Although Saussure's perspective was in historical linguistics, the Course develops a theory of semiotics that is generally applicable. A manuscript containing Saussure's original notes was found in 1996, and later published as Writings in General Linguistics.
Following a brief introduction to the history of linguistics, Saussure sets the tasks of linguistics. He largely equates general linguistics with historical-comparative and reconstructive linguistics arguing that "the scope of linguistics should be
A core task of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics is to define the subject matter of general linguistics. To do this, a definition of 'language' is required. Saussure distinguishes between language (la langue) and speech (la parole) introducing his concept of the 'speech circuit' (le circuit de la parole). The speech circuit emerges when at least two persons (A and B in the picture) interact verbally. It consists of two physical elements: the brain, representing the personal-psychological aspect of speaking; and speech, which is the result of the vocal organs producing sound waves. Third, language (not visible in the picture), with its rules, arises from the speech circuit socially and historically as a non-physical phenomenon. However, Saussure considers it "concrete" and not an abstraction, making language the suitable subject of linguistics as a natural science.
In practice, Saussure proposes that general linguistics consists of the analysis of language itself by way of semantics, phonology, morphology, lexicology, and grammar. Moreover, general or internal linguistics is informed by the related disciplines of external linguistics such as anthropological and archaeological linguistics. While language is the ultimate object of research, it must be studied through speech, which provides the research material. For practical reasons, linguists mostly use texts to analyse speech to uncover the systemic properties of language.
The publication a century ago of the Course in General Linguistics, allegedly by Ferdinand de Saussure, was a main impetus behind modern linguistics as well as the structuralist and post-structuralist movements.[1] Going back to the "founding father"[2] of these movements is therefore not only of historical interest but also of great philosophical importance, in particular since this influential book was the product of a rather high-handed editorial process by Saussure's colleagues, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, who had not been present at the actual courses.
Stawarska writes well; her book is often both pleasant to read and thought-provoking. However, the richness of ideas and interconnected themes is perhaps also one of its weakest points: while an important groundwork is laid down for English-speaking philosophers and linguists, the positive theses are difficult to sort out. We get a critique of earlier interpretations that sometimes borders on straw-man arguments. For one thing, the structuralist development of Saussure's linguistics were not intended to be a truthful exegesis. In addition, this multifarious movement is more often than not presented as equivalent to the rather unsophisticated dogma of closed and rigid structures. Moreover, even though Stawarska is absolutely right in pointing out the distortions of Saussure's ideas by the editors, the claim that the Saussure they produced is a "metaphysical traditionalist who maintained the received notion of a sign considered as a positive unity of sound and sense" (p. 79) is a perfect hyperbole. The editors put together an often highly equivocal work, but enough of Saussure's original ideas transpired for early interpreters to discern their ingenuity.[6]
In fact, Saussure repeatedly emphasises the importance of upholding a distinction between these perspectives for a reason: for him, general linguistics should help us understand thefunctioning of language, and this requires us to take the viewpoint of the speaking subject. In contrast to the dominant paradigm in linguistics at the time, according to which general linguistic principles must be based on historical facts, Saussure took linguistic practice as his point of departure. Since the speaker does not necessarily know anything about the history of his or her language, it is not through the diachronic perspective that we can gain an understanding of its functioning. This is clearly a methodological choice, but one that must be maintained. As Stawarska herself points out, linguistic facts are not given independently but are contingent on the viewpoint adopted (p. 117). In other words, the synchronic point of view constituteslanguage as a system of oppositional, differentially and negatively determined values and cannot simply be intertwined with the diachronic perspective. The latter will constitute a different theoretical object.
In her discussion of the analogy, Stawarska reveals a fundamental paradox in Saussure's linguistics presented by him as a general principle of creativity in language (and thus, one would imagine, of change). However, since Saussure insists (also in the manuscripts) that analogy is a synchronic phenomenon, he admits a problem: if there is innovation there is change, and thus one enters the diachronic perspective. This is definitely a part of Saussure's thought that merits investigation, but to some extent Stawarska dodges the paradox when she claims that the analogy implies "a logic of chiasmatic interdependency" (p. 148). But the question remains how such an interdependency would be possible: according to Saussure's own principles, the analogy must occur in the synchronic realm and the distinction with diachrony be maintained, since the whole of the language system is needed in order for the analogy to have meaning.[7]
Saussure and the Grounds of InterpretationDavid Herman
North Carolina State University
dherman@unity.ncsu.edu 2002 David Herman.
All rights reserved.Review of:
Roy Harris, Saussure and His Interpreters. New York: New York UP, 2001.The author of a 1983 English translation of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique gÃnÃrale, as well as two previous books centering on Saussure's theories of language (Reading Saussure and Language, Saussure, and Wittgenstein), Roy Harris brings a wealth of expertise to his new book on Saussure. More than this, as is amply borne out in the early chapters of Saussure and His Interpreters, Harris is deeply familiar with the various manuscript sources (i.e., students' notebooks) on which Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye relied in producing/editing what became the Course in General Linguistics, the first edition of which was published in 1916. [1] Added to these other qualifications is Harris's stature as an expert in the field of linguistic theory more generally. [2] From all of these achievements emerges the profile of a commentator uniquely positioned to interpret--to understand as well as adjudicate between--previous interpretations of Saussure. To be sure, Harris's background and research accomplishments--his knowledge of the origins, details, and larger framework of Saussurean language theory--are unimpeachable. [3] But while Harris's credentials are unimpeachable, there remains the question of whether those credentials have equipped him to take the true measure of Saussure's interpreters, i.e., those who claim (or for that matter disavow) a Saussurean basis for their work. This question, prompted by the tone as well as the technique of a book cast as an exposà of nearly a century's worth of "misreadings" of Saussure, is itself part of a broader issue exceeding the scope of the author's study. The broader issue concerns the exact nature of the relation between ideas developed by specialists in particular fields of study and the form assumed by those ideas as interpreted (and eo ipso adapted) by non-specialists working in other, more or less proximate fields. Also at issue are the nature and source of the standards that could (in principle) be used to adjudicate between better and worse interpretations of source ideas imported into diverse target disciplines--that is, into domains of study in which, internally speaking, distinct methods and objects of interpretation already hold sway. Indeed, even within the same discipline in which the ideas in question had their source, interpretations can vary widely--as suggested by Harris's chapters on linguists who in his view misunderstand or misappropriate Saussure (the list includes such major figures as Leonard Bloomfield, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson, and Noam Chomsky). Although these deep issues sometimes surface during Harris's exposition, they do not receive the more sustained treatment they deserve. The result is a study marked, on the one hand, by its technical brilliance in outlining the Rezeptiongeschichte of Saussurean theory, but on the other hand by its avoidance of other, foundational questions pertaining to the possibilities and limits of interpretation itself. The salience of those questions derives, in part, from the transdisciplinary legacy of Saussure's own work. It is worth underscoring at the outset that Harris's account of Saussure and his interpreters is not merely a descriptive one. Granted, the author carefully traces the transformation and recontextualization of Saussurean ideas as they were propagated within the field of linguistics and later (or in some cases simultaneously) migrated from linguistics into neighboring areas of inquiry. [4] But Harris does not rest content with pointing out where an intra- or interdisciplinary adaptation differs from what (in his interpretation) is being adapted. Persistently, in every chapter of the book, and sometimes in quite vituperative terms, Harris construes this adaptive process as one involving distortion, i.e., a failure to get Saussure right. [5] I discuss Harris's specific claims in more detail below. For the moment, I wish to stress how this prescriptive, evaluative dimension of the author's approach is at odds with what he emphasizes at the beginning of his study--namely, the status of Saussure's text as itself a construct, a constellation of interpretive decisions made by those who sought to record and, in the case of his editors, promulgate Saussure's ideas. Indeed, Harris's meticulous analysis of the textual history of the Course invites one further turn of the Saussurean screw: if the very text on which all subsequent interpretations have been built is itself the product of students' and editors' interpretations, then who, precisely, is in a position to interpret Saussure's interpreters? Or rather, where is the ground on which one might stand to distinguish between the wheat of productive adaptations and the chaff of non- or counter-productive misappropriations, whether these borrowings are made within or across the boundaries of linguistic study? [6] In this connection, there is a sense in which Harris seeks to have his cake and eat it, too. The author advances the claim that, in the case of Saussure's text, interpretation goes all the way down, meaning that no feature of the Course is not already an interpretation by Saussure's contemporaries. But he also advances the claim that at some point (is it to be stipulated by all concerned parties?) interpretation stops and the ground or bedrock of textual evidence begins (2), such that those of Saussure's successors who engaged in particular strategies or styles of interpretation can be deemed guilty of error, of violating the spirit (if not the letter) of Saussure's work. As demonstrated by the early chapters of Saussure and His Interpreters, no writer is more aware than Harris that the book often viewed as the foundational document of (European) structuralism was in fact a composite creation, a portmanteau assemblage of more-or-less-worked-out hypotheses by Saussure himself, re-calibrated for the purposes of undergraduate instruction; notes taken by students not always consistent in their reports of what Saussure actually said in class; conjectures, surmises, extrapolations, and outright interpolations by the editors of the Course; and, later, interpretations of Saussure by linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and others--interpretations because of which later generations of readers came to "find" things in Saussure's text that would not necessarily have been discoverable when the book first appeared. As Harris puts it in chapter 1, "Interpreting the Interpreters," "the majority of Saussure's most original contributions to linguistic thought have passed through one or more filters of interpretation" (2). As Harris's discussion proceeds, the emphasis on Saussure's ideas as inevitably interpretively filtered gives way to a series of attempts to dissociate Saussure's theories from a group of filters that seem to be qualitatively different from those falling into the initial group (i.e., students and editors). Harris distinguishes between the two sets of filters by dividing them into contemporaries and successors (3-4), although by Harris's own account neither group can be exempted from the process by which Saussure's ideas were actively constructed rather than passively and neutrally conveyed. Given that (as Harris discusses in chapter 3) Saussure's editors took the liberty of writing portions of the Course without any supporting documents, it is not altogether clear why the parameters of distance in time and intellectual inheritance (4) are sufficient to capture what distinguishes a successor's from a contemporary's interpretations. An editorial interpolation is arguably just as radically interpretive as any post-Saussurean commentator's extrapolation. In any case, in interpreting Saussure, neither contemporaries nor successors have stood on firm ground, whatever their degree of separation in time and tradition from the flesh-and-blood "author" of the Course.[7]Indeed, Harris's concern early on is with the difficulty or rather impossibility of getting back to the solid ground of Saussure's "true"--unfiltered--ideas. In chapter 2, "The Students' Saussure," the author remarks that two separate questions must be addressed in considering the students' notebooks as evidence concerning Saussure's ideas: on the one hand, whether the students understood their teacher's points; on the other hand, whether what Saussure said in class always reliably indicated his considered position on a given topic (17). With respect to the latter question, Saussure may have sometimes been unclear, and he also may have sometimes oversimplified his views for pedagogical reasons. The challenge of reconstructing the Saussurean framework on the basis of student notes is therefore considerable. Moreover, Saussure's decisions about what to include in his lectures were in some cases dictated by the established curriculum of his time, rather than by priorities specific to his approach to language and linguistic study. Assuming as much, Saussure's editors expunged from the published version of the Course the survey of Indo-European languages that he presented in his actual lectures (18-23), to mention just one example. As for the editors themselves, Harris discusses their role in chapter 3. The author notes that, in statements about the Course written after the publication of the first edition, Bally and Sechehaye came to quote their own words as if they were Saussure's (32). The publication of Robert Godel's Les Sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique gÃnÃrale de F. de Saussure in 1957, however, revealed that many of the editors' formulations lacked any manuscript authority whatsoever. They were imputations by Bally and Sechehaye rather than, in any nontrivial sense, reconstructions of the student notebooks. Also, in selecting which Saussurean materials to include in the Course and in making decisions about which ideas should be given pride of place in the exposition, the editors were inevitably biased by their own linguistic training and theories. The editors' biases came into play in their choices about how to present such key distinctions as those between signification and value, synchrony and diachrony, and "la langue" and "la parole."In chapters 4-10, Harris's focus shifts from contemporaries to successors, with chapter 11 attempting to take stock of "History's Saussure." As the first group of interpretive filters, Saussure's contemporaries already impose a layer of mediation between the linguist's theories and modern-day readers' efforts to know what those theories were. But the second group of filters imposes what often comes across as an even thicker--and somehow more reprehensible--layer of intervening (mis)interpretations on top of the layer already there because of the contemporaries' (mis)interpretations. Thus, the chapters in question portray a process by which a series of filters get stacked one by one on top of Saussure's already-filtered ideas, according to the following recursive procedure: Filter 1 (Saussure's ideas filtered through students and editors)
Filter 2 (Filter 1(Saussure's ideas filtered through students and editors))
Filter 3 (Filter 2(Filter1(Saussure's ideas filtered through students and editors)))
etc. As each successive filter gets pushed onto the stack, Saussure's ideas (at least as they were interpreted by his contemporaries rather than his successors) recede farther in historical memory. Even worse, the filters continually being loaded on the stack are the handiwork of commentators guilty of carelessness (Chomsky), incomprehension (Bloomfield, Jakobson, Claude LÃvi-Strauss), confusion (Roland Barthes), or even meretricious slander (Jacques Derrida), as the case may be. Again, though, this compilation of misreadings seems strangely at odds with Harris's earlier emphasis on the instability of the Course as itself an assemblage (one might even say stack) of more or less plausible interpretations. Does Harris mean to imply that, in shifting from contemporaries to successors, the interpretations of the former become "evidence" on which the latter must base their own, later interpretations? If so, by what mechanism (and at what point on the continuum linking contemporaries and successors) does an interpretation or set of interpretations achieve evidential status? Though centrally important to Harris's study, these questions about validity in interpretation are never explicitly posed (let alone addressed) by the author. To take the linguists first, Harris identifies a host of misinterpretations of Saussure on the part of scholars who, as specialists in Saussure's field of study, apparently should have known better. None of the linguists included in the author's scathing series of exposÃs emerges in very good shape. In "Bloomfield's Saussure," Harris suggests that the famous American linguist misunderstood the distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics, the Saussurean conception of the sign, and, more generally, the relationship between Saussure's theoretical position and his own. "Hjelmslev's Saussure" characterizes the Danish linguist's theory of glossematics as one that claims to be the logical distillation of Saussurean structuralism but ends up looking more like a "reductio ad absurdum" of Saussure's ideas: "Glos