Things in relation to other things.

"Signs function not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (39)
Saussure, in this almost poetic line, is implying that words hold meaning not because of what they represent but rather how what they represent differs from other words and what they represent. He uses the example of the words “male” and “female” and how the meaning of each word is as much about not being the other word as much as it means what it actually is. This relativity creates an elaborate network of signs (words) that all exist without positive or negative connotation. The point he is trying to make is that because all of these signs and their meanings are all arbitrary, the only way you get meaning out of the word itself is relative to the meanings of all other words. In one of his other examples he references how we distinguish a hut from a shed or a mansion from a palace. We are able to do this because we have taken a simple idea such as shelter and subcategorized it to further complicate its meaning. Now that we have the words shed, hut, house, mansion, and palace. Each word has a value that is relative to its surrounding words. If the word house did not exist, the meanings of the words shed and mansion would have been expanded to cover the lost meaning. Saussures ideas were taken and adapted by the structuralists as a model on which their ideas can be founded. His model of words and how they relate allowed them to measure their work in many ways.
When I step back and think about what it is I just learned from this reading I think to myself, "How incredibly simple yet so monumentally complex when brought into a social or cultural realm". When you think about aspects of our language like dialect you consider why there are different cultural values on two words that mean the same thing. Slang versus ornate language of the upper class, bubbler versus water fountain. A social hierarchy is recognized through conversation when certain words are used.
I am not entirely clear on everything I've read so far but I think I am starting to get it.