A Brief History of Modern Linguistics

Importantly, de Saussure went on to show that the same thought can be applied to other systems of meaning, such as games. Imagine a game of chess. Because you like travelling and take your chess board everywhere, you happened to have lost the figure of the white king. But if you inform your opponent before every came that the coin you take out of your pocket represents the white king and all his properties, like being able to move only one square at a time, you can still enjoy the game as much as before. Hence, every element in a system of meaning only acquires its identity through its position within that same system and, importantly, by being what other elements are not. There is nothing ”king-like” about the coin, but it gains its identity by virtue of not being a queen, a rook, or a bishop. Therefore, for Saussure ”concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what others are not”.