Semiotics: Saussure

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.

Written in 1878, while the author was a twenty-year-old student in Berlin, Saussure's only full-length work proposed the existence of two additional sonant coefficients in the Indo-European parent language. Applying the methods of comparison and internal reconstruction to Proto-Indo-European, Saussure argued that the long vowels had developed from a short vowel plus a sonant coefficient. A hypothesis far ahead of its time, his proposal was not confirmed until 1927 when a consonantal phoneme etymologically derived from Saussure's A was discovered in newly deciphered Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language. Not only is the Mémoire a dramatic demonstration of the method of internal reconstruction, but it also paved the way for further developments in historical phonology including laryngeal theory, and may have stimulated Saussure's later development of structuralism. This reissue includes, as an appendix, Antoine Meillet's 1913 obituary of Saussure.

The founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure inaugurated semiology, structuralism, and deconstruction and made possible the work of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan, thus enabling the development of French feminism, gender studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism. Based on Saussure's lectures, Course in General Linguistics (1916) traces the rise and fall of the historical linguistics in which Saussure was trained, the synchronic or structural linguistics with which he replaced it, and the new look of diachronic linguistics that followed this change. Most important, Saussure presents the principles of a new linguistic science that includes the invention of semiology, or the theory of the "signifier," the "signified," and the "sign" that they combine to produce. This is the first critical edition of Course in General Linguistics to appear in English and restores Wade Baskin's original translation of 1959, in which the terms "signifier" and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made Course in General Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy. and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made Course in General Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy.and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made Course in General Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy.and "signified" are introduced into English in this precise way. Baskin renders Saussure clearly and accessibly, allowing readers to experience his shift of the theory of reference from mimesis to performance and his expansion of poetics to include all media, including the life sciences and environmentalism. An introduction situates Saussure within the history of ideas and describes the history of scholarship that made Course in General Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy.Linguistics legendary. New endnotes enlarge Saussure's contexts to include literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy.

This short, highly accessible book offers a clear and systematic exposition of Ferdinand de Saussure’s thought, especially his influence on structuralism. Culler introduces core Saussurean concepts—such as the signifier/signified distinction, langue vs. parole, and synchronic vs. diachronic analysis—and explains how these form the basis of structuralist approaches in linguistics, literary theory, and anthropology. Culler also highlights Saussure’s semiotic legacy, including how later thinkers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida drew from or critiqued Saussure’s ideas. It’s ideal for readers looking for a primer that bridges linguistics and continental theory.

In this insightful work, Gasparov offers a groundbreaking reexamination of the intellectual influences behind Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist whose ideas fundamentally transformed the study of language and semiotics. The book uncovers how early German Romantic thinkers shaped Saussure’s key theoretical contributions — especially his concepts of arbitrary linguistic signs, the interplay between signifier and signified, and the differential nature of meaning. Gasparov provides the first comprehensive mapping of these roots, arguing that Saussure’s modernist epistemological aims coexist in tension with Romantic notions of language’s fluid, dynamic nature — an awareness that transcends rigid categorical thought. Drawing on recently available sources, he demonstrates how Saussure’s focus on synchronic versus diachronic analysis, and his mutable versus immutable semiotic categories, are deeply entangled with early Romantic theories of cognitive development and cultural memory transmission. In essence, Beyond Pure Reason invites readers into a richer conceptual history of linguistics, revealing how the legacy of Romantic philosophy informs the formal structures of modern linguistics and semiotics — and, in doing so, redeems the seeming contradictions in Saussure’s work through a fresh, integrative lens.