That is, signs are created by their value relationships with other signs. The contrasts that form between signs of the same nature in a network of relationships are how signs derive their meaning. As the translator of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, Roy Harris, puts it:.
The essential feature of Saussure's linguistic sign is that, being intrinsically arbitrary, it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system (p. x).
In Saussure's theory of linguistics, the signifier is the sound/image and the signified is the concept. The linguistic sign is neither conceptual nor phonic, neither thought nor sound. Rather, it is the whole of the link that unites sound and idea, signifier and signified. The properties of the sign are by nature abstract, not concrete. Saussure states that the sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'signification'. "A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified- (Saussure 101-03). A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified. The same signifier could stand for a different signified (and thus be a different sign). The signifier is now commonly interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign - it is something which can be seen, heard, or touched. For Saussure, both the signifier and the signified were purely 'psychological' (12, 14-15, 66). Saussure continues by stating:.
The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it material, it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract (66).