Langue and parole

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Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speaking") are
linguistic terms distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General
Linguistics. Langue encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions
of a signifying system; it is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users.
Langue involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful
utterance, "parole", would be possible. Parole refers to the concrete instances
of the use of langue. This is the individual, personal phenomenon of language as
a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.Saussure did not
concern himself overly with parole; however, the structure of langue is revealed
through the study of parole. The distinction is similar to that made about
language by Wilhelm von Humboldt, between energeia (active doing) and ergon (the
product of that doing).Saussure drew an analogy to chess to explain the
concept of langue and parole. He compared langue to the rules of chess—the norms
for playing the game—and compared the moves that an individual chooses to make—the
individual's preferences in playing the game—to the parole.