generally considered the father of structural linguistics, and of structuralism in its wider application. Saussure locates the study of linguistics in the synchronic relationships of langue rather than parole: the structural and common aspects of language responsible for its use as a medium of communication. Signs, which for Saussure are combinations of signifier and signified (something like a concept or element of thought, rather than a thing that is represented), are the product of ‘systems of differences’: a sign has the value that it does in virtue of its place in a network of other possible choices. In his famous phrase, ‘there are only differences’. A word has its place in a sentence or other stretch of discourse (its ‘syntagmatic’ relations) but also its ‘associative’ relations with other words of its family (the terms that might be listed as partial substitutes in a thesaurus, for example). Saussure’s work puts in its own vocabulary many of the distinctions of analytical semantic theory: see competence/performance, Sinn/Bedeutung, holism. His lectures were collected and published in 1916 as the Cours de linguistique générale (trs. as Course in General Linguistics, 1959).