Ferdinand de Saussure

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Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) is generally recognized as the creator of the modern theory of structuralism and the father of modern linguistics. His best-known book, "A Course in General Linguistics", was published posthumously in 1916. The book transformed 19th-century comparative and historical philology into 20th-century contemporary linguistics.

Born into Scientific Family

Ferdinand de Saussure was born on November 26, 1857, in Geneva, Switzerland, to a family with a long history of contributions to the sciences. A bright and eager student, de Saussure showed an early promise in the area of languages and learned Sanskrit, Greek, German, Latin, French, and English. He had a mentor, the eminent linguist Adolphe Pictet, who encouraged the young man in his growing passion for languages.

Inclined to follow his ancestors' footsteps into the physical sciences, he began attending the prestigious University of Geneva in 1875 to study chemistry and physics. However, by 1876 he had returned to the study of linguistics. De Saussure studied at the University of Berlin from 1878 to 1879 and then enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study comparative grammar and Indo-European languages. He published his first full-length book, Memoire sur le systeme primitive des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeennes (Thesis on the original system of vowels in Indo-European Languages), in 1878. Hailed by critics as a brilliant work, the book launched de Saussure's reputation as a new expert, contributing as it did to the field of comparative linguistics. The work also revealed an important discovery in the area of Indo-European languages that came to be known as de Saussure's laryngeal theory, which explained perplexing characteristics of some of the world's oldest languages. The theory would not enjoy widespread acceptance until the mid-20th century.

De Saussure also published Remarques de grammaire et de phonetique (Comments on Grammar and Phonetics) in 1878. He completed his doctoral dissertation, on the use of the absolute genitive in Sanskrit, and finished summa cum laude at the University of Leipzig in 1880.

Began Professional Career as Linguist

De Saussure's first professional work in his field was as a teacher at the École Practique des Hautes Études in Paris. He taught numerous languages there, including Lithuanian and Persian, which he had added to his immense repertoire. Meanwhile, he became an active member of the Linguistic Society of Paris and served as its secretary in 1882. He remained at the École Practique for 10 years, finally leaving in 1891 to accept a new position as professor of Indo-European languages and comparative grammar at the University of Geneva.

Historical records indicate that de Saussure had a great fear of publishing any of his studies until they were proven absolutely accurate. Thus, many of his works were not released during his lifetime and many of his theories have been explained in books by other authors. According to Robert Godel in an essay in Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, de Saussure was also said to be "terrified" when in 1906 the University of Geneva asked him to teach a course on linguistics, believing himself unequal to the job. Godel explained that de Saussure "did not feel up to the task, and had no desire to wrestle with the problems once more. However, he undertook what he believed to be his duty."

Course Notes Became Classic Linguistics Book

Between 1906 and 1911, de Saussure taught his course in general linguistics three times, remaining at the school until 1912. The class would become the basis for his classic and influential A Course in General Linguistics, which was published in 1916 - three years after his death. Edited entirely by two of his students, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, and based on de Saussure's class notes, the book received good reviews. However, the editors have been criticized for failing to show how their professor's ideas evolved and for not making clear that de Saussure rarely believed his innovative concepts to be fully formed.

Further controversy over the book has been generated by scholars who cite evidence that de Saussure was strongly influenced by his academic peers, W. D. Whitney and Michel Breal, suggesting that de Saussure's theories were not as original as they were once believed to be. Nevertheless, A Course in General Linguistics has become recognized as the basis of the modern theory of structuralism, and it established de Saussure as a founder of modern linguistics. Roy Harris, who published a 1983 translation of the Course, wrote in its introduction that the book is undoubtedly "one of the most far-reaching works concerning the study of cultural activities to have been published at any time since the Renaissance."

Proposed Revolutionary Theory of
Language

A Course in General Linguistics sets out de Saussure's idea of language as a system of signs that evolves constantly, in which particular words do not have meaning. Rather, he explained, meaning happens only when people agree that a certain sound combination indicates an object or idea. This agreement, then, creates a "sign" for the object or idea. De Saussure believed that such signs comprise two parts: the signifier (what it sounds or looks like in vocal or graphic form) and the signified (the object the signifier represents). The relationship between the two parts of the sign, he explained, is hazy and the parts can be impossible to separate because of their arbitrary relationship. In other words, the representation of an object does not define it, and the relationship between signs changes constantly.

De Saussure argued that these signs "are unrelated to what they designate, and that therefore a cannot designate anything without the aid of b and vice versa, or in other words, that both have value only by the differences between them, or that neither has value, in any of its constituents, except through this same network of forever negative differences." One of the main tenets of the book was that often implicit agreement of meaning occurs at all levels of language, and that in order to achieve successful communication, speakers must be able to distinguish between both nuances of meaning and signs.

Explained Science of Language

Another relationship de Saussure examined in his book was that of langue and parole, in which langue is the conception of language as more than a system of names without social meaning and parole is simply the graphic or vocal manifestation of an utterance. A further dichotomy that he discusses is synchronic versus diachronic linguistics, where the former entails the study of language at a certain point and the latter looks at the changing state of language over time. After de Saussure's work became public, linguists, who had traditionally studied language from a historical (diachronic) perspective, were more inclined to experiment with synchronic studies. De Saussure had believed strongly in the value of the synchronic perspective for its ability to facilitate the analysis of language as more than a series of descriptive changes.

Despite his outstanding contributions to his field, de Saussure has been criticized for narrowing his studies to the social aspects of language, omitting the ability of people to manipulate and create new meanings. However, his application of science to his examination of the nature of language has had impacts on a wide range of areas related to linguistics, including contemporary literary theory; deconstructionism (a theory of literary criticism that asserts that words can only refer to other words and that tries to show how statements about any words subvert their own meaning); and structuralism (a method of analyzing a word by contrasting its basic structures in a system of binary opposition).

De Saussure is regarded by many as the creator of the modern theory of structuralism, to which his langue and parole ideas are integral. He believed that a word's meaning is based less on the object it refers to and more on its structure. In simpler terms, he suggested that when a person chooses a word, he does so in the context of having had the chance to choose other words. This adds another dimension to the chosen word's meaning, since humans instinctively base a word's meaning on its difference from the other words not chosen. De Saussure's theories on this subject, which flew in the face of the positivist research method of his day, laid the foundations for the structuralist schools in both social theory and linguistics.

Although by studying languages he at first seemed to have veered off the path established for him by his scientific ancestors, de Saussure was and still is widely regarded as a scientist. He perceived linguistics as a branch of science that he dubbed semiology (the theory and study of signs and symbols) and, through his Course, encouraged other linguists to view language not "as an organism developing of its own accord, but … as a product of the collective mind of a linguistic community."

De Saussure died from cancer at age 56 on February 22, 1913. Filling the void that de Saussure's dislike of publishing and early death caused, many of his works have been released posthumously, including Recueil des publications scientifiques (1921), Manoscritti di Harvard (1994), Phonetique (1995), Linguistik und Semiologie (1997), Ecrits de linguistique generale (2002), and Theorie de sonantes: Il manoscritto de Ginevra (2002).

Books

Contemporary Authors, Vol. 168, The Gale Group, 1999.

de Saussure, Ferdinand, Course in General Linguistics, translation, introduction, and annotation by Roy Harris, edited by Bally and Sechehaye and Riedlinger, Duckworth, 1983.

Malmkjaer, Kirsten, ed., The Linguistics Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2002.

Periodicals

Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, Vol. 38, 1984; Vol. 39, 1985.

Online

"Saussure, Ferdinand de," Marxists.org Internet Archive website,http://www.Marxists.org (December 27, 2003).

Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857-1913). Linguist. Saussure spent all but 10 years of his life in Geneva, but his work has had more influence on French thought than that of any other Swiss national since Rousseau. Similarly intriguing is the fact that he never published his major work: the Cours de linguistique générale (1916) was constructed posthumously from lecture plans and student notes of the period 1907-11. During his lifetime Saussure's publications were more language-specific: a dissertation on vowel systems in Indo-European languages in 1878, a doctoral thesis on Sanskrit, and studies of Lithuanian, medieval German legends, and anagrams in Latin poetry.

Saussure is generally considered to be the father of structural linguistics; he is also one of the forefathers of Structuralism. He conceived of language as a system of signs, which could be analysed either in its specific empirical manifestations, i.e. as different languages which may be compared and contrasted, and whose historical evolution may be described; or, more abstractly, as part of a study of semiotics or semiology in which the main focus of interest is the nature of signification and of the sign itself. Saussure's analyses tend to be conducted in terms of a series of binary oppositions. The study of language may be diachronic (historical) or synchronic (structural). In his view, the state of a language at a particular point in time needs to be described before its evolution can be assessed. This gives the synchronic priority over the diachronic, but purely in the sense of the logical order of study. Secondly, language may be considered as langue or as parole, that is, either as the general set of semantic and syntactic rules of a particular language or as its individual utterances. Thirdly, Saussure describes the linguistic sign as comprising a signifiant (signifier) and a signifié (signified), that is, an aural or written form and the concept which it embodies. (Followers of Saussure have extended this bipartite structure to a tripartite one which also includes the object to which the sign refers, the referent.) The relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, and both depend on a vast network of differences. Furthermore, since language itself contributes to the understanding and division of the real, rather than being a mere nomenclature naming the already given, languages may not correspond readily to one another, and their ‘arbitrary’ divisions of the real may not be easily translatable. These theories of meaning have influenced not only linguistics but also literary theory [see Barthes], anthropology [see LéVI-Strauss], and psychoanalysis [see Lacan].

[Christina Howells]

Bibliography

• J. Culler, Saussure (1976, rev. edn. 1988)

Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857-1913) Swiss linguist generally considered the father of structural linguistics, and of structuralism in its wider application. Saussure locates the study of linguistics in the synchronic relationships of langue rather than parole: the structural and common aspects of language responsible for its use as a medium of communication. Signs, which for Saussure are combinations of signifier and signified (something like a concept or element of thought, rather than a thing that is represented), are the product of ‘systems of differences’: a sign has the value that it does in virtue of its place in a network of other possible choices. In his famous phrase, ‘there are only differences’. A word has its place in a sentence or other stretch of discourse (its ‘syntagmatic’ relations) but also its ‘associative’ relations with other words of its family (the terms that might be listed as partial substitutes in a thesaurus, for example). Saussure's work puts in its own vocabulary many of the distinctions of analytical semantic theory: see competence/performance, Sinn/Bedeutung, holism. His lectures were collected and published in 1916 as the Cours de linguistique générale (trs. as Course in General Linguistics, 1959).

Saussure, Ferdinand de (fĕrdēnäN' də sōsür'), 1857-1913, Swiss linguist. One of the founders of modern linguistics, he established the structural study of language, emphasizing the arbitrary relationship of the linguistic sign to that which it signifies. Saussure distinguished synchronic linguistics (studying language at a given moment) from diachronic linguistics (studying the changing state of a language over time); he further opposed what he named langue (the state of a language at a certain time) to parole (the speech of an individual). Saussure's most influential work is the Course in General Linguistics (1916), a compilation of notes on his lectures.

Quotes:

"Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent."

"A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas."

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