Ferdinand de Saussure is commonly regarded as one of the fathers of 20th Century Linguistics. His lectures, posthumously published as the Course in General Linguistics ushered in the structuralist mode which marked a key turning point in modern thought. Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan, the anthropologist ClaudeLevi-Strauss and linguists such as Noam Chomsky all found an important influence for their work in the pages of Saussure's text. Published 100 years after Saussure's death, this new edition of Roy Harris's authoritative translation is now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series with a substantial new introduction exploring Saussure's contemporary influence and importance.
Reconstructed from lecture notes of his students, these are the best records of the theories of Ferdinand De Saussure, the Swiss linguist whose theories of language are acknowledged as a primary source of the twentieth century movement known as Structuralism.
Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique g n rale was posthumously composed by his students from the notes they had made at his lectures. The book became one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, giving direction to modern linguistics and inspiration to literary and cultural theory. Before he died Saussure told friends he was writing up the lectures himself but no evidence of this was found. Eighty years later in 1996 a manuscript in Saussure's hand was discovered in the orangerie of his family house in Geneva. This proved to be the missing original of the great work. It is published now in English for the first time in an edition edited by Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, and translated and introduced by Carol Sanders and Matthew Pires, all leading Saussure scholars. The book includes an earlier discovered manuscript on the philosophy of language, Saussure's own notes for lectures, and a comprehensive bibliography of major work on Saussure from 1970 to 2004. It is remarkable that for eighty years the understanding of Saussure's thought has depended on an incomplete and non-definitive text, the sometimes aphoristic formulations of which gave rise to many creative interpretations and arguments for and against Saussure. Did he, or did he not, see language as a-social and a-historical? Did he, or did he not, rule out the study of speech within linguistics? Was he a reductionist? These disputes and many others can now be resolved on the basis of the work now published. This reveals new depth and subtetly in Saussure's thoughts on the nature and complex workings of language, particularly his famous binary oppositions between form and meaning, the sign and what is signified, and language (langue) and its performance (parole).
Ferdinand de Saussure is most famous for his Course in General Linguistics, reconstructed after his death by his students from notes of lectures he had given at the University of Geneva. He only published two books before his death, the Memoir on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages, and the book that we publish here for the first time in English translation, On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit. Originally a doctoral thesis in French written while he was a student at the University of Leipzig, On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit was first published in French in 1881. Here, Saussure explores a neglected area in Sanskrit syntax. Already in this work we find an empirical case of the seminal principle of structural linguistics based on use, a principle for which, after his death, he was to become so famous. Editor and translator Ananta Sukla has at last rescued this book from neglect. Apart from translating the text in collaboration with late Patrick Thomas, Sukla provides an extensive introduction that clarifies several points illuminating foundation of modern linguistics in ancient Sanskrit grammars, particularly in principles of use.
Saussure's Cours de linguistique gnrale has been one of the seminal books of the twentieth century, having shaped modern linguistics and semiology, and having importantly affected anthropology, philosophy and literary studies. Yet the book was written by Saussure's colleagues, based on student notes taken during the three occasions when Saussure gave his lectures on general linguistics. For Saussure's first course, the notebooks of Albert Riedlinger are certainly the best and the most detailed. They have loomed large in our knowledge of Saussurean linguistics, but a number of Saussure's statements, as recorded by Riedlinger, have never been known to a larger public. Until now, those notes themselves have been unavailable, except in fragmented and incomplete form in Engler's unwieldy and hard-to-find edition of the Cours. Now, the best of the student notes to all three courses will be available for the first time as they were taken down in French, and have been provided with a facing translation, an introduction, and a full analytical index of terminology. With their publication, Saussurean scholars as well as students of linguistics and related disciplines will have at their disposal the most reliable source material for Saussure's thinking on language. It is hoped that this work will encourage those who take Saussure's principal ideas to be sufficiently known from the CLG to reconsider Saussure's ideas in their greater immediacy and in their development, so as to appreciate nuances of his thinking generally unknown until now. This edition presents Riedlinger's notes intact and in their original order. The notes are accompanied by an introduction and a full English translation of the text. Together with the other two volumes, it offers the best insight yet into the evolution of Saussure's thinking.
Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique g n rale was posthumously composed by his students from the notes they had made at his lectures. The book became one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, giving direction to modern linguistics and inspiration to literary and cultural theory. Before he died Saussure told friends he was writing up the lectures himself but no evidence of this was found. Eighty years later in 1996 a manuscript in Saussure's hand was discovered in the orangerie of his family house in Geneva. This proved to be the missing original of the great work. It is published now in English for the first time in an edition edited by Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, and translated and introduced by Carol Sanders and Matthew Pires, all leading Saussure scholars. The book includes an earlier discovered manuscript on the philosophy of language, Saussure's own notes for lectures, and a comprehensive bibliography of major work on Saussure from 1970 to 2004. It is remarkable that for eighty years the understanding of Saussure's thought has depended on an incomplete and non-definitive text, the sometimes aphoristic formulations of which gave rise to many creative interpretations and arguments for and against Saussure. Did he, or did he not, see language as a-social and a-historical? Did he, or did he not, rule out the study of speech within linguistics? Was he a reductionist? These disputes and many others can now be resolved on the basis of the work now published. This reveals new depth and subtetly in Saussure's thoughts on the nature and complex workings of language, particularly his famous binary oppositions between form and meaning, the sign and what is signified, and language (langue) and its performance (parole).
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.
Scholarly discussions of biblical interpretation often ignore the fact that language and literature form an integral part of a people's culture, that interpretation therefore implies the total cultural system of the relevant literature, and that biblical interpretation consequently implies inter-cultural communication. This book explores the theoretical and practical implications of this observation from a cultural anthropological perspective, looks at recent anthropological studies of ancient Israelite society, supplies practical examples of a cultural interpretation of ancient Hebrew narratives, and discusses the impact of the notions 'cultural relativity' and 'inter-cultural communication' for biblical interpretation.
Behind these news networks was the entrepreneurial spirit of Benjamin Collins, a figure of national importance, who set up Salisbury's first bank, established newspapers in London and the provinces, wrote children's books with John Newbery, and whose publishing interests brought him into contact with the literary and commercial life of London. This fascinating study of the information networks of eighteenth-century provincial life will be interest to literary students and biographers as well as historians.
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