The Cambridge Companion to Saussure, Cambridge Companion Series
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Introduction: Saussure today
Carol Sanders
Why, still today, do we find the name of Ferdinand de Saussure featuring promi-
nently in volumes published not only on linguistics, but on a multitude of topics,
volumes with titles such as
Culture and Text: Discourse and Methodology in
Social Research and Cultural Studies
(Lee and Poynton, 2000), or the intriguing
Plastic Glasses and Church Fathers
(Kronenfeld, 1996)? It is to this question
that the present volume attempts to bring at least a partial answer, by looking
afresh at the intellectual background to Saussure’s work, the work itself, its
impact on European structuralism in general and linguistics in particular, and
its changed but continuing influence today.
The titles above, then, are enough to show that nearly a century and a half after
his birth, the ideas of this Swiss linguist and thinker still excite interest. He is best
known for his
Cours de linguistique generale
, edited after his premature death
from the notes of students who had attended his lectures and first published in
1916. This ‘Course in general linguistics’ has gone through numerous editions
in France, has been translated into numerous languages, and has had an influence
far beyond the area of linguistics. This book, however, is far from being the
sole reason for his importance as a thinker, the recognition of which has gone
through various phases since his death. In his own lifetime, he was regarded –
and regarded himself – primarily as a historical linguist who had made his mark
with a brilliant and precocious study in Indo-European linguistics. At the turn
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, general linguistics, as a discipline
that examines how language works and how best to describe the current state
of a living language (as opposed to tracing the history of past language states),
was barely constituted; Saussure was one of the main thinkers who contributed
to establishing the principles of the discipline as we know it today. However,
although the
Cours
, on first being published, was received with praise by a
few, and with a more muted mixture of praise and criticism by others, it was
largely ignored in many quarters. In particular, in the English-speaking world
references to it were almost non-existent (see Sanders, 2000a). It would only be
in the mid-twentieth century that the significance of Saussure’s thought came
to be realised, initially in the context of the structuralist movement.
1
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2
Carol Sanders
Structuralism was a school of thought (to some) or a method (to others)
which for several decades of the second half of the twentieth century domi-
nated some disciplines – linguistics, literary criticism, anthropology, film and
media criticism, to mention but a few, and which had a strong impact on others,
from psychology and philosophy to economics. The main text that inspired,
and was constantly cited by, this movement was Saussure’s
Cours de linguis-
tique generale
, interpreted as a blueprint for describing how the structures of
our social and cultural life are constituted, and the way in which once con-
stituted they function as a system of signs. The concepts of the
Cours
thus
inspired some of the most interesting and best-known thinkers of the period,
in an astonishingly fertile period of ground-breaking work in what were often
new disciplines, or radical departures within established disciplines, as well
as work that crossed disciplinary borders. Such widespread acclaim for one
book (which was not even by the thinker whose ideas it purported to represent)
and such single-minded enthusiasm for one approach were bound to provoke
a reaction, and towards the end of the last century, so-called Saussurean struc-
turalism was accused, among other things, of ahistoricism, and of promoting a
reductionist view of language as a code while ignoring real usage and language
in context. These criticisms were to some extent countered by later studies
based on manuscripts in which Saussure explores in great detail certain aspects
of classical and medieval literature, in particular his claim to have discov-
ered the widespread use of anagrams concealed in Latin poetry. So different
was this facet of his work that commentators spoke of the ‘two Saussures’.
Even amidst the debates, studies continued to appear that testified to the rele-
vance of the
Cours
in various domains (for example, Holdcroft, 1991, for the
social sciences). Subsequently, it was partly with more balanced readings of the
Cours
, and partly with the further discovery in 1996 of notes in Saussure’s own
hand, that the pendulum began to swing back again. Interested readers began
to construct a more nuanced view of the incomplete and suggestive work of
this fascinating thinker, looking afresh at his original contribution to intellec-
tual history, even to the extent in some cases of seeing in his reflections the
embryonic beginnings of a theory of utterance and of speech acts.
There are also, of course, those Saussure scholars who, less swayed by chang-
ing intellectual fashions, have continued to work steadily to elucidate and make
available his ideas. The purpose of the schematic account above is simply to
give an initial overview which enables the reader to situate the subject of this
book, and to understand the rationale for the topics that are covered. Specific
names and works have not been cited so far, because these will emerge in the
chapters that follow. Saussure himself was very aware of the history and epis-
temological status of linguistics, and an attempt has been made to reflect this. It
is perhaps time to reexamine the place in Saussure’s thought of the two centres
of linguistics in which he spent his early years as a young scholar. In the first
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Introduction: Saussure today
3
chapter, Saussure’s work as an Indo-Europeanist, and its relation to nineteenth-
century German scholarship as well as to the rest of his work, is examined. The
second chapter focuses on Saussure’s years of teaching in Paris, during which
he was undoubtedly as much influenced by colleagues as he influenced them,
although this mutual debt is not always as fully recognised as it might be. The
four chapters of part II concern the
Cours
itself: the complex story of its compi-
lation, and the interlocking sum of key concepts that explain its impact. Part III
deals with the delayed ‘aftermath’ of the
Cours
, its reception and influence not
only in European structuralism and post-structuralism, but also in other places
and traditions, from Russia to North America. Finally, there is an opening out
to the wider impact of Saussure’s thought and the elements of it that are under
discussion today or which are likely to continue to be of interest tomorrow, such
as his contribution to theories of meaning, and to the discipline of semiotics
which he foreshadowed in the
Cours
.
Rather than duplicating the numerous studies of Saussure that exist in French,
the emphasis of this volume is on providing an up-to-date introduction to, and
assessment of, Saussure’s ideas to an English-speaking readership. There is
thus a two-fold perspective. Firstly, the aim in some of the chapters is to shed a
slightly different light on the Swiss linguist by setting his thought in the wider
context of English-speaking approaches to linguistics and to contemporary
intellectual history (as in the chapter by Norris). Inevitably, many major writers
on Saussure publish in languages other than English, and in particular in French,
so that a second aim is to try to make accessible to readers the work of certain
scholars from other traditions. Chapters may be read individually; although
certain key concepts inevitably recur, an attempt has been made to avoid undue
overlap. However, because Saussure’s ideas are looked at here in a variety of
ways by the different authors, most will be gained from (preferably) reading
the whole volume, or (at the very least) from following up the cross-references
that are given from one chapter to others.
In the context of the above, a comment is called for about the various edi-
tions of the
Cours de linguistique generale
, which can be confusing, and also
about translation and terminology. The
Cours
, first published in 1916, has been
republished in a number of subsequent editions, which from the second edition
on have kept the same page numbering. In 1972, an important scholarly edition
with substantial notes by Tullio de Mauro (based on an Italian version published
in 1967) appeared in French, still retaining the original page numbers for the
text of the
Cours
. In this volume, page references to the
Cours
are simply given
with the abbreviation
CLG
, and if a distinction needs to be made between the
original publication and de Mauro’s edition, the abbreviation
CLG
/D is used
or the date is given. Manuscript sources of the
Cours
were first published by
Godel (Godel, 1957), followed by a masterly juxtaposition of the various stu-
dent notes available drawn up by Engler (
CLG
/E) in two volumes published in
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4
Carol Sanders
1968 and 1974. Other works by Saussure are listed under his name and the date
of publication in the first section of the final bibliography. The next section of
the bibliography comprises a select list of major works on Saussure published
in the last two decades, mainly in English, but with some references in other
languages; it is hoped that this may prove a helpful reference tool for further
reading and research. Finally, there is a consolidated list of references used by
the authors of the chapters of this volume. (A small number if items appear
twice: for example, Godel’s compilation of the lecture notes taken by some
students is commonly referred to as Godel, 1957, and it is listed as such in the
references as well as among Saussure’s works.)
Most of the quotations in the chapters are given in English, with occasional
short quotations being provided in French also, in order to give the reader a
taste of the original. There are two published English translations of the
Cours
de linguistique generale
, and a number of critical volumes in which authors
have provided their own versions. The first published translation into English,
by Wade Baskin, appeared in the USA in 1959 (and then in Britain a year later).
It was subsequently reissued with a useful introduction by Jonathan Culler
in 1974, with the same page numbering. Baskin’s translation is referred to as
CLG
-B. The second English translation is by Roy Harris and was first published
in Britain in 1983 (
CLG
-H). Because each of these translations has its strengths
and weaknesses, it was decided to allow authors the freedom to use either of
them, or even to supply their own, as they thought fit. The translated quotations
to be found in the chapters are not sufficiently different to lead to misunder-
standings or inconsistencies; rather, they allow the reader to get the flavour of
each, and perhaps eventually to select one or the other in order to read more of
the
Cours
, as well, hopefully, as appreciating some of the difficulties involved
in translating this text. There are bilingual French/English editions of some stu-
dent notebooks (see Saussure, 1993, 1996 and 1997 in the bibliography). Some
manuscript notes have been published over the years in French, for example in
the
Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure
; the major publication of manuscript notes,
both those discovered in 1996 and some older ones, is the
Ecrits de linguis-
tique generale (ELG
), edited by Bouquet and Engler (Saussure, 2002), which
will shortly appear in English published by Oxford University Press. Where no
reference is made to an existing English version of a text, the translation is the
work of the author (or overall translator) of the chapter.
A translation problem arises with certain of Saussure’s terms. The first is
the translation of the terms
langue
and
parole
, as used in the
Cours
.Overthe
years Saussure’s own terminology varies, and it develops throughout the three
lecture series on which the
Cours
is based. The solution which he adopted,
and which has been consecrated by the
Cours
with occasional lapses, was
to divide the overarching term for language, or the human language faculty,
which he refers to as
langage
, into
langue
and
parole
. The former refers to
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Introduction: Saussure today
5
the potential linguistic system which resides in the mind of all members of a
speech community, and waits to be activated in
parole
, in individual utterances,
or acts of speech. To complicate matters,
une langue, les langues
, etc. is used
with its non-technical meaning of a language/languages, although this usage
poses no translation problem. (See Gordon’s chapter, and Sanders, 2000b.)
The difficulty with the other three terms
langage/langue/parole
is that English
only has two likely contenders: language and speech. Baskin uses ‘human
speech/language/speaking’ for the triad, whereas Harris tends to use ‘language’
or ‘language faculty’ for
langage
, ‘language structure’ or ‘linguistic system’ (or
less happily ‘the
langue
’) for
langue
and ‘speech’ for
parole
. There is no ideal
solution, but of the English terms, ‘language system’ for
langue
and ‘speech’
for
parole
would seem the best in most contexts, as long as another phrase such
as ‘language faculty’ is retained for
langage
where there is any possible confu-
sion between it and
langue
. However, the French terms have now been used so
frequently in English in any writing on Saussure or on structuralism in general
that another solution is to borrow the French words. In these chapters, we have
generally used either ‘language system’ or
langue
when talking about
langue
,
and either ‘speech’ or
parole
for the latter. There are other Saussurean terms
that have become ‘naturalised’, such as
etat de langue
for the snapshot picture
that we get of any language at a particular stage of its development. There
is also another well-known pair of terms: the linguistic sign is made up of
two inseparable parts, the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’, which are Baskin’s
translation of
signifiant
and
signifie
, while Harris uses ‘signification’ and
‘signal’. (On the sign, see the chapter by Joseph.) We have used either Baskin’s
terms, or the French loan-words of
signifiant
and
signifie
.
The adoption of these terms, which will be found in English in a range of
disciplinary fields, is just one more indication of the lasting impact made by
Saussure’s thought. These concepts were to be found embryonically present in
other scholars of Saussure’s time, but he it was who sharpened their focus and,
above all, who wove them all into a coherent system which could be used as a
model for us to understand and describe the workings not only of language, but
also of other human sign systems. In our age of communication and information
technologies, it is not surprising that there is once more interest in Saussure’s
thought, so that an ‘Institut Ferdinand de Saussure’ has been set up with the
aim of exploring and promoting the relevance of Saussure to linguistics and
beyond, for example in cognitive science, and in what the French are calling
‘les sciences de la culture’. It is true that at one point, just at the time when
it was fashionable to proclaim the death of the author, Saussure’s elevation to
almost cult-figure status may have owed something to the enigmatic nature of
his work, unfinished, sometimes ambiguous and posthumously published by
others. However, if since then it has shown that it will stand the test of time in
its relevance to a range of disciplines, this is also in part due to the individual
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