Saussure and the world of Competitive Skating

In “Course in General Linguistics,” Ferdinand Saussure described language as a social institution, emphasizing that how we speak and write are influenced by our psychological perceptions of that word (sign), which describes an object or person. In his system of semiotics he designated the sign as the written character which represents a verbal utterance or thought, and the signified as the mental concept which that sign represents. Signifiers are characteristics which we associate with the sign/signified.
Consider the sign “Tanya Harding.” In the 1990’s the world of Olympic Skating was rocked when skater Tanya Harding became implicated on a vicious attack on a fellow American teammate to improve her own chances in the competition. Saussure believed that signs are arbitrary – they can change as our perceptions change or as situations evolve, etc. So pre-attack signifiers for Tanya Harding might have been underdog, competitive, hopeful, and motivated. Signifiers pertaining to Tanya Harding after the attack would cause people to associate the sign Tanya Harding with more negative signifiers: vicious, poor-sport, mean, heartless, criminal, aggressive, competitive, sociopathic, and selfish.
Saussure did not intend language simply to be a system of nomenclature or labeling. He aded that the value and the signification are not the same thing. Signification is a descriptive terminology applied to the object or person. But while signs are arbitrary, and subject to change they are generally agreed upon, he writes that these are “associations which bear the stamp of collective approval” (Saussure, 60) To help imbue a sense of value, there must be two components which help build value for the signifiers that we attach to sign. Saussure believed that we must have dissimilar things to compare the sign with, such as Nancy Kerrigan – the victim in the attack who was deemed as: sympathetic, graceful, competitive, victim, beautiful, charming, role model. Additionally, a similar thing that can be compared to the sign further reinforces the value of the sign. If you consider another figure, like Christi Yamaguchi, you may note that all three characters have some similar signifiers such as, drive, motivation, competitiveness and skill, but Yamaguchi’s signifiers like admirable and team player mark her as something quite different to Harding, and offer a stark contrast for both the signs and signifiers. Even today, almost 20 years later if you mention the name Tanya Harding those mental concepts of negativity are forever connected to that name.