And human language uses this amazing trick described by Ferdinand de Saussure, the great linguist, as "The arbitrariness of the sign."

人类语言使用这些,被语言学家费迪南德·德·索绪尔,称之为"符号任意性"的神奇把戏

耶鲁公开课 - 心理学导论课程节选

As I say, red tends to be chosen, but then if you get lab experiments showing that that particular color of gas blue is somehow or another sort of more invasive of your consciousness than red is, then you move away from the arbitrariness of the choice of red as a color.

所以人们就倾向于选择红灯，但是如果你想用实验证明,比如说烟蓝色或者,其他任何另一种颜色比红色更加醒目，那么你就忽视了颜色选择上的任意性。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选