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Concept
Langue and parole
Summary
Langue and parole is a theoretical linguistic dichotomy distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics.
The French term langue ('[an individual] language') encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system; it is independent of, and pre-exists, the individual user. It involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful utterance, or parole, would be possible.
In contrast, parole ('speech') refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue, including texts which provide the ordinary research material for linguistics.
Structural linguistics, as proposed by Saussure, assumes a non-biological standpoint of culture within the nature–nurture divide. Langue and parole make up two thirds of Saussure's speech circuit (French: circuit de la parole); the third part being the brain, where the individual's knowledge of language is located. The speech circuit is a feedback loop between the individual speakers of a given language. It is an interactive phenomenon: knowledge of language arises from language usage, and language usage arises from knowledge of language. Saussure, however, argues that the true locus of language is neither in the verbal behaviour (parole) nor in the mind of the speakers, but is situated in the loop between speech and the individual, existing as such nowhere else but only as a social phenomenon within the speech community.
Consequently, Saussure rejects other contemporary views of language and argues for the autonomy of linguistics. According to Saussure, general linguistics is not:
the study of human mind, as thought by structural psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt (and, later, generative and cognitive linguists).
the study of evolutionary psychology or the biological research of living organisms as claimed by Charles Darwin and the evolutionary linguists (which would later include 'usage-based linguistics' which also argues for a feedback loop between the speakers, but without the emergent langue phenomenon).
Official source
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