Ferdinand Saussure
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The Arbitrariness of the sign is the organizing principle for the whole of linguistics. The most important of these consequences is what is not arbitrary about the signifier, but is necessary in order that it have meaning: The differences that distinguish it from all other signifiers in the linguistic system.
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Language is a series of distinctions (synchronic/diachronic, language/langue, langue/parole, signifier/signified), and two basic and related principles (the arbitrariness of the sign and the differential nature of langue).
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Language is most usefully regarded not as a kind of linguistic mirror for representing the world, but as a system of signs (which refer to objects in the real world).
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Langue is a system of signs based on the principle of difference, difference between different signifiers on the one hand, and difference between different signifieds on the other. The signifier 'horse' is identifiable only to the extent that it is phonetically distinct from other signifiers (for example, 'course' or 'norse')... the signified 'horse' makes sense only in relation to a network of concepts from which it differs (in the same category, 'ass' or 'donkey').
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Langue is characterized by reversible time (synchonic) and parolei is a kind of situational particularity existing in non-reversible time (diachronic).
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Langue is made up only of differences and no positive terms. It includes neither ideas nor sounds existing prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences arising out of that system.
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Langue is not a function of the speaking subject, it is the social part of language, external to the individual, who by himself is powerless either to create it or to modify it. It exists only in virtue of a kind of contract agreed between the members of a community.
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Langue is the legislative part of language, and parole (speech) as the executive part of language, the concrete instantiation of langue in the individual and particular acts of speaking or writing, for example. (232).
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Meaning is not about connections with the world 'out there', but contrasts within the closed sign system. Meaning is based on difference within language, not reference without.
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Motivatedness is the admixture and process of ideology and arbitrariness in living language which must be ignored as an analytic self-constraint in order for his sign system to function coherently.
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A Sign is made up of two closely linked elements. The first is the signified, which is the mental or cognitive image we have in our heads of the thing or object being referred to.
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A Signifier is a sound-image, a word, while the signified is a concept, for example 'the concept 'tree'.
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The Signifier is the 'sensible' side of the sign, the carrier of sense (saussure specifies that it is the 'acoustic image' of a sound, for instance, and not the sound itself), while the signified is the mental construct or concept corresponding to a given signifier.