Return to Saussure

Dürer’s Saussure. Aquarelle. AI image Introduction: A Shift in Perspective One of Ferdinand de Saussure’s lasting contributions is that he alters not only linguistic theory but also the way we perceive language itself. He urges us to question what normally seems self-evident—namely, that words attach to pre-existing ideas, that speaking is a physical performance, or that communication is nothing more than the transmission of messages. Against these intuitive assumptions, Saussure offers a vision of linguistic activity that is simultaneously cognitive, social and structural. His analyses grow out of concrete experiences of speaking and hearing, yet they culminate in a conception of language as an intricate system of relations. When read carefully, his reflections on the linguistic faculty, the speech circuit and the logic of differences reveal a radically new way of seeing something as familiar as everyday discourse. The Linguistic Faculty: Beyond Physiology Saussure begins with ...

Letter to a Japanese Friend. AI image Introduction Translation appears, on the surface, to be a practical matter: finding equivalent terms in one language for those in another. Yet for two of the most influential thinkers on language in the twentieth century, Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Derrida, this assumption conceals a deeper problem. Both argue, in different ways, that meaning is not a substance that words carry across linguistic borders. Rather, meaning is immanent to the structure of language itself: it arises from the relations among signs and is perpetually unstable. This article brings Saussure and Derrida into conversation to show why translation is always a risky, imperfect endeavor, and why that very imperfection reveals something essential about how language works. Language as a System: Saussure’s Insight In his Cours de linguistique générale (1916), Saussure proposed a radical new way of understanding language. Instead of viewing words as labels for things, h...