Research On Saussure’s Meaning Theory And Its Influence

The linguistic theory of Saussure plays a significant role in the history of linguistics,but so far there has been little systematical research on his meaning theory. Starting from the origin of Saussure’s meaning theory, based on his works such as "Manuscript of General Linguistics", "Course in General Linguistics" and "The Third Course in General Linguistics", we study the theory of meaning in a systematical way, including his cognition and definition of value, his analysis on the relationship among value, concept and meaning, as well as his understanding to the problems of meaning in real language expressing.Chapter one is an introduction to the origin of Saussure’s meaning theory and a brief discussion of it’s background and theory basis.Chapter two is the body of this paper, in which we collect all the discourses on value, concept and meaning in Saussure’s theory of meaning. The first part is about the definition, feature and manifestation mode of value; Then it comes to the analysis of relationship between value and concept; Finally we make interpretation about concept, meaning and the meaning in real context.Chapter three mainly introduces the re-interpretation of Saussure’s meaning theory in Western semiology. The first part writes about the limitation of his theory and the gap in semiotic meaning theory opened by Hjelmslev glossematics. The second part introduces that Roland Barthes’ semiology brought some amendment on Saussure’s meaning theory and combined the latter with language expressing. The third part tells how Graemes studies meaning from the aspect of structure. Likewise, he seperates the reference into expression and content, with expression being the structure of meaning and content being the feeling of people in real context. In the combination between Saussure’s meaning theory and real context, a good interpretation has been given on structure and meaning, value and concept, system and expression with "the structure of meaning".