Ferdinand de Saussure is known as the father of structural linguistics and he lays out his pretty revolutionary theories in the “Course in General Linguistics” in which he explains how language is structured not as a system of innate concepts but rather how language is exactly the opposite. As he says “There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language”(Saussure 830). For Saussure, language is a constructed series of signs that are in a constant state of difference. The Sign is in a purely negative system, meaning that any sign lies in the expanse of other signs.

The way he formulates his arguments is he first identifies the characteristics of language. The first characteristic is that language as a system is fixed and words are different from each other. The second characteristic is that the study of language itself is the subject of a mostly independent study. The third characteristic is that language is arborescent in the sense that it “is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the union of meanings and sound-images”(Saussure 824). The final characteristic is that language is constructed sum of the totality of other sound-images. 

He speaks a lot of sound-image which I, at the beginning of reading the text, was under the assumption of the sound-image being a term to describe the association speech and perception but as Saussure uses it is far more. Of the nature of the sound-image he says “The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound” (Saussure 826). That is to say, at least how I understand it, that the sound image is psychological less than it is necessarily “material”.This then is opposed by the concept, which is simply the idea of whatever is being referred to. Saussure refers to these two as; the signified(concept) and the signifier (sound-image), which they come to be as a whole a sign. The relation of the two is solely abortuary, in that any succession of sounds is not linked to the idea. The sign then is not purposeful, it does not gravitate towards objects in the world, rather words come into being on a purely differential relationship. Saussure view on language gets translated into his epistemological view in which he says pretty definitively ;

“ Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.”(Saussure 830)

 We see here how Saussure thinks any talk about “innate ideas” or “a priori knowledge” is naive. For him, reality is not fixed or “true”, reality is constructed with language, with signs. The ontological conclusion could be that being in the world is purely differential. For us to be things with names and conceptions of ourselves as being things, our condition in the world is defined by structures. A structure that is not necessarily positivistic, but solely negative. We are therefore constructed and not by any means whole of ourselves, but whole as a series of differentiating signs or in other words our being in the world is defined by other beings.

In The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies by Roland Barthes, he goes in depth about, predictably, the Eiffel Tower but not about how the tower is built or why it was built but about its significance to us who view it. When we think about the Eiffel tower, the immediate thought that comes after it would Paris, at least for most people, and Barthes would agree, he says in the passage “It’s simple primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher: in turn and according to the appeals of our imagination, the symbol of Paris, of modernity.” But why is that? Looking at it purely from a observational perspective the tower is nothing more than a huge pile of welded-together metal shaped like a pointy “A”, it has no purpose whatsoever, not like how a hospital is used for treating ill people, how train stations are used to travel from one place to another, or how a convenience store is used for, well, convenience. Nothing is really noteworthy about the tower, except for maybe its monumental size but it’s not really something different from other skyscrapers that are built in other cities. Yet the tower, as Barthes puts it, “Receives each year twice as many visitors as the Louvre and considerably more than the largest movie house in Paris.” So, an obvious question would be, well why is that the case? Well, it differs from people to people, it could be that someone might want to visit the tower because it’s a historical monument, others might do so because they believe that you haven’t really been to Paris if you haven’t visited the Eiffel tower at least once, or maybe because they want to make memories they’d want to remember for the rest of their lives there. But there is one thing all of these have in common, and it’s the feeling of sublimity and power over the world. The Eiffel Tower is a bastion of humanity, it represents what we as a species are capable of and what we can yet do if we put our collective minds into it. People visit it because they want to feel like they have the world under them and that they rule it absolutely (not in a literal sense but a metaphorical one). As Barthes says “The Tower ultimately reunites with the essential function of all major human sites: autarchy.” which is a word commonly linked with absolute power. Which makes sense, the tower represents an idea and a reality that those of us who want to visit want to be apart of as well.

            In “The Eiffel Tower” Roland Barthes draws into question the cultural and symbolic significance of the Eiffel Tower. Barthes notes that the tower has come to represent Paris itself as it has heavily engrained itself within pop culture and daily Parisian life. The Eiffel Tower, true to its nature, looms over the Paris skyline as its metal trusses solidify it as both a symbol of the past and the future, “The Tower is at once a symbol of Paris, of France, and of modernity itself”. The rawness of the tower serves as the perfect place to get a panoramic view of Paris, it is, of course, natural for us to want to see the “natural” landscape of the land. We see this here in New York City with the One World Trade Center Observatory and with the Empire State Building Observatory. While looking out of The Eiffel Tower people get an over-encompassing idealistic view of daily Parisian life as everything appears orderly and almost routine similar to ants in an ant hill performing their everyday tasks while they think no on was is watching, “The Tower seems to triumph over the disorder of the city, fixing it within a frame, organizing its elements into a coherent whole.”  

            I find it interesting how Barthes toys with the idea that we as a society flock to build these huge structures that give us some sort of an understanding of the world when the world isn’t thousands of feet up in the sky but, here on the ground level. Barthes does this by posing the idea that people are so excited to express the fact that they have been to Paris and been on the Eiffel tower but, what does that truly mean? Did you just stand there and take some pictures or videos of you looking out to Paris? How does going to Paris equate to looking at Paris from hundreds of feet in the air? Barthes expresses this idea by writing, “The Tower is both an object of fascination and a mirror reflecting the desires and anxieties of the society that produced it.” It is our constant struggle to understand the world around us that drives us to construct objects that provide us with some sort of dominion over a set area and therefore allow us to feel as though we have a sort of understanding of that set area. I believe Barthes’ commentary on The Eiffel Tower could be applied to many other facets of life as it allows for the critical analysis of our cultural symbols as being more than symbols as their importance seems to change as time passes.