Saussure For Beginners

W. Terrence Gordon, Abbe Lubell

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781939994417
• eBook ISBN:
  9781939994424
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A concise accessible introduction to the great linguist who shaped the study of language for the 20th century Saussure for Beginners puts the challenging ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) into clear and illuminating terms focusing on the unifying principles of his teachings and showing how his thoughts on linguistics migrated to anthropology.Ferdinand de Saussure's work is so powerful that it not only redefined modern linguistics it also opened our minds to new ways of approaching anthropology literary criticism and psychoanalysis. Saussure felt that 19th century linguistics avoided hard questions about what language is and how it works. By 1911 he had taught a general linguistics course only three times. Upon his death however his students were so inspired by his teachings that they published them as the "Course in General Linguistics."Saussure For Beginners takes you through this course points out the unifying principles and shows how these ideas migrated from linguistics to other subjects.

INDEX

abstraction, 58

acoustic image, 18, 21–22

agglutination, 78–79

anagrams, 105–8

analogy, 70–79

false, 71

anthropology, 96–98

Aristotle, 12

association, 54–58, 72, 76

Barthes, Roland, 6, 98–100

Bloomfield, Leonard, 91–93

child language, 62–63, 74

Chomsky, Noam, 37, 93–95

code, 85

complex sign, 56–58, 68, 74

concept, 18, 21–22, 40

concrete object, 58

consonants, 61

Constantin, Emile, 8

context, 42–43

contrast, 48–49, 51–52

Cours de linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics)(Saussure), 1–2, 8, 18

deconstruction, 103–4

Derrida, Jacques, 6, 7–9, 103–4

diachronic fact, 69

diachronic linguistics, 30–36, 59–82

doublet, 68

dualities (paired terms)

(Saussure's), 16–17, 103–4, 116

etymology, 66–68

folk or popular, 76–79

Firth, J. R., 37, 38

form, 39, 42–43, 69, 74–75

Gadet, Françoise, 102

grammatical system, 57–58

Guillaume, Gustave, 6, 86–88

Guiraud, Pierre, 89–91

idea, 38, 44, 48

identity, 41–43, 80–81

ideograph, 115–16

Indo-European, 3–4

irregular forms, 70–72

Jakobson, Roman, 6, 83–...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Was there linguistics before Saussure?
• Definition of the linguistic sign
• How did Saussure break with earlier ways of analyzing language and why?
• The most important lessons in the Course in General Linguistics
• The linguistic sign
• Synchronic and diachronic analysis
• The elements of language
• Context and contrast create synchronic identity
• Synchronic identity is separable from synchronic value
• Language is a system of values
• The link between sound and thought in the lingistic sign
• Linguistic forms
• Oppostions among signs
• Linear and nonlinear relations
• Diachronic linguistics
• Analogy
• Agglutination
• European structuralism
• Gustave Guillaume (1883-1960)
• Pierre Guiraud (1912-1982)
• Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949)
• Noam Chomsky (1928- )
• Claude Lévi Strauss (1906- )
• Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
• Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
• Jacques Derrida (1930- )
• Anagrams
• Saussure at a glance
• Appendix
• Index