It is most common meaning value stands for something and its price. Yet in Saussurian linguistics value (valeur) stands for something a lot different, and, frankly, hard to understand. As Saussure has put a lot of effort, into trying to make a comparison between Economics and his approach to linguistics, he also used some economical terms in his take on linguistics. Thus, one of the terms, borrowed from economics was the term in question – value.
Since diachronic linguistics is focused on researching the development/evolution of language, it ought to correspond at least in some manner to economic theory. What is more, as synchronic linguistics has as its main research focus the formal devices that operate inside a given linguistic system, it corresponds to what, in Saussure‘s time, people called “political economy” and today, we refer to as simply “economy”.
In linguistics, as well as in economics, “we are standing in front of the idea of value, both sciences are using a system that strives to equalize of objects of different categories [classes, order] – labor and its compensation in one, and signifier and signified in the other”.
