2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

F ORM AND CONTENT
that the former possesses and the latter does not.”(ib.) The form that gets thematized, there-
fore, is produced by all the oppositions that bind together and at the same time separates
the various terms within a system. In other words: there is not a formal side of the term
sheep that can be neatly separated from its content. Rather, for de Saussure, there is a series
of oppositions that differentiates sheep from mutton, for example, and it is this series of op-
position that can be called formal. The system is formal because it detaches (e.g. it “ab-
stracts” from) the single terms whose value is determined “not positively, in terms of their
content, but negatively, by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes
each most exactly is being what others are not” (Leur plus exacte caractéristique est d’être
ce que les autres ne sont pas). 10
In structural linguistics, and in structural anthropology as well, the abstraction entails
a shift of the attention from the terms to their mutual relationships that leaves aside the con-
tent of the terms considered in themselves and focuses instead on their mutual oppositions.
Consider one last example, this one proposed by Louis Hjelmslev, perhaps the most rigor-
ous structural linguist to follow in de Saussure’s path:
Confront the following correspondences between Danish, German and
French:
træ
skov
Baum
Holz
Wald
arbre
bois
forêt
we may conclude from this fact that in one of the two entities that are
functives of the sign function, namely the content, the sign function institutes
a form, the content-form, which from the point of view of the purport
is arbitrary, and which can be explained only by the sign function and is obviously
solidary with it. In this sense, Saussure is clearly correct in distinguishing
between form and substance. 11
10. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours…, 162; Engl. tr. 115. Emphasis added
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