Course in general linguistics / Ferdinand de Saussure ; translated by Wade Baskin ; edited by Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 1857-1913.

Contributor:

Baskin, Wade.

Meisel, Perry.

Saussy, Haun, 1960-

Standardized Title:

Cours de linguistique générale. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Language and languages.

Comparative linguistics.

Physical Description:

lvi, 260 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2011.

Summary:

The Cours de linguistique generale, reconstructed from students' notes after Saussure's death in 1913, founded modern linguistic theory by breaking the study of language free from a merely historical and comparativist approach. Saussure's new method, now known as Structuralism, has since been applied to such diverse areas as art, architecture, folklore, literary criticism, and philosophy.

This new edition of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) is the first critical edition of Saussure to appear in English. It also restores Wade Baskin's delightful original English translation (1959), which has long been unavailable. The founder of modern linguistics, Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Lacan, French feminism, cultural studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on the lectures that Saussure gave at the end of his life at the University of Geneva, the text of the Course was collated from notes taken by Saussure's students and published by Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye, and Albert Riedlinger. Saussure traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which he was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaces it, and the new look of diachronic linguistics subsequent to this change in scholarly perspective. Most important, Saussure presents the general principles of a new linguistic science which includes among its achievements the invention of semiology: the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" which they combine to produce. Relaunching Baskin's translation restores these terms and makes Saussure's thought once again clear and accessible. Baskin's translation allows readers to experience how Saussure shifts the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and expands the purview of poetics to include all media, including life sciences and environmentalism. The introduction to this new edition situates Saussure's position in the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made the Course in General Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts well beyond linguistics to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy.

Contents:

Introduction: Saussure and his contexts

Course in general linguistics : Translator's introduction ; Preface to the first edition

Introduction : A glance at the history of linguistics

Subject matter and scope of linguistics; its relations with other sciences

The object of linguistics

Linguistics of language and linguistics of speaking

Internal and external elements of language

Graphic representation of language

Phonology

Appendix : Principles of phonology : Phonological species

Phonemes in the spoken chain

Part I. General linguistics : Nature of the linguistic sign

Immutability and mutability of the sign

Static and evolutionary linguistics

Part II. Synchronic linguistics : Generalities

The concrete entities of language

Identities, realities, values

Linguistic value

Syntagmatic and associative relations

Mechanism of language

Grammar and its subdivisions

Role of abstract entities in grammar

Part III. Generalities

Phonetic changes

Grammatical consequences of phonetic evolution

Analogy

Analogy and evolution

Folk etymology

Agglutination

Diachromic unities, identities, and realities

Part IV. Geographic linguistics : Concerning the diversity of languages

Complication of geographical diversity

Causes of geographical diversity

Spread of linguistic waves

Part V. Concerning retrospective linguistics : The two perspectives of diachronic linguistics

The oldest language and the prototype

Reconstructions

The contribution of language to anthropology and prehistory

Language families and linguistic types.

Notes:

Translation of Cours de linguistique generale.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-243) and index.

ISBN:

9780231157261

0231157266

9780231157278

0231157274

OCLC:

695390190