Ferdinand de Saussure
Words get their meaning not from the things they name but from their differences to all the other words in the language.
Placement
Often regarded as the founder of modern linguistics: language is a system of differences between signs.
Key ideas
- Signifier / signified
- Langue / parole
- Arbitrariness of the sign
Influence
Influenced 6
Jacques Lacan
influenced ✓
Lacan inverted Saussure’s sign, placing the signifier over the signified and giving it primacy, so that meaning slides along chains of signifiers (‘L’instance de la lettre’, 1957). J. Lacan, “L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient ou la raison depuis Freud” (1957), in Écrits (1966); F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (1916); SEP “Jacques Lacan”
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Claude Lévi-Strauss
influenced ✓
After meeting Jakobson in New York, Lévi-Strauss took structural linguistics after Saussure as the model for anthropology, analysing kinship as a system of differences (Word, 1945). C. Lévi-Strauss, “L’analyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie”, Word 1 (1945), in Anthropologie structurale (1958); Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949)
Claude Lévi-Strauss › 1908–2009
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
influenced ✓
Merleau-Ponty took Saussure’s diacritical sign, meaningful only through differences from other signs, into his phenomenology of expression (‘Le langage indirect et les voix du silence’, 1952). M. Merleau-Ponty, “Le langage indirect et les voix du silence” (1952), in Signes (1960); La prose du monde (written 1951–52; publ. 1969); SEP “Maurice Merleau-Ponty”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Maurice Merleau-Ponty › 1908–1961
Roland Barthes
influenced ✓
Barthes applied Saussure’s signifier and signified to myth as a second-order sign system (Mythologies, 1957) and systematised his concepts for a general semiology (1964). R. Barthes, Mythologies (1957); Éléments de sémiologie (1964); F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (1916)
Roland Barthes › 1915–1980
Algirdas Julien Greimas
influenced
Greimas extended Saussure’s principle that meaning arises from differences, via Hjelmslev, to semantics, breaking meaning down into semes and isotopies (Sémantique structurale, 1966). A. J. Greimas, Sémantique structurale (1966); F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (1916)
Evidence: AI draft
Algirdas Julien Greimas › 1917–1992
Yuri Lotman
influenced
Lotman applied Saussure’s distinction of language and speech to literature, describing art as a secondary modelling system built on natural language (Struktura chudožestvennogo teksta, 1970). Ju. M. Lotman, Struktura chudožestvennogo teksta (1970); Lekcii po struktural’noj poėtike (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Yuri Lotman › 1922–1993
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Jacques Derrida
criticised by
Derrida argued in Of Grammatology (1967) that Saussure banishes writing as a mere image of speech, although his principle of difference without positive terms implies a general writing. J. Derrida, De la grammatologie (1967), part I, ch. 2 “Linguistique et grammatologie”; F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (1916), introduction, ch. VI
Evidence: AI draft
Jacques Derrida › 1930–2004
Works
Compiled after his death by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from students’ notes of his Geneva lectures (1907–11): the linguistic sign is arbitrary; language is a system of differences.
Position
Saussure is often regarded as the founder of modern linguistics: he shifted attention from the history of words to language as a system at a given moment. He distinguished language as a shared system (langue) from individual speaking (parole). The linguistic sign unites a sound image (signifier) with a concept (signified), and their connection is arbitrary: nothing about the sound “tree” resembles a tree. Above all, signs have no positive content on their own; they gain their value only through their differences from other signs in the system. “In language there are only differences.” This idea became the model for structuralism in anthropology, literary theory and psychoanalysis, and later the starting point of poststructuralist critique.
Life & context
Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857 and studied in Leipzig with the leading historical linguists of his time. At twenty-one he published a study of the Indo-European vowel system that is still cited. After teaching in Paris he returned to Geneva, where he lectured on general linguistics from 1907 to 1911. The Course was compiled after his death from students’ notes.
Further main works
- Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages (1878)
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