They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world.

This typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human sciences.

It consists of two physical elements: the brain, representing the personal-psychological aspect of speaking; and speech, which is the result of the vocal organs producing sound waves.

Third, language (not visible in the picture), with its rules, arises from the speech circuit socially and historically as a non-physical phenomenon.

However, Saussure considers it "concrete" and not an abstraction, making language the suitable subject of linguistics as a natural science.

However, based on William Dwight Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language (1875), Saussure emphasizes that the concept of 'life' is in this context metaphorical and not biological.

[2] Cultural historian Egbert Klautke notes that Saussure borrowed his language-versus-speech distinction from his teacher Heymann Steinthal, who proposed Völkerpsychologie.

[3] This collectivist view became later known as the standard social science model (SSSM), thus also representing the most common understanding of culture in contemporary sociology.

Saussure explains further that language arises as a well-defined homogeneous object from the heterogeneous mass of speech facts.

Through the interaction of language and speech, however, concepts (the signified part of the sign), are likewise founded on social contract.

In practice, Saussure proposes that general linguistics consists of the analysis of language itself by way of semantics, phonology, morphology, lexicology, and grammar.

For practical reasons, linguists mostly use texts to analyse speech to uncover the systemic properties of language.

Indeed, the basic insight of Saussure's thought is that denotation, the reference to objects in some universe of discourse, is mediated by system-internal relations of difference.

In further support of the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure goes on to argue that if words stood for pre-existing universal concepts they would have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next and this is not so.

An obvious example is in the English number system: That is, though twenty and two might be arbitrary representations of a numerical concept, twenty-two, twenty-three etc.

However, Saussure argues that, on closer etymological investigation, onomatopoeic words can, in fact, be unmotivated (not sharing a likeness), in part evolving from non-onomatopoeic origins.

Finally, Saussure considers interjections and dismisses this obstacle with much the same argument, i.e., the sign/signifier link is less natural than it initially appears.

He invites readers to note the contrast in pain interjection in French (aie) and English (ouch).

The set of synonyms redouter ("to dread"), craindre ("to fear"), and avoir peur ("to be afraid"), for instance, have their particular meaning so long as they exist in contrast to one another.

This is an important fact to realize for two reasons: (A) it allows Saussure to argue that signs cannot exist in isolation, but are dependent on a system from within which they must be deduced in analysis, rather than the system itself being built up from isolated signs; and (B) he could discover grammatical facts through syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses.

To consider a language synchronically is to study it "as a complete system at a given point in time," a perspective he calls the AB axis.

Saussure notes that a person joining the audience of a game already in progress requires no more information than the present layout of pieces on the board and who the next player is.

The other kind of variation, diversity of relationship, represents infinite possibilities for comparisons, through which it becomes clear that dialects and languages differ only in gradient terms.

Initially, there is no difference between the language spoken by the colonists on the new island and their homeland counterparts, in spite of the obvious geographical disconnect.

Saussure thereby establishes that the study of geographical diversity is necessarily concentrated upon the effects of time on linguistic development.

The "wave" concept is integral to Saussure's model of geographical linguistics—it describes the gradient manner in which dialects develop.

Linguistic waves, according to Saussure, are influenced by two opposed forces: parochialism, which is the basic tendency of a population to preserve its language's traditions; and intercourse, in which communication between people of different areas necessitates the need for cross-language compromise and standardization.

Nevertheless, differentiation will continue in each area, leading to the formation of distinct linguistic branches within a particular family.