Saussure proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered and the signified as the mental concept。 According to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary—i。e。, there is no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning。 This sets him apart from previous philosophers, such as Plato or the scholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies。 In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure credits the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) with insisting on the arbitrary nature of the sign。 Saussure's insistence on the arbitrariness of the sign also has influenced later philosophers and theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard。 Ferdinand de Saussure coined the term sémiologie while teaching his landmark "Course on General Linguistics" at the University of Geneva from 1906 to 1911。 Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful。 Rather a word is only a "signifier", i。e。, the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the "signified", or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued "sign"。 Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts。