Saussure provides a critique of treating language as a “naming process — a list of words, each corresponding to the thing it names” (Saussure 65). The linguistic sign, according to him, does not unite a name and a thing but a concept and the sound image. We have to be careful that the sound image here doesn’t mean physical sound but the psychological imprint of the sound upon our senses. He coins the word signifier for the sound image and signified for the concept. A linguistic sign hence consists of signifier and signified. Here is an example. Take the word ‘dog’, it is the sign. The concept i.e. the signified is: ‘a four-legged animal that barks ’. The signifier is the sound image: ‘/dɒɡ/’.

It can also be added that the constituent parts derive their relevance within the structure. But this relevance is not derived out of any intrinsic or innate characteristic that they possess, but because of the relation of one to another, among themselves.

However, his willingness to be subservient to the white culture does not impress Beneatha much on account of his competitive rather than collaborative approach to life.