How do you like them apples?

Saussure suggests that in language, the bond between signified and signifier is radically arbitrary.  To understand his statement, we must first understand what the signified and the signifier are in language.  The signified refers to the mental concept of the word, or what the person thinks of when hearing the word.  It is not the real object, but rather what the signifier refers to.  The signifier is the sound of the image completely divorced from the idea; it is just the word that you see on the page or that you hear.  As Daniel Chandler says, it is a jumble of words on a page that cues thoughts and images.

A sign needs both the signified and the signifier to be possible.  While the word “dog” needs both the signified and the signifier in order for it to be a word, the signified and the signifier are arbitrary and meaning is arbitrary.  As Chandler explains it, a real object does not need to actually exist.  He defends that, in language at least, the form of the signifier is not determined by what it signifies: there is nothing 'treeish' about the word 'tree'.  A way to recognize this is to realize that different languages articulate the world with different signifiers for a signified and sometimes use the same signifiers for a different signified.  An example would be how mono in Spanish means both monkey and cute.  The same signifier creates two unrelated signifieds, showing how there is no true connection between the signifier and the signified.  Our reality as constructed through language simply allows us to place value on the signs that they make.  The point here is that the value of the sign is not the thing itself, just that language constructs it.

In addition, Barry points out that the meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary and these meanings are maintained by convention only.  In simpler terms Barry states that there is no actual connection between a word and what it signifies, therefore the signifier and the signified exist separately.

My understanding is that in describing the signified and the signifier as arbitrary, Saussure is describing how actual things like the wall in front of me are not actually what we say they are.  It is signified by what I see, and the word “wall” is what I use as a signifier but it is not actually a wall.  Another thing Saussure says is I can’t actually describe what the wall is without using signifiers which are all arbitrary and, constructed by us.  Therefore, the word “wall” is not connected to what the actual thing is.  It is as much a wall as it is a mouse, just a different “signified” comes into our mind when we see it.

In my opinion, the song has everything to do with Saussure’s opinion of Structuralism, but that is because I’m in the mindset that all of the words in the song actually have a different signified than they are signifying.  The verse in which this lyric is taken from says “I met Ferdinand de Saussure on a night like this, On love, he said, I'm not so sure I even know what it is, No understanding, no closure, it is a nemesis, You can't use a bulldozer to study orchids, he said so.”  The line “You can’t use a bulldozer to study orchids, he said so” highlights that it is only so because “he” said so.  However, if the “bulldozer’s” signified was actually a microscope and the “orchid’s” signified was a cell because “he” said so, then we could study them.  As far as this line in the song goes, I think that it is speaking to how hegemony has determined what is signified by signifiers and how that is the only reason why certain things signifiers describe as not possible could be signified as possible with different signifiers.  In other words, if the image (signified) was called something else than it actually is, then maybe a bulldozer could study orchids. 

Relating how we are nothing without love can also be considered a part of Saussure’s argument, assuming the word love does not actually mean what it is signified to mean.  The song could mean any word instead of love in relation to Saussure because again, the signifier is not actually the signified; it is just what the hegemony uses to create the image of the signified when it is heard.  Not to beat a dead horse, but if the song is in the nature of Saussure theory, then it can be assumed that all of those words have a different signifier than the one that hegemony has conditioned to pop into our heads.  How do you like them apples?