Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (/soʊˈsjʊər/;[3] French:  [fɛʁdinɑ̃ də

Ferdinand de Saussure
sosyʁ]; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss
linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation
for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics
in the 20th century.[4][5] He is widely considered one of the
founders of 20th-century linguistics[6][7][8][9] and one of two major
founders (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics, or
semiology, as Saussure called it.[10]

One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's

contribution to linguistics and the study of "the whole range of
human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy,
psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology and anthropology."[11]
Although they have undergone extension and critique over time,
the dimensions of organization introduced by Saussure continue to
inform contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of language.
Prague school linguist Jan Mukařovský writes that Saussure's
"discovery of the internal structure of the linguistic sign
differentiated the sign both from mere acoustic 'things'... and from
mental processes", and that in this development "new roads were Born 26 November 1857
thereby opened not only for linguistics, but also, in the future, for
Geneva, Switzerland
the theory of literature".[12] Ruqaiya Hasan argued that "the
impact of Saussure’s theory of the linguistic sign has been such Died 22 February 1913
that modern linguists and their theories have since been positioned (aged 55)
by reference to him: they are known as pre-Saussurean, Vufflens-le-Château,
Saussurean, anti-Saussurean, post-Saussurean, or non- Vaud, Switzerland
Saussure". [13]
Alma mater University of Geneva
Leipzig University
(PhD, 1880)
University of Berlin

Contents Era 19th-century

philosophy
Biography
Region Western philosophy
Work and influence
School Structuralism,
Course in General Linguistics
linguistic turn,[1]
Laryngeal theory
semiotics
Influence outside linguistics
Institutions EPHE
View of language University of Geneva
Language as semiology
The bilateral sign Main Linguistics
interests
Opposition theory
Notable Structural linguistics
Language as a social phenomenon ideas Semiology
The speech circuit
A legacy of ideological disputes Langue and parole
Structuralism versus generative grammar Signified and signifier
Saussure versus the social Darwinists Synchrony and
Political controversies diachrony
Linguistic sign
Works
Semiotic arbitrariness
See also
Laryngeal theory
Notes
Influences
References Durkheim,[2] Leskien, Zimmer,
Sources Oldenberg, Pāṇini
External links Influenced
Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan,
Althusser, Foucault, Derrida,
Biography Laclau, Bloomfield, Meillet,
Benveniste, R. Harris, Shaumyan,
Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857. His father, Henri Louis
Jakobson, Merleau-Ponty,
Frédéric de Saussure, was a mineralogist, entomologist, and
Hjelmslev, Firth, Labov, Percy,
taxonomist. Saussure showed signs of considerable talent and
intellectual ability as early as the age of fourteen.[14] In the autumn Mukařovský, Prague school
of 1870, he began attending the Institution Martine (previously the Signature
Institution Lecoultre until 1969), in Geneva. There he lived with
the family of a classmate, Elie David.[15] Graduating at the top of
class, Saussure expected to continue his studies at the Gymnase de
Genève, but his father decided he was not mature enough at fourteen and a half, and sent him to the
Collège de Genève instead. Saussure was not pleased, as he complained: "I entered the Collège de Genève,
to waste a year there as completely as a year can be wasted."[16]

After a year of studying Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and taking a variety of courses at the University
of Geneva, he commenced graduate work at the University of Leipzig in 1876.

Two years later, at 21, Saussure published a book entitled Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans
les langues indo-européennes (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages).
After this he studied for a year at the University of Berlin under the Privatdozent Heinrich Zimmer, with
whom he studied Celtic, and Hermann Oldenberg with whom he continued his studies of Sanskrit.[17] He
returned to Leipzig to defend his doctoral dissertation De l'emploi du génitif absolu en Sanscrit, and was
awarded his doctorate in February 1880. Soon, he relocated to the University of Paris, where he lectured on
Sanskrit, Gothic and Old High German and occasionally other subjects.

Ferdinand de Saussure is one of the world’s most quoted linguists, which is remarkable as he himself hardly
published anything during his lifetime. Even his few scientific articles are not unproblematic. Thus, for
example, his publication on Lithuanian phonetics[18] is mostly taken from studies by the Lithuanian
researcher Friedrich Kurschat, with whom Saussure traveled through Lithuania in August 1880 for two
weeks and whose (German-language) books Saussure had read.[19] Saussure, who had studied some basic
grammar of Lithuanian in Leipzig for one semester but was unable to speak the language, was thus
dependent on Kurschat.

Saussure taught at the École pratique des hautes études for eleven years during which he was named
Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor).[20] When offered a professorship in
Geneva in 1892, he returned to Switzerland. Saussure lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European at the
University of Geneva for the remainder of his life. It was not until 1907 that Saussure began teaching the
Course of General Linguistics, which he would offer three times, ending in the summer of 1911. He died in
1913 in Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland. His brothers were the linguist and Esperantist René de
Saussure, and scholar of ancient Chinese astronomy, Léopold de Saussure. His son Raymond de Saussure
was a psychoanalyst.

Saussure attempted, at various times in the 1880s and 1890s, to write a book on general linguistic matters.
His lectures about important principles of language description in Geneva between 1907 and 1911 were
collected and published by his pupils posthumously in the famous Cours de linguistique générale in 1916.
Some of his manuscripts, including an unfinished essay discovered in 1996, were published in Writings in
General Linguistics, but most of the material in it had already been published in Engler's critical edition of
the Course, in 1967 and 1974. It is also questionable to what extent the Cours itself can be traced back to
Saussure alone. Studies have shown that at least the current version and its content are more likely to have
the so-called editors Charles Bally and Albert Sèchehaye as their source than Saussure himself.[21]

Work and influence

Saussure's theoretical reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language vocalic system and particularly
his theory of laryngeals, otherwise unattested at the time, bore fruit and found confirmation after the
decipherment of Hittite in the work of later generations of linguists such as Émile Benveniste and Walter
Couvreur, who both drew direct inspiration from their reading of the 1878 Mémoire.[22]

Saussure had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century
with his notions becoming incorporated in the central tenets of structural linguistics. His main contribution
to structuralism was his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first is the langue, the abstract
and invisible layer, while the second, the parole, refers to the actual speech that we hear in real life.[23] This
framework was later adopted by Claude Levi-Strauss, who used the two-tiered model to determine the
reality of myths. His idea was that all myths have an underlying pattern, which form the structure that
makes them myths.[23] These established the structuralist framework to literary criticism.

In Europe, the most important work after Saussure's death was done by the Prague school. Most notably,
Nikolay Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson headed the efforts of the Prague School in setting the course of
phonological theory in the decades from 1940. Jakobson's universalizing structural-functional theory of
phonology, based on a markedness hierarchy of distinctive features, was the first successful solution of a
plane of linguistic analysis according to the Saussurean hypotheses. Elsewhere, Louis Hjelmslev and the
Copenhagen School proposed new interpretations of linguistics from structuralist theoretical frameworks.

In America, where the term 'structuralism' became highly ambiguous, Saussure's ideas informed the
distributionalism of Leonard Bloomfield, but his influence remained limited.[24][25] Systemic functional
linguistics is a theory considered to be based firmly on the Saussurean principles of the sign, albeit with
some modifications. Ruqaiya Hasan describes systemic functional linguistics as a 'post-Saussurean'
linguistic theory.[13] Michael Halliday argues:

Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the
conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of
highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the
phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with
greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different
kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as
appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms[26]
Course in General Linguistics

Saussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), was
published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, on the basis of
notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva.[27] The Course became one of the seminal linguistics
works of the 20th century not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works
of other 20th century linguists) but for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic
phenomena.

Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from
the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his
notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also
have a referent, Saussure took that to lie beyond the linguist's purview.

Throughout the book, he stated that a linguist can develop a diachronic analysis of a text or theory of
language but must learn just as much or more about the language/text as it exists at any moment in time (i.e.
"synchronically"): "Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas". A science that studies the life of
signs within society and is a part of social and general psychology. Saussure believed that semiotics is
concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, and he called it semiology.

Laryngeal theory

While a student, Saussure published an important work in Indo-European philology that proposed the
existence of ghosts in Proto-Indo-European called sonant coefficients. The Scandinavian scholar Hermann
Möller suggested that they might actually be laryngeal consonants, leading to what is now known as the
laryngeal theory. It has been argued that the problem that Saussure encountered, trying to explain how he
was able to make systematic and predictive hypotheses from known linguistic data to unknown linguistic
data, stimulated his development of structuralism. His predictions about the existence of primate
coefficients/laryngeals and their evolution proved a success when Hittite texts were discovered and
deciphered, some 50 years later.

Influence outside linguistics

The principles and methods employed by structuralism were later adapted in diverse fields by French
intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Claude Lévi-
Strauss. Such scholars took influence from Saussure's ideas in their own areas of study (literary
studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively).

View of language
Saussure approaches theory of language from two different perspectives. On the one hand, language is a
system of signs. That is, a semiotic system; or a semiological system as he himself calls it. On the other
hand, a language is also a social phenomenon: a product of the language community.

Language as semiology

The bilateral sign

One of Saussure's key contributions to semiotics lies in what he called semiology, the concept of the
bilateral (two-sided) sign which consists of 'the signifier' (a linguistic form, e.g. a word) and 'the signified'
(the meaning of the form). Saussure supported the argument for the arbitrariness of the sign although he did
not deny the fact that some words are onomatopoeic, or claim that picture-like symbols are fully arbitrary.
Saussure also did not consider the linguistic sign as random, but as historically cemented.[a] All in all, he
did not invent the philosophy of arbitrariness, but made a very influential contribution to it.[28]

The arbitrariness of words of different languages itself is a fundamental concept in Western thinking of
language, dating back to Ancient Greek philosophers.[29] The question whether words are natural or
arbitrary (and artificially made by people) returned as a controversial topic during the Age of Enlightenment
when the mediaeval scholastic dogma, that languages were created by God, became opposed by the
advocates of humanistic philosophy. There were efforts to construct a 'universal language', based on the lost
Adamic language, with various attempts to uncover universal words or characters which would be readily
understood by all people regardless of their nationality. John Locke, on the other hand, was among those
who believed that languages were a rational human innovation,[30] and argued for the arbitrariness of
words.[29]

Saussure took it for granted in his time that "No one disputes the principle of the arbitrary nature of the
sign."[b] He however disagreed with the common notion that each word corresponds "to the thing that it
names" or what is called the referent in modern semiotics. For example, In Saussure's notion, the word 'tree'
does not refer to a tree as a physical object, but to the psychological concept of a tree. The linguistic sign
thus arises from the psychological association between the signifier (a 'sound-image') and the signified (a
'concept'). There can therefore be no linguistic expression without meaning, but also no meaning without
linguistic expression.[c] Saussure's structuralism, as it later became called, therefore includes an implication
of linguistic relativity. However, Saussure's own view has been described instead as a form of semantic
holism that acknowledged that the interconnection between terms in a language was not fully arbitrary and
only methodologically bracketed the relationship between linguistic terms and the physical world.[31]

The naming of spectral colours exemplifies how meaning and expression arise simultaneously from their
interlinkage. Different colour frequencies are per se meaningless, or mere substance or meaning potential.
Likewise, phonemic combinations which are not associated with any content are only meaningless
expression potential, and therefore not considered as signs. It is only when a region of the spectrum is
outlined and given an arbitrary name, for example 'blue', that the sign emerges. The sign consists of the
signifier ('blue') and of the signified (the colour region), and of the associative link which connects them.
Arising from an arbitrary demarcation of meaning potential, the signified is not a property of the physical
world. In Saussure's concept, language is ultimately not a function of reality, but a self-contained system.
Thus, Saussure's semiology entails a bilateral (two-sided) perspective of semiotics.

The same idea is applied to any concept. For example, natural law does not dictate which plants are 'trees'
and which are 'shrubs' or a different type of woody plant; or whether these should be divided into further
groups. Like blue, all signs gain semantic value in opposition to other signs of the system (e.g. red,
colourless). If more signs emerge (e.g. 'marine blue), the semantic field of the original word may narrow
down. Conversely, words may become antiquated, whereby competition for the semantic field lessens. Or,
the meaning of a word may change altogether.[32]

After his death, structural and functional linguists applied Saussure's concept to the analysis of the linguistic
form as motivated by meaning. The opposite direction of the linguistic expressions as giving rise to the
conceptual system, on the other hand, became the foundation of the post-Second World War structuralists
who adopted Saussure's concept of structural linguistics as the model for all human sciences as the study of
how language shapes our concepts of the world. Thus, Saussure's model became important not only for
linguistics, but for humanities and social sciences as a whole.[33]
Opposition theory

A second key contribution comes from Saussure's notion of the organisation of language based on the
principle of opposition. Saussure made a distinction between meaning (significance) and value. On the
semantic side, concepts gain value by being contrasted with related concepts, creating a conceptual system
which could in modern terms be described as a semantic network. On the level of the sound-image,
phonemes and morphemes gain value by being contrasted with related phonemes and morphemes; and on
the level of the grammar, parts of speech gain value by being contrasted with each other.[d] Each element
within each system is eventually contrasted with all other elements in different types of relations so that no
two elements have the exact same value:

"Within the same language, all words used to express related ideas limit each other
reciprocally; synonyms like French redouter 'dread', craindre 'fear,' and avoir peur 'be
afraid' have value only through their opposition: if redouter did not exist, all its content
would go to its competitors."[e]

Saussure defined his own theory in terms of binary oppositions: sign—signified, meaning—value, language
—speech, synchronic—diachronic, internal linguistics—external linguistics, and so on. The related term
markedness denotes the assessment of value between binary oppositions. These were studied extensively
by post-war structuralists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss to explain the organisation of social
conceptualisation, and later by the post-structuralists to criticise it. Cognitive semantics also diverges from
Saussure on this point, emphasizing the importance of similarity in defining categories in the mind as well
as opposition.[34]

Based on markedness theory, the Prague Linguistic Circle made great advances in the study of phonetics
reforming it as the systemic study of phonology. Although the terms opposition and markedness are rightly
associated with Saussure's concept of language as a semiological system, he did not invent the terms and
concepts which had been discussed by various 19th century grammarians before him.[35]

Language as a social phenomenon

In his treatment of language as a 'social fact', Saussure touches topics that were controversial in his time,
and that would continue to split opinions in the post-war structuralist movement.[33] Saussure's relationship
with 19th century theories of language was somewhat ambivalent. These included social Darwinism and
Völkerpsychologie or Volksgeist thinking which were regarded by many intellectuals as nationalist and
racist pseudoscience.[36][37][38]

Saussure, however, considered the ideas useful if treated in a proper way. Instead of discarding August
Schleicher's organicism or Heymann Steinthal's "spirit of the nation", he restricted their sphere in ways that
were meant to preclude any chauvinistic interpretations.[39][36]

Organic analogy

Saussure exploited the sociobiological concept of language as a living organism. He criticises August
Schleicher and Max Müller's ideas of languages as organisms struggling for living space, but settles with
promoting the idea of linguistics as a natural science as long as the study of the 'organism' of language
excludes its adaptation to its territory.[39] This concept would be modified in post-Saussurean linguistics by
the Prague circle linguists Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy,[40] and eventually diminished.[41]

The speech circuit

Perhaps the most famous of Saussure's ideas is the distinction between language and speech (Fr. langue et
parole), with 'speech' referring to the individual occurrences of language usage. These constitute two parts
of three of Saussure's 'speech circuit' (circuit de parole). The third part is the brain, that is, the mind of the
individual member of the language community.[f] This idea is in principle borrowed from Steinthal, so
Saussure concept of a language as a social fact corresponds to "Volksgeist", although he was careful to
preclude any nationalistic interpretations. In Saussure's and Durkheim's thinking, social facts and norms do
not elevate the individuals, but shackle them.[36][37] Saussure's definition of language is statistical rather
than idealised.

"Among all the individuals that are linked together by speech, some sort of average
will be set up : all will reproduce — not exactly of course, but approximately — the
same signs united with the same concepts."[g]

Saussure argues that language is a 'social fact'; a conventionalised set of rules or norms relating to speech.
When at least two people are engaged in conversation, there forms a communicative circuit between the
minds of the individual speakers. Saussure explains that language, as a social system, is neither situated in
speech nor in the mind. It only properly exists between the two within the loop. It is located in – and is the
product of – the collective mind of the linguistic group.[h] An individual has to learn the normative rules of
language and can never control them.[i]

The task of the linguist is to study language by analysing samples of speech. For practical reasons, this is
ordinarily the analysis of written texts.[j] The idea that language is studied through texts is by no means
revolutionary as it had been the common practice since the beginning of linguistics. Saussure does not
advise against introspection and takes up many linguistic examples without reference to a source in a text
corpus.[39] The idea that linguistics is not the study of the mind, however, contradicts Wilhelm Wundt's
Völkerpsychologie in Saussure's contemporary context; and in a later context, generative grammar and
cognitive linguistics.[42]

A legacy of ideological disputes

Structuralism versus generative grammar

Saussure's influence was restricted in American linguistics which was dominated by the advocates of
Wilhelm Wundt's psychological approach to language, especially Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949).[43]
The Bloomfieldian school rejected Saussure's and other structuralists' sociological or even anti-
psychological (e.g. Louis Hjelmslev, Lucien Tesnière) approaches to theory of language. Problematically,
the post-Bloomfieldian school was nicknamed 'American structuralism', causing confusion.[44] Although
Bloomfield denounced Wundt's Völkerpsychologie and opted for behavioural psychology in his 1933
textbook Language, he and other American linguists stuck to Wundt's practice of analysing the grammatical
object as part of the verb phrase. Since this practice is not semantically motivated, they argued for the
disconnectedness of syntax from semantics,[45] thus fully rejecting structuralism.

The question remained why the object should be in the verb phrase, vexing American linguists for
decades.[45] The post-Bloomfieldian approach was eventually reformed as a sociobiological[46] framework
by Noam Chomsky who argued that linguistics is a cognitive science; and claimed that linguistic structures
are the manifestation of a random mutation in the human genome.[47] Advocates of the new school,
generative grammar, claim that Saussure's structuralism has been reformed and replaced by Chomsky's
modern approach to linguistics. Jan Koster asserts:

it is certainly the case that Saussure, considered the most important linguist of the
century in Europe until the 1950s, hardly plays a role in current theoretical thinking
 about language. As a result of the Chomskyan revolution, linguistics has gone
through a number of conceptual transformations which have led to all kinds of
technical pre-occupations that are far beyond linguistic practice of the days of
Saussure. For the most it seems Saussure has rightly sunk into near oblivion.[48]

French historian and philosopher François Dosse however argues that there have been various
misunderstandings. He points out that Chomsky's criticism of 'structuralism' is directed at the Bloomfieldian
school and not the proper address of the term; and that structural linguistics is not to be reduced to mere
sentence analysis.[49] It is also argued that

"‘Chomsky the Saussurean’ is nothing but “an academic fable”. This fable is a result
of misreading – by Chomsky himself (1964) and also by others – of Saussure’s la
langue (in the singular form) as generativist concept of ‘competence’ and, therefore,
its grammar as the Universal Grammar (UG)."[50]

Saussure versus the social Darwinists

Saussure's Course in General Linguistics begins[k] and ends[l] with a criticism of 19th century linguistics
where he is especially critical of Volkgeist thinking and the evolutionary linguistics of August Schleicher
and his colleagues. Saussure's ideas replaced social Darwinism in Europe as it was banished from
humanities at the end of World War II.[51]

The publication of Richard Dawkins's memetics in 1976 brought the Darwinian idea of linguistic units as
cultural replicators back to vogue.[52] It became necessary for adherents of this movement to redefine
linguistics in a way that would be simultaneously anti-Saussurean and anti-Chomskyan. This led to a
redefinition of old humanistic terms such as structuralism, formalism, functionalism and constructionism
along Darwinian lines through debates which were marked by an acrimonious tone. In a functionalism–
formalism debate of the decades following The Selfish Gene, the 'functionalism' camp attacking Saussure's
legacy includes frameworks such as Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar, Usage-based linguistics
and Emergent Linguistics.[53][54] Arguing for 'functional-typological theory', William Croft criticises
Saussure's use or the organic analogy:

When comparing functional-typological theory to biological theory, one must take

care to avoid a caricature of the latter. In particular, in comparing the structure of
language to an ecosystem, one must not assume that in contemporary biological
theory, it is believed that an organism possesses a perfect adaptation to a stable
niche inside an ecosystem in equilibrium. The analogy of a language as a perfectly
adapted 'organic' system where tout se tient is a characteristic of the structuralist
approach, and was prominent in early structuralist writing. The static view of
adaptation in biology is not tenable in the face of empirical evidence of nonadaptive
variation and competing adaptive motivations of organisms.[55]

Structural linguist Henning Andersen disagrees with Croft. He criticises memetics and other models of
cultural evolution and points out that the concept of 'adaptation' is not to be taken in linguistics in the same
meaning as in biology.[41] Humanistic and structuralistic notions are likewise defended by Esa
Itkonen[56][57] and Jacques François;[58] the Saussurean standpoint is explained and defended by Tomáš
Hoskovec, representing the Prague Linguistic Circle.[59]

Conversely, other cognitive linguists claim to continue and expand Saussure's work on the bilateral sign.
Dutch philologist Elise Elffers, however, argues that their view of the subject is incompatible with
Saussure's own ideas.[60]
Political controversies

There had long been disagreements between structuralists and Marxists, and after the Soviet occupation of
Eastern Europe, structural linguists who found themselves behind the Iron Curtain were labelled dissidents.
From 1948 onwards the communist government of Czechoslovakia forced the Prague Linguistic Circle to
publish a series of writings repudiating structuralism, and to rally around the banner of dialectical
materialism. For example, Jan Mukařovský publicly denounced structuralism in his 'confession' as the
product of 'bourgeois scholarship', arguing that its role

"in the service of the warmongers is to subvert the worker's consciousness by stirring
a distrust of the power of knowledge, spreading individualism and subjectivism,
concealing the insoluble inner contradictions of perishing capitalism."[61]

The original Prague Linguistic Circle disbanded in 1953 due to its problems with the socialist regime.

In Western Europe, in contrast, Saussure's work became widely influential as the structuralists led by
Michel Foucault rose to academic power at the Sorbonne after the student revolts of Spring 1968. Their
intention was to replace Marxism[62][m] by redefining leftism as a struggle for equality of all social
categories.[62] Structural linguistics was taken as the model science for humanities.[33][n] Soon enough it
was however noted that, as a scientific enterprise, structuralism was too conservative to serve the
purpose.[63][o] This led to new paradigms of post-structuralism. Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism, for
example, does not take as its goal the recognition of binary oppositions but that of their deconstruction.[62]
Structuralism also became criticised for its denial that the individual can change the social norm, and
labelled as 'anti-humanistic' by many.[64]

The post-structuralists, after having extended their method to natural sciences, were eventually attacked by
Chomsky's allies, including Jean Bricmont,[65] in the Science Wars.

The term 'structuralism' continues to be used in structural–functional linguistics[66][67] which despite the
contrary claims defines itself as a humanistic approach to language.[68]

Works
(1878) Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes [=
Dissertation on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages]. Leipzig:
Teubner. (online version (http://gallica2.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k729200) in Gallica Program,
Bibliothèque nationale de France).
(1881) De l'emploi du génitif absolu en Sanscrit: Thèse pour le doctorat présentée à la
Faculté de Philosophie de l'Université de Leipzig [= On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in
Sanskrit: Doctoral thesis presented to the Philosophy Department of Leipzig University].
Geneva: Jules-Guillamaume Fick. (online version (https://archive.org/details/delemploidugni
00sausuoft) on the Internet Archive).
(1916) Cours de linguistique générale, eds. Charles Bally & Alert Sechehaye, with the
assistance of Albert Riedlinger. Lausanne – Paris: Payot.
1st trans.: Wade Baskin, trans. Course in General Linguistics. New York: The
Philosophical Society, 1959; subsequently edited by Perry Meisel & Haun Saussy, NY:
Columbia University Press, 2011.
2nd trans.: Roy Harris, trans. Course in General Linguistics. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court,
1983.
(1922) Recueil des publications scientifiques de F. de Saussure. Eds. Charles Bally &
Léopold Gautier. Lausanne – Geneva: Payot.
 (1993) Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures in General Linguistics (1910–1911) from the
Notebooks of Emile Constantin. (Language and Communication series, vol. 12). French text
edited by Eisuke Komatsu & trans. by Roy Harris. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
(1995) Phonétique: Il manoscritto di Harvard Houghton Library bMS Fr 266 (8). Ed. Maria
Pia Marchese. Padova: Unipress, 1995.
(2002) Écrits de linguistique générale. Eds. Simon Bouquet & Rudolf Engler. Paris:
Gallimard. ISBN 978-2-07-076116-6.
Trans.: Carol Sanders & Matthew Pires, trans. Writings in General Linguistics. NY:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
This volume, which consists mostly of material previously published by Rudolf Engler,
includes an attempt at reconstructing a text from a set of Saussure's manuscript pages
headed "The Double Essence of Language", found in 1996 in Geneva. These pages
contain ideas already familiar to Saussure scholars, both from Engler's critical edition of
the Course and from another unfinished book manuscript of Saussure's, published in
1995 by Maria Pia Marchese.
(2013) Anagrammes homériques. Ed. Pierre-Yves Testenoire. Limoges: Lambert Lucas.
(2014) Une vie en lettres 1866 – 1913. Ed. Claudia Mejía Quijano. ed. Nouvelles Cécile
Defaut.

See also
Theory of language
Geneva School
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay

Notes
a. 1959 translation, p. 68–69
b. p. 68
c. p. 65
d. Ch. III
e. p. 116
f. p. Ch. 1.2
g. p. 13
h. p. 5
i. p. 14
j. p. 6
k. 1959 translation, pp. 3–4
l. pp. 231–232: "We now realize that Schleicher was wrong in looking upon language as an
organic thing with its own law of evolution, but we continue, without suspecting it, to try to
make language organic in another sense by assuming that the "genius" of a race or ethnic
group tends constantly to lead language along certain fixed routes."
m. p. 19–20: "Two historical events are emblematic of this way of thinking about the political.
The first is the waning of traditional Marxist political movements, in part due to the wider
understanding of the failure and repressiveness of Soviet and Maoist regimes in the 1960s,
and in part due to the failure of revolutionary movements (for example, in Algeria)."
n. p. xxii: "But the true origins of the practice, in its modern sense, and on the scale of all the
human sciences, comes from developments in the field of linguistics."
 o. p. 6: "Although May 1968 would also weaken the structuralist paradigm, as we will see... We
no longer wanted static structures, and structuralism at that point was associated with
conservatism."

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External links
Publications by and about Ferdinand de Saussure (https://nb-helveticat.primo.exlibrisgroup.
com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,%22Ferdinand+de+Saussure%22&tab=LibraryC
atalog&search_scope=MyInstitution&vid=41SNL_51_INST:helveticat&lang=de&offset=0) in
the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
Works by or about Ferdinand de Saussure (https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79-43763) in
libraries (WorldCat catalog)
The poet who could smell vowels (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entert
ainment/the_tls/article2869724.ece): an article in The Times Literary Supplement by John E.
Joseph, November 14, 2007.
Original texts and resources (http://www.revue-texto.net/Saussure/Saussure.html), published
by Texto, ISSN 1773-0120 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:1773-0120) (in
French).
Hearing Heidegger and Saussure (http://www.egwald.ca/ubcstudent/theory/heidegger.php)
by Elmer G. Wines.
Cercle Ferdinand de Saussure (https://www.cercleferdinanddesaussure.org/), Swiss society
devoted to Saussurean studies.

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