Langue vs. Parole – these are French terms, usually translated as language and speech (discourse).
In The Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure separates Langue from parole. Saussure deals with the reorientation of linguistics (the study of language) from a historical or diachronic perspective to a systematic or synchronic study.
He denies the possibility of a combined study between synchronic and diachronic forms.
The main thing around which this reorientation revolves is the separation of language (langue) from speech or discourse (parole).
This binary opposition penetrates deep into structuralism and semiotics.
In fact, structuralism is a generalization of Saussure‘s approach to the study of language.
The way in which the author of The Course in General Linguistics proposes to study language can be applied to the study of culture (for example, Claude Lévi-Strauss), or reason (Jean Piaget), or the unknowable (Jacques Lacan).
