giuseppe d'ottavi

Language and Semiotic Studies, vol. 8, n. 1 (2022), ISSN 2751-7160. Special Issue: Ferdinand de Saussure in Contemporary Semiotics. Guest Editors: Bent Sørensen & Torkild Thellefsen.
Ce numéro est désormais disponible en ligne sur le site de l’Éditeur.

 

In Cours(e) we find, a goldmine of abstract ideas and (research) principles, and, seen from the perspective of the twentieth century, a novel approach to linguistic studies, concerning the distinction between langue and parole, language as a system of signs, the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, value by difference, associative and syntagmatic axes, and, of course, sémiologie, as a science which studies the life (and laws) of signs in society.
Even though Saussure himself did not further develop any concrete or direct guidelines concerning the study and understanding of other sign systems than language, his abstract ideas and principles have influenced and still do influence, not only linguistic studies, but also fields of study concerning, for example, semiotics.
Therefore, with this volume we not only wish to honour the memory of the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, but also to contribute to the advancement of the understanding of his indeed excellent work in relation to semiotics.
The thirteen articles in this special issue on Saussure testify, in very different ways, his relevance for contemporary semiotics; and, the articles are organized into three main groups, namely (1) articles offering a fresh look on Saussurian concepts, such as language system (De Angelis, Danesi, Jungk), sign (Bulea Bronckart), arbitrariness, (Gvoždiak), structure, opposition and markedness (Danesi II), value (Bédouret-Larraburu), and linguistic innovation (Stawaska), (2) articles with a focus on mind, thought processes from the perspective of Saussure (Brandt, Bronckart), and, finally, (3) articles in which Saussurian concepts are applied in order to analyse and understand phenomena such as money (Bankov) and visual communication (Rudloff and Kjærboe, Chandler).

Extrait de l’introduction par Bent Sørensen et Torkild Thellefsen, p. 1-2.

[Contributions de Kristian Bankov, Sandrine Bédouret-Larraburu, Per Aage Brandt, Ecaterina Bulea Bronckart, Jean-Paul Bronckart, Daniel Chandler, Marcel Danesi, Rossana De Angelis, Isabel Victoria Galleguillos Jungk, Vít Gvoždiak, Rasmus Kjærboe, Maja Rudloff, Beata Stawarska]

Johannes Kabatek, Eugenio Coseriu. Beyond Structuralism. Berlin, Walter De Gruyter, 2023, 338 p.
ISBN 9783110716153, € 99.95
DOI: doi.org/10.1515/9783110716573
Notice de l’Éditeur avec table des matières ; le volume est entièrement disponible en Open Access sur le site de l’Éditeur.

This is the first comprehensive monograph on Eugenio Coseriu. Its aim is to serve as an introduction to the vast Coserian oeuvre, an overview that will offer, chapter by chapter, basic insights into his work and thought. This is not an easy task: we live in a world of experts, and due to today’s high degree of disciplinary specialisation, no linguist in the 21^st century is likely to have a thorough grasp of all the fields in which Coseriu was active throughout his life. The general programme of what he himself used to call “Integral Linguistics” from the 1980s onwards is not only extremely ambitious, but is also something to which Coseriu himself contributed from a wide variety of scholarly fields. Not only did he work within a number of areas of general and Romance linguistics, he was also an expert on the history of linguistics and the philosophy of language, as well as on the theory of aesthetics. To produce an adequate and satisfying monograph on the whole range of Coseriu’s thinking would ideally presuppose expert knowledge in all these areas, something beyond the reach of a single author, and thus in what follows it is possible that scholars from one or another specific field might feel that their own area of expertise has not been dealt with in the kind of depth which ideally they would like. This may be the reason why such a work has never been attempted before. Be that as it may, it was on the centenary of Coseriu’s birth that I was reminded that such an endeavour was indeed necessary, and I felt it almost a duty to write this overview. I apologise, however, for any shortcomings herein; I am perfectly aware that each of the chapters is imperfect, and that much more could be said. On the other hand, a compact overview also has advantages, and the aims of this book will have been fulfilled if it contributes to the knowledge of Coseriu’s thought and makes the read- er curious to explore Coseriu’s own texts; from personal experience I know that reading him can be enormously enriching. Perhaps this is also the right moment to look at his work afresh. The Japanese linguist Takashi Kamei, in comparing the reception of Coseriu’s writings with those of Saussure and Jakobson and observing that a true reception only comes after a certain time, claimed that Coseriu would in fact become “a linguist of the 21^st century”.

Extrait de l’Introduction, p. 1

I won’t thank ChatGPT because it still knows little about Coseriu’s linguistics (for fun I asked it to produce a text about Coseriu’s semantics and it made a cognitivist out of him); I am sure that the online version of this book will contribute to improvements here.

Extrait des Remerciements, p. VII