Description
This excerpt is from a book about the life and work of Ferdinand de Saussure, who is considered one of the founders of modern linguistics. Saussure's Cours de linguistique generale (Course on General Linguistics) was posthumously compiled by his students from notes he had made at his lectures. The book became one of the most influential works in twentieth century linguistics, giving direction to modern linguistics and inspiration to literary and cultural theory. A manuscript in Saussure's hand was discovered in 1996 and was published in English for the first time in an edition edited by Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler. The book includes an earlier discovered manuscript on the philosophy of language, Saussure's own notes for lectures, and a comprehensive bibliography of major work on Saussure from 1970 to 2004. It is remarkable that for eighty years the understanding of Saussure's thought has depended on an incomplete and non-definitive text, the sometimes aphoristic formulations of which gave rise to many creative interpretations and arguments for and against Saussure.
Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique generale was posthumously composed by his students from the notes they had made at his lectures. The book became one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, giving direction to modern linguistics and inspiration to literary and
cultural theory. Before he died Saussure told friends he was writing up the lectures himself but no evidence of this was found. Eighty years later in 1996 a manuscript in Saussure's hand was discovered in the orangerie of his family house in Geneva. This proved to be the missing original of the
great work. It is published now in English for the first time in an edition edited by Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, and translated and introduced by Carol Sanders and Matthew Pires, all leading Saussure scholars. The book includes an earlier discovered manuscript on the philosophy of language,
Saussure's own notes for lectures, and a comprehensive bibliography of major work on Saussure from 1970 to 2004.
It is remarkable that for eighty years the understanding of Saussure's thought has depended on an incomplete and non-definitive text, the sometimes aphoristic formulations of which gave rise to many creative interpretations and arguments for and against Saussure. Did he, or did he not, see language
as a-social and a-historical? Did he, or did he not, rule out the study of speech within linguistics? Was he a reductionist? These disputes and many others can now be resolved on the basis of the work now published. This reveals new depth and subtetly in Saussure's thoughts on the nature and complex
workings of language, particularly his famous binary oppositions between form and meaning, thesign and what is signified, and language (langue) and its performance (parole).
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