32 Adelbert Denaux system (langue) and speech (parole): “Linguistic structure (langue) ... is not, in our opinion, simply the same as language (langage). Linguistic structure (langue) is only part of language (langage), even though it is an essential part. The structure of a language (langue) is a social product of our language faculty. At the same time, it is also a body of necessary conventions adopted by society to enable members of society to use their language faculty” (pp. 9-10); “By distinguishing between the language itself (langue) and speech (parole), we distinguish at the same time: (1) what is social from what is individual, and (2) what is essential from what is ancillary and more or less accidental. The language itself (langue) is not a function of the speaker. It is the product passively registered by the individual … Speech (parole), on the contrary, is an individual act of the will and the intelligence, in which one must distinguish: (1) the combinations through which the speaker uses the code provided by the language (langue) in order to express his own thought, and (2) the psycho-physical mechanism which enables him to externalise these combinations” (pp. 13-14)4. Hence G. Kazimier comments: “language as a means of communication, a system of ‘signs’, is meant to transfer ideas; and hence of psychic and social origin. His (i.e. de Saussure’s) distinction between ‘la langue’, the language system of a community, and ‘la parole’, the individual realisation of that system, has been of great importance for the study of style”5. Or, in the words of Moisés Silva: “These two terms have become standard in linguistic literature and are intended to contrast the (abstract) linguistic system of a particular speech community with the actual utterances of individual speakers”6. The former (langue) points to a given language system (on the one hand ‘words’ in their semantic, grammatical and morphological aspects; on the other hand more complex data like word groups, phrases, sentences, parataxis and hypotaxis, described in the syntax). Any language user (writer or speaker) has to ‘obey’ to this system if he wants to be understood by his reader or hearer. Within a given language system the individual language user has the freedom to develop his own style (parole or idiolect), through which his personal linguistic expression is recognizable (e.g. this particular text displays the personal style of a well known writer). Language systems are F. de Saussure, Cours, 9-10 and 12-13; see also 19: “The study of language thus 4 comprises two parts. The essential part takes for its object the language itself (langue), which is social in its essence and independent of the individual. This a purely psychological study. The subsidiary part takes as its object the individual part of language, which means speech (parole), including phonation. This is a psycho-physical study”. G. Kazemier, “Stilering”, in Moderne encyclopedie der wereldliteratuur 8 (1974) 234. 5 M. Silva, Biblical Words and their Meaning. An Introduction to Lexical Semantics 6 (Grand Rapids, rev. and exp. ed., 1994) 114-15.