Application Of Saussure's Theory Of Sign To English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning

The discussions about the nature of signs had never stopped since the day human civilization was born. In spite of the attention from many great philosophers and linguists, the discussions had not found an accordant direction until the day Saussure finally guided the discussions to the way to an independent discipline.About the nature of sign, many great scholars put forward their own understandings, among which the most famous ones are Saussure's dyadic model and Pierce's triadic model.It is very important for a foreign language learner to acquire enough vocabulary knowledge. Because of its importance, many studies had been carried out to find more efficient and workable methods to help students learn new words faster are carried out. The paper tries to find such a method by applying Saussure's theory of sign and linguistic value theory into the practical English vocabulary teaching and learning.Saussure revolutionarily proposes that the linguistic sign should be a two-sided entity in nature. And he uses signifier and signified as the linguistic terms for sound-image and concept respectively. He emphasizes that signifier and signified actually exist as the components of a sign, and in no case can either of them appear alone. The appearance of one should definitely call for the appearance of the other. Only the combination of both of them can be called a sign. A single sound-image is completely meaningless unless it carries a corresponding concept, vise versa. It is impossible to find a totally formless signified either.Another important theory put forward by Saussure as a part of synchronic linguistics is Linguistic value. It is the last thing that can be missed if anyone wants to have an accurate account of Saussure's theory of sign. Saussure believes that the value of a sign works when it has other simultaneous presence of the other signs. But concept, is just an abstract component of a sign whose task is to work together with its counterpart, sound-image, to differentiate the sign that carries them from the other ones.So, the paper assumes that one of the reasons that some of the students can not memorize English vocabulary efficiently is that oversimplified English-Chinese vocabulary list and mechanical learning mode make student link merely English signifier (sound-image) and Chinese signified (sound-image), therefore makes the connection very vulnerable and unserviceable.Based on the Saussure's sign model and language value theory and the supports from cognitive science, the following hypotheses are put forward:Conscious or unconscious awareness of the existence of concept in the learner's mind can make the establishment of the connection between English sound-image and Chinese concept more natural.At the first stage of learning a word, if the students learn the value of a word, instead of the concept, it will make the connection more durable and workable.A proper context can strengthen the connection between sound-image and value (or a concept. The concept shows here because for some proper nouns, their value is almost equal to their concept in the nature).In a word, this paper tries to explore a possible access to an effective and easy way of acquiring English words according to Saussure's sign theory and hopes just in case that the forthcoming results could be a positive support for Saussure's theory.The paper consists of five chapters. It begins with an introductive chapter including general theoretical background, aim and significance of the study. Chapter Two is an overall review of basic sign theory of Saussure with focus on the nature of sign and linguistic value theory. Besides, further discussions and development about Saussure's theory are also included in this part. Chapter Three plays a vital role in the whole paper, because it explores the basic idea of the paper. It presents an experiment from the hypothesis to some detailed information about the experiment, such as objective, subjects and procedures. In Chapter Four, the data from the experiment are analyzed and a general conclusion is got from the analysis. Chapter Five summarizes the whole paper and offers more possibility for the future researches.