Linguistic and social structure were conceived simultaneously as ideal existences

Evidence

Linguistic meaning was to be found, then, neither within the material of the words themselves nor simply within the mind of the individual. It lay outside both, as a ‘structure’ with an ‘ideal existence’. (Bréal’s discovery of linguistic ‘structure’ occurred in the same years as Durkheim’s discovery of social structure, which rested as we saw on making the same separation between the material realm of representations and an ideal realm they represented.) ‘It does not diminish the importance of language’, Bréal wrote, ‘to grant it only this ideal existence; on the contrary, it means placing it with the things that occupy the first rank and exert the greatest influence in the world, for these ideal existences – religions, laws, customs – are what gives a form to human life.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 445 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Logical abstraction is simultaneously a sociological abstraction. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 528; Bréal’s linguistic structure and Durkheim’s social structure emerged simultaneously from the same material-ideal split — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 445; Meaning and social relations form not sequentially but through structural articulation within a whole — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 619 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Bréal’s linguistic structure and Durkheim’s social structure emerged simultaneously from the same material-ideal split #corroborates (0.95) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 445