Language allows us to communicate within society, but it also tells us a lot about the society in which it is used. If you want to get all Sherlock Holmes with a language, you can discover 1) what that language says about a culture's social interactions, and 2) how its speakers use language to describe and understand the world. It may not seem like much in our 140-character world, but Saussure recognized the important cultural meaning of words. It's a truth pretty much universally acknowledged that Saussure is the founder of twentieth-century linguistics, more specifically known as Structural Linguistics. It's all in them words, so get out your toolkit and start taking apart any and every metaphor, symbol, narrative device, and figure of speech that comes your way. According to Saussure, if you're interested in understanding a culture, you have to start with that culture's language. Saussure and his peeps held the strong conviction that language forms the way we think, and that, in turn, in turn influences culture. We'll get into the hairy details later, but for now, it helps to know that semiotics studies the social function of language-language as it is spoken by real, live people. Ever heard of words? Well, then you're already interested in the work of Switzerland's very own Ferdinand de Saussure, the granddaddy of linguistics (the science of language) and semiotics (the "science of signs," in case you aren't fluent in Greek).
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