Michael Agar highlights the way in which Ferdinand de Saussure believed in language as a systematic structure serving as a link between thought and sound. He thought of language sounds as a series of linguistic signs that are purely arbitrary. It seems clear that Saussure is saying that any language is a self-contained system of signs, in which each element is meaningless by itself and meaningful only by its differentiation from the other elements in paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships. However, did Saussure overemphasize the arbitrary, symbolic relation between signs and signifiers? I ask this because how do all of the relationships discussed (iconic and indexical included) connect to one another to create something meaningful, as opposed to meaningless?
And also, focusing on the way in which Saussure studied “language” over “speech”, distinguishing the two on pg 37, it is not clear to me how using this history Agar is suggesting we can erase the Circle?