giuseppe d'ottavi

John E. Joseph, « The affective, the conceptual and the meaning of ‘life’ in the stylistics of Charles Bally», Language & Communication 86 (September 2022), p. 60-69.
Published online : 24 August 2022
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2022.05.006
Article disponible en open access à ce lien

Abstract

The work in stylistics of Charles Bally (1865–1947) attempts to analyse that subset of a language system in which meaning is not purely conceptual or intellectual, but has an affective, emotional dimension. It is not concerned with literary language, but with everyday language used in the service of ‘life’, a word which is central for Bally. This paper adds to the definitive study of Bally’s stylistics (Taylor 1981) by bringing in material which came to light after its publication, including Médina’s (1985) study of Bally’s reliance on the work of Henri Bergson, who reconfigured the affective-conceptual dyad and whose writings are the source, Médina shows, of Bally’s use of ‘life’. This paper also adduces more recently published documents on Bally’s intellectual and professional relationship with Ferdinand de Saussure, which figures prominently in Taylor’s (1981) account, and which can now be reassessed in a new light.

Estanislao Sofía – « Quand c’est l’objet qui impose le point de vue : notes saussuriennes sur l’impossibilité des théories linguistiques en synchronie », in The Architecture of Grammar. Studies in Linguistic Historiography in Honor of Pierre Swiggers,  ed. by T. Denecker, P. Desmet, L. Jooken, P. Lauwers, T. Van Hal, R. Van Rooy, Leuven : Peeters (Orbis Supplementa, 47), 2022, XII-560 p., ISBN 978-90-429-4687-3, € 123, p. 409-422
Notice l’Éditeur, avec table des matières.

L’idée selon laquelle Saussure ferait abstraction de toute forme de substance et ne s’intéresserait qu’à des théories construites sur la base de ce qu’il traitera, dans quelques textes ponctuels, comme étant des systèmes de valeurs « pures », est l’une des plus fréquemment évoquées dans l’histoire récente du saussurisme, surtout à partir de la grande découverte de manuscrits survenue en 1996 – qui a eu, entre autres, le mérite de relancer les études sur l’œuvre du maître de Genève, et de contribuer, par là, au surgissement de l’école « néo-saussurienne », dont une des thèses centrales est précisément celle que nous venons d’évoquer. Cette idée pourtant, dont on trouve parfois des développements chez Saussure, appliquée soit au plan phonologique, soit (plus rarement) au plan sémantique, n’est pas une position constante chez Saussure. Elle apparaît dans certains cas seulement, appliquée à des objets théoriques dont on cherchera ci-après à préciser les contours.

On se concentrera ponctuellement sur un texte publié par Saussure en 1897, dont on interrogera aussi les notes préparatoires. On verra que, dans ce texte du moins, la question qui nous intéresse apparaît intimement liée à une problématique épistémologiquement centrale, à savoir le rapport possible entre, d’un côté, les données linguistiques susceptibles d’être attestées, et, de l’autre, le(s) système(s) théorique(s) susceptible(s) d’en rendre compte. Elle préside, en d’autres termes, à la question sur les fondements épistémologiques des théories linguistiques.

Passage tiré des pp. 409-410.

Sign Systems Studies, vol. 50 no. 1 (2022). Special issue: Ferdinand de Saussure today: semiotics, history, epistemology
Guest editors: Ekaterina Velmezova, Emanuele Fadda
Published: June 1, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2022.50.1
Numéro entièrement disponible en ligne sur le site de l’Éditeur.

In this special issue we publish the works of researchers from several countries (Switzerland, Estonia, Italy and the United Kingdom) who agreed to our proposal to reflect on Ferdinand de Saussure and his legacy in the framework of modern semiotics, as well as history and epistemology of ideas. The name of Saussure is often mentioned in modern works on semiotics and its history and Saussure is sometimes considered as one of the founders of the “science of signs”; at the same
time, Saussure as such is often equated to the most famous book published in 1916 under his name – the Course in General Linguistics. Even if this issue reflects partly this tendency too, all its contributors understand the importance of distinguishing between this book and Saussurean ideas as such, drawing cues, as far as possible, from all the Saussurean texts available to us, and considering Saussure’s legacy not dogmatically, but as a field on which we have not finished working yet.
[…]
One of the landmark texts in modern semiotics is Jacques Lacan’s seminar on “La lettre volée”, Baudelaire’s translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The purloined letter”, in which the plot turns on the fact that an incriminating letter which the police search for but cannot find turns out to be hidden in plain sight (in this respect, see Joseph’s article in this issue). The articles in this special issue show how the impact of Saussure’s semiotic model has been hidden in plain sight across the 20th century and on to the present. Everyone names Saussure as the co-founder of the discipline, along with Peirce, and then it appears as though, having lit the fuse, he fled before the explosion which saw all his ideas transformed, very differently in different places, with little of himself remaining. Yet reading the studies collected here, we see how present he has been through  all these transformations – as a consistent interlocutor for all who have followed.
Establishing this novel perspective will help us tie together the diverse threads of semiotic research, which sometimes have little in common other than what they retain from that Saussurean model which has been hidden in plain sight all along.

Extrait de l’Introduction par Ekaterina Velmezova et Emanuele Fadda.