signified is the idea that is associated with the word. I think that Saussure is one hundred percent correct in saying the relationship between the two is arbitrary. A great example of this is one that was brought up in class a few classes back when someone said that the train they were looking for was not actually a train in the sense that we may think of it in contemporary English language. In the context that it was described train actually referred to a bus that was maybe being substituted for a train that we think of in the normative contemporary English. I think that this is a good example of how the signifier can be altered and change the meaning of the signified. The idea that there are also many different words for different objects or even places is also significant within this context. If you take for example, a car well, another world for a car is automobile. But, think for a second, a motorcycle is just as much an automobile as a car, isn’t it. Auto meaning automatic and mobile meaning moving therefore, it is automatically moving without human power (although this could also be up to interpretation. This is just another example of Saussure’s argument that the signifier and the signified are arbitrary because, they are interchangeable. I think that in order to understand this you need to think about what we talked about in class today about finding the center, although this may also be an impossible dream. Anyway these are just a few of my thoughts on Saussure’s argument that the signified and the signifier are interchangeable.