Key Terms
Sign: With Saussurean linguistics, the sign becomes the basic unit of the analysis of language. A sign is defined as a psychical entity consisting of a signifier (a sound image/pattern) and a signified (a concept). The relationship between the two is referred to as signification.

Value: The value of a sign is determined by the network of contrasts in enters into
with all the other signs in the system. (The value of a sign is not its meaning.)

Langue/Parole: According to Saussure, langue is a "body of necessary conventions adopted by society to enable members of society to use their faculty of language." Langue therefore refers to language as a system or a code. Parole is Saussure's term for the linguistic level at which individual speech acts occur. Saussure maintained that the proper object of linguistics was langue.

Paradigmatic (Associative)/Syntagmatic Relations: A paradigm is usually understood as a set from which lexical items are selected and then combined to form a syntagm. (Saussure himself did not use the term paradigmatic but instead referred to the associatve dimension of language.) The paradigmatic is often conceived of as the vertical axis of language, in contradistinction to the syntagmatic axis---the horizontal, linear axis of language that moves forward in time.

Synchrony/Diachrony: An opposition introduced by Saussure to describe two aspects of language and two corresponding approaches to linguistics. The synchronic approach studies the state of language at a given stage of its evolution, and facilitates the analysis of the system of internal relations that constitutes it as a language. The diachronic approach traces the historical evolution of a language through time. Saussure privileged the synchronic over the diachronic aspect of language.