giuseppe d'ottavi

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.

Jean-Paul Bronckart, Ecaterina Bulea Bronckart, Ferdinand de Saussure. Une science du langage pour une science de l’humain, Paris, Classiques Garnier (Domaines linguistiques, n° 20), 2022, 590 p., ISBN 978-2-406-12925-7, € 32,00
DOI: 10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-12927-1
Notice de l’Éditeur, avec table des matières

QUAM PERGERE ?

« Pourquoi Saussure encore ? » C’est par cette question que nous avions introduit le présent ouvrage ; question évidemment rhétorique à laquelle nous avions répondu que l’œuvre de Saussure nous paraissait d’une importance capitale pour la linguistique et les sciences de l’humain contemporaines, en raison notamment de trois de ses orientations. Tout d’abord la conviction épistémologique de l’unité structurelle et fonctionnelle de l’entité langue, qui a conduit Saussure à aborder l’ensemble des dimensions de cette entité, des unités phonologiques aux textes, des processus de changement historique et géographique à la construction du système des langues, des dimensions proprement sémiologiques aux ingrédients sociaux et psychologiques qui y sont mobilisés. Ensuite, la mise en œuvre d’une méthodologie consistant à analyser de multiples données authentiques issues de langues diverses, anciennes et contemporaines, et à élaborer des propositions théoriques sous le contrôle de ces données empiriques. Enfin, la conviction profonde que l’essence même du langagier réside en la relation nodale de la sémiose, conviction qui a donné lieu à une analyse exceptionnellement profonde des processus constitutifs des signes, ainsi qu’à des tentatives d’identifier les modalités sous lesquelles la bifacialité de signes se manifeste éventuellement aux niveaux non lexicaux de l’organisation des langues.

Extrait du dernier chapitre, p. 551.

Saussure and Chomsky. Converging and Diverging, ed. by Giuseppe Cosenza, Claire A. Forel, Genoveva Puskas, Thomas Robert. Bern, Peter Lang (« Sciences pour la communication, 131 »), 2022, 172 p., 4 ill. n/b, 2 tabl., ISBN 978-3-03434-457-9, € 46
DOI: 10.3726/b19300
Notice de l’Éditeur, avec table des matières et préface de L. de Saussure

« It is very good news that contemporary specialists of the works of Saussure and Chomsky get back to a serious comparison between them. Even though a number of divergences may seem obvious, it is particularly refreshing that some key convergences are actually being uncovered, which were long hidden under the confusing layers of radical and sometimes superficial readings of Saussure. Such convergences were also waiting for some more recent evolutions of the Chomskyan paradigm to emerge more clearly.

Saussure is still often viewed by functionalists as a naturalist (for langue is an entirely psychic object organized with general principles in the brain, and, as Constantin writes, “langue is a part of language”, which is crucial since language is a “faculty” for Saussure) and by naturalists and formalists as a relativist or a pre-functionalist (because “langue is social in essence and independent of the individual” and “langue is a social institution”). I think that such opinions are built upon a very confusing usage of the term langue in writings like the Course, and more ideological than balanced interpretations of Saussure’s philosophy of language by following scholars.

Indeed, the concept of langue seems to be about two clearly different things. First (and foremost, perhaps), langue is the fundamental and universal set of principles determining natural language. It is a system of signs, whatever the actual language this system is filled with. Second, langue refers to specific languages; it is in that sense for example that langue is only fully realized by the mass of speaking subjects within a community. »

Extrait de la préface par L. de Saussure