The fourth principle is the principle of ideality. Langueis an abstract, ideal
system, realised in parole, or a biological competence realised in performance.
Even if competence is materially inscribed in the body, the genes, and the
neuronal circuits, it stands in the same relation to concrete acts of paroleas
the sonata does to its interpretations. Its existence is ideal; it is a (re)construction
of the mind.
The fifth principle is the principle of systematicity. This is the principle which
states that language is a fixed code, that a language is a set of rules, that what
is relevant for the study of language is not parole– endlessly variable and
chaotic – but langue, in that it is systematic. (Various systems of rules will be
distinguished, at various hierarchical levels of the system: phonological,
morphological, syntactic, semantic rules – langueis a stack of levels.) This
reinforces the principle of immanence: it is because langueis systematic that
it is self-sufficient, at least for the purposes of scientific study.
The sixth principle is the principle of synchrony. The system is immune, if
not to change, then at least to history. This means that linguistic change does
indeed occur, but it is not constituted in history: we pass in one bound from
one system to the next. The system is studied in the a-historical present of
the essential section. And since it has to be conceded that there is change in
language, a couple of concepts are fashioned: synchrony – the ideal, abstract
moment of the analysis of the system – and diachrony – the transition from
one synchronic moment to another. Obviously, as is always the case with
philosophical dichotomies (mind/body, etc.), one of the terms is hierarchically
superior to the other: diachrony is relegated by systematic linguistics to its
margins. And, yet, we can ask in the case of a given language – English, for
example – what this a-temporal moment of synchrony is. If it is comparatively
easy to decide that the texts of Old or Middle English belong to different
synchronic moments (and thus to other languages – even though they are
always named as variants of ‘English’), we can ponder what should be done
with seventeenth- or eighteenth-century English, which presents considerable
differences from contemporary English (it is hard to read Shakespeare unless
the text is heavily annotated).
These six principles constitute the skeletal structure of the dominant
philosophy of language: they underpin the ideology of communication, form
the substratum of the spontaneous philosophy of scientists, and are developed,
refined, and sometimes contradicted in explicit philosophies of language. We
Critique of the Philosophy of Language • 69