Recent Developments in Saussurean Linguistics

The Course in General Linguistics has played a foundational role in the development of structural methods within the humanities (philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory). Its main premise is that cultural signification can be studied in terms of relatively autonomous and self-organizing sign systems situated within the social world. Because of its broad focus on signification, the Course made it possible to study the ensemble of human culture in a systematic, comprehensive, and rigorous manner. The Course introduces a basic set of oppositional pairings between the signifying and the signified facets of a sign, between the language system (la langue) and speech (la parole), and between synchrony and diachrony. This approach allows for the study of any human phenomenon on the basis of a rule-governed system of contrastive and combinatorial relations between signifying elements. However, in the last sixty years, scholars have challenged the legitimacy of the Course itself. Previously, the Course was believed to be a simple recast of Saussure’s lectures on general linguistics, but the combination of critical works and direct access to Saussure’s private manuscripts allows for the Course to be called into question and examined anew.