In “Base and Superstructure”, Karl Marx contemplates the reality of social consciousness and its relationship to individual agency. Marx asserts that is the process of material production that guides the political and intellectual structures of society. He theorizes that society consists of two parts: the base and the superstructure. The base reflects the forces and relationships of production (such as the relationship between employee and employer and the technical division of responsibility and labor) that people enter into in order to produce the material necessities and amenities that society relies on. The superstructure refers to all other social structures that govern and reflect ideology and culture. Marx argues that the superstructure
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It is from this concept that Saussure uses the interconnection between cultural structures and linguistic structures to further describe his linguistic theories. The sociology of human interaction is an arbitrary structure of rules and conventions that only have meaning due to the connotations that are placed there by the system it exists in. One of Saussure’s most prominent points is that meaning is derived through the structural relationships of opposition and connection that is formed by structure. This is exemplified in part of the passage where he explains that “Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better than the others the ideal of the sociological process; that is why language, the most complex and universal of all systems of expression, is also the most characteristic…” In other words, language complies with sociology because they both share a reliance on set structure to have meaning and significance. Language is as equally “arbitrary” as culture and because of this understands its structural process best. Therefore, language is the universal and most human form of expression. This relates to Saussure’s idea that language is a pre-existent system that transcends individual’s desires or intentions. It is an autonomous system of expression, that no one individual has power over. If language and sociology share the compliancy suggested above, one can assume that the creation of culture is equally arbitrary. The process to create culture is outside of an individual’s capacity and relies on the complacency of the linguistic system to form
It is from this concept that Saussure uses the interconnection between cultural structures and linguistic structures to further describe his linguistic theories. The sociology of human interaction is an arbitrary structure of rules and conventions that only have meaning due to the connotations that are placed there by the system it exists in. One of Saussure’s most prominent points is that meaning is derived through the structural relationships of opposition and connection that is formed by structure. This is exemplified in part of the passage where he explains that “Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better than the others the ideal of the sociological process; that is why language, the most complex and universal of all systems of expression, is also the most characteristic…” In other words, language complies with sociology because they both share a reliance on set structure to have meaning and significance. Language is as equally “arbitrary” as culture and because of this understands its structural process best. Therefore, language is the universal and most human form of expression. This relates to Saussure’s idea that language is a pre-existent system that transcends individual’s desires or intentions. It is an autonomous system of expression, that no one individual has power over. If language and sociology share the compliancy suggested above, one can assume that the creation of culture is equally arbitrary. The process to create culture is outside of an individual’s capacity and relies on the complacency of the linguistic system to form