A língua como instituição social: contribuições de Ferdinand Saussure

Abstract

This article seeks to reflect on the social nature of language in Saussurian thought. To this end, we consider the conception of language as a social institution adopted by Saussure, differentiating it from the conception adopted by William Dwight Whitney (1827-1824) - an American linguist. This discussion is justified by the need to reassess the relevance of Saussure's thought and its productivity in the contemporary scenario of language science investigations. This is an exploratory research, of bibliographical nature, whose analyses are based on the Course of General Linguistics (2012 [1916]) and on Notes for an article about Whitney, published in the Writings of General Linguistics (2004), organized and edited by Simón Bouquet and Rudolf Engler. After the analysis, we found that Saussure was still dealing with epistemological uncertainties essential to the formulation of his theory, highlighting the specificities of language as an activity that is situated at the level of the unconscious, making its value shifts impossible in the face of individual and or collective will in a general and sudden way. In this perspective, he considered language an institution without analogue, since its nature is twofold.