ferdinand de saussure general linguistics

A careful reading of CLG shows that the separating of langue and parole does not pertain to the “reality” of language but is a methodological tool for gaining a useful perspective on language. This fallacy continues to cause confusion between description or methodology, on the one hand, and ontology, on the other. Some linguists and semioticians take it for granted that this is a description of what language is, though these dichotomies are merely constructed by a theory of linguistics. This dichotomous way of thinking about the study of language remained the dominant reading of Saussure throughout mainstream European twentieth‐century linguistics. This includes the study of language in relation to its historical development, social institutions such as church and school, its literary development, and its political history. “External” linguistics, which Saussure conceives of as secondary to the more “essential” internal linguistics, is concerned with the individual's use of language. Saussure privileges langue as a way of delimiting the object of study, which he sees as an internal system of terms regulated by the differences, or oppositions, among them.

Saussure makes a basic distinction between an “internal” linguistics of the language system ( langue) and an “external” linguistics of the “individual part of language” ( parole). In the earlier work, Saussure already demonstrates an explicit awareness of the systemic imperatives that are assumed to drive sound change. There is considerable continuity in both theory and methodology between Saussure's first published study, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo‐européennes (Essay on the Early System of Vowels in Indo‐European Languages, 1879), and the discussion in part 3 of CLG of sound change. Saussure draws on his comprehensive knowledge of the historical processes of linguistic change, a theme ever present in CLG, as it is throughout Saussure's career.

The cycle of lectures on which this text is based occupied a relatively brief period in Saussure's scholarly life, which was mostly spent working within the tradition of comparative and historical linguistics with which CLG is generally presented as a decisive break. Swiss linguist and comparative philologist best known to semioticians for the posthumously published Cours de linguistique générale ( CLG Course in General Linguistics, 1916).

Ferdinand de saussure general linguistics