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Language has both an internal structure and an external manifestation in speech. The distinction between actual speech and its internal grammatical structure was originally made by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand De Saussure in his posthumous publication compiled by his students.^[1] De Saussure first made a sharp distinction between three terms le langage, la langue and la parole. Human speech as a whole - le langage -according to De Saussure, is composed of two aspects langue and parole.

La langue refers to the internalized knowledge of language, the language system shared by a community of speakers through the collective fact (totality) of a language. It implies through langue members of the community share the common properties of speech that make them understand each other. La langue is thus a kind of institutionalized element of the community’s collective consciousness. It exists as a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each individual yet it is common to all (Rajimwale 1999: 24). What De Saussure regarded as langue is generally a particular language that is the common possession of all the members of a given language-community. It is, therefore, a social phenomenon, having its reality only as a social institution that is constant, passive, supra-individualistic, and generalized. A langue can at best be crucial to every member of a language community and at the same terms a knowledge base, a composite body of linguistic phenomena, derived as it were from the individual manifestations (paroles) of all the members of a language community. In other words, langue relates to the actual knowledge of language whereas realization of language in speaking on the part of an individual is parole. Thus, while la langue is the set of all possible grammatical sentences in the language, la parole is the set of all concrete utterances that result from la langue and hence actually produced. La langue is a system of linguistic signs of a language community, the internal structure of a language whereas la parole refers to the actual use by the speakers and hearers of that language. While la langue is characterized as stable, institutionalized and passive in contrast to la parole which is momentary, heterogeneous and active and very much a personal, dynamic, social activity existing at a particular time and place and in a particular situation. These features actually enable la parole a capacity to be observed, perceived and provide data whereas enable la langue to be examined indirectly but as a more potential and viable manifestation for the study of language.

The distinction between langue and parole as drawn by Saussure is the distinction between what is potential and what is actual on the one hand, and between what is social and what is individual, on the other. Both of these concepts are mutually interrelated and interdependent. Just as la parole is not possible or effective without la langue and la langue also changes gradually under the effect of la parole. Speech, according to De Saussure, subsumes both and one cannot be conceived of without the other.