Strange Life of a Sentence
Philosophy Today 59 (2):305-316 (2015)
Abstract
In this essay, I follow the lead of recent scholarship in Saussure linguistics and critically examine the Saussurean doctrine associated with the Course in General Linguistics, which later became a hallmark of structuralism. Specifically, I reconstruct the history of the concluding sentence in the Course which establishes the priority of la langue over everything deemed external to it. This line assumed the status of an oft-cited ‘famous formula’ and became a structuralist motto. The ‘famous formula’ was, however, freely inserted by the editors of the Course who effectively ghostwrote the book after Saussure’s death, and authored a series of early book-reviews of the same text in dedicated scholarly venues. I argue that the editorial success turning their vision of Saussure’s teaching into official doctrine was enabled in part by the dominant social structures regulating twentieth-century European academia.Author's Profile
ISBN(s)
0031-8256
DOI
10.5840/philtoday201522666
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References found in this work
The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics.Paul Ricoeur - 1974 - Northwestern University Press.
Saussure's Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology: Undoing the Doctrine of the Course in General Linguistics.Beata Stawarska - 2015 - New York: Oxford UP USA.
Course in General Linguistics: Translated by Wade Baskin. Edited by Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy.Ferdinand de Saussure - 2011 - Columbia University Press.
On Plato, Meno 5. By C.W.F.A. Wolf. In Lat. Progr., Halle.Christian Wilhelm Friedrich A. Wolf - 1795
The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics.Paul Ricœur - 1974 - Northwestern University Press.