Ghostwriting: The inception and reception of the Course in General Linguistics
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Beata Stawarska
Abstract
Stawarska 2015 The Course in General Linguistics presentes contemporary scholars of Saussure’s linguistics with a performative paradox: as in the case of any other Great Book, a critical study of this posthumously ghostwritten text contributes to its canonization. That is why one can offer a scholarly critique of the Course without diminishing the established legacy of this foundational text. The contribution of this essay is indeed chiefly critical: I reconstitute the process of ghostwriting – and reviewing – the Course by its two editors, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, in order to raise doubts about book’s being a reliable statement of Saussure’s linguistics. I argue specifically that the received “official doctrine” articulated in the Course and appropriated within structuralism, which is based upon a set of oppositional and hierarchical pairings between la langue and la parole, synchrony and diachrony, is rendered suspect in light of the book’s complicated editorial history. This “official doctrine” emerged out of an institutional interest to establish general linguistics as a recognizable academic discipline with proper object and method; its enduring status as an unrivaled truth of Saussurianism can be deciphered by investigating the interrelation between dominant discourses and social relations of power.
Article Note
This essay draws on material previously published in Stawarska 2015.
References
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© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: special issue on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Cours de linguistique générale
- The future of Saussure
- Saussure et la science du langage
- La double essence, concept primitif de la linguistique saussurienne
- Lost and not found: The Course in General Linguistics between “Saussurism” and “Saussurology”
- Ghostwriting: The inception and reception of the Course in General Linguistics
- Is the arbitrary symmetrical?
- “Le langage est une institution SANS ANALOGUE (si l’on y joint l’écriture)”: L’écriture comme problèmes dans la réflexion théorique de Saussure
- Ferdinand de Saussure: La sémiologie et les sémiologies
- The arbre-tree sign: Pictures and words in counterpoint in the Cours de linguistique générale
- Saussure and the model of communication
- Une source du premier cours de linguistique générale de Saussure, octobre 1906
- The language of the Cours de Linguistique Générale
- Interview with Jonathan Culler
- Saussure and the will
- Saussure and the psychic
- Review article/Compte rendu
- Saussure relu
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: special issue on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Cours de linguistique générale
- The future of Saussure
- Saussure et la science du langage
- La double essence, concept primitif de la linguistique saussurienne
- Lost and not found: The Course in General Linguistics between “Saussurism” and “Saussurology”
- Ghostwriting: The inception and reception of the Course in General Linguistics
- Is the arbitrary symmetrical?
- “Le langage est une institution SANS ANALOGUE (si l’on y joint l’écriture)”: L’écriture comme problèmes dans la réflexion théorique de Saussure
- Ferdinand de Saussure: La sémiologie et les sémiologies
- The arbre-tree sign: Pictures and words in counterpoint in the Cours de linguistique générale
- Saussure and the model of communication
- Une source du premier cours de linguistique générale de Saussure, octobre 1906
- The language of the Cours de Linguistique Générale
- Interview with Jonathan Culler
- Saussure and the will
- Saussure and the psychic
- Review article/Compte rendu
- Saussure relu
