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feature is the combination of sound and acoustic image with an idea. (The acoustic image is the impression that remains with us the latent impression in the brain (D.)). There is no need to conceive it (the language) as necessarily spoken all the time. Let us come down to details; let us consider the language as a social product. Among social products, it is natural to ask whether there is any other which offers a parallel. The American linguist Whitney who, about 1870, became very influential through his book The principles and the life of language, caused astonishment by comparing languages to social Institutions, saying that they fell in general into the great class of social institutions. In this, he was on the right track-, his ideas are in agreement with mine. 'It is, in the end, fortuitous,' he said, 'that men made use of the larynx, lips and tongue in order to speak. They discovered it was more convenient; but if they had used visual signs, or hand signals, the language would remain in essence exactly the same: nothing would have changed.' This was right, for he attributed no great importance to execution. Which comes down to what I was saying: the only change would be the replacement of the acoustic images I mentioned by visual images. Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions. Nevertheless, you cannot find any social institution that can be set on a par with a language and is comparable to it. There are very many differences. The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences. In a general way, institutions such as legal institutions, or for instance a set ,of rituals, or a ceremony established once and for all, have many characteristics which make them like languages, and the changes they undergo over time a.-e very reminiscent of linguistic changes. But there are enormous differences. 1) No other institution involves all the individuals all the time; no other is open to all in such a way that each person participates in it and naturally influences it. 2) Most institutions can be improved, corrected at certain times, reformed by an act of will, whereas on the contrary we see that such an initiative is impossible where languages are concerned, that even academies cannot change by decree the course taken by the institution we call the language, etc. Before proceeding further, another idea must be introduced: that of semiological facts in societies. Let us go back to the language considered as a product of society at work: it is a set of signs fixed by agreement between the members of that society; these signs evoke ideas, but in that respect it's rather like rituals, for instance. Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things. In all societies we find this phenomenon: that for various purposes systems of signs are established that directly evoke the ideas one wishes; it is obvious that a language is one such system, and that it is the most important of them all; but it is not the only one, and consequently we cannot leave the others out of account. A language must thus be classed among semiological institutions; for example, ships' signals (visual signs), army bugle calls, the sign language of the deaf