Ricœur and Saussure: On meaning and time
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Yong-Ho Choi
His interests are Saussurean studies, text semantics, and applied semiotics. His publications include ‘Semiotics and semantics’ (2001); ‘The value in discourse in Saussure’ (2002); ‘The polysemy of the notion of mechanism in Saussure’ (2002); and ‘Saussurism in Korea in the twentieth century’ (2004).
Abstract
This paper attempts to arrange a meeting between Ricœur and Saussure through their texts. Ricœur's reading Saussure reflects a particular limitation of his time, i.e., the structuralism to which we are no longer confined. He criticizes Saussure from a semantic point of view by appealing to the notion of discourse. According to Meschonnic, the discovery in 1996 of a manuscript of Saussure regarding the double essence of language reveals a particular interest in this notion, warranting a revisiting of Saussurean thought and thus reopening a debate on the status of meaning. Ricœur regards the question of meaning as a moment of self-understanding, situated outside the semiotic system in the world of signification. Saussure suggests defining the value of a linguistic unit in relation to its surrounding units. Where the former searches outside the linguistic unit, the latter searches around it: both refuse to remain, as it were, inside it. In this paper, I suggest that they were to be at odds with the question of time when raising the question of meaning. Eager to grasp a meaning that changes from one moment to the next, they relied on notions of system or context to regulate semantic diversity.
About the author
His interests are Saussurean studies, text semantics, and applied semiotics. His publications include ‘Semiotics and semantics’ (2001); ‘The value in discourse in Saussure’ (2002); ‘The polysemy of the notion of mechanism in Saussure’ (2002); and ‘Saussurism in Korea in the twentieth century’ (2004).
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction Theatrical semiosphere: Toward the semiotics of theatre today
- Semiotic arts of theatre
- Prague's experimental stage: Laboratory of theatre and semiotics
- A historical outlook on theatrical ostension and its links with other terms of the semiotics of drama and theatre
- Semiotics of nonsemiotic performance
- The end of theatre semiotics? A symptom of an epistemological shift
- Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken
- Dreams and phantasms: Towards an ethnoscenological reading of the intercultural theatrical event
- The homogeneous nature of the theatre medium
- The semiotics of curtain calls
- Actor-puppet-video projection-spectator-fantasmagorie technologique: Towards a theory for a new theatre genre
- Vital signs
- Présentation
- Paul Ricœur, habitant de ce monde. Les affleurements de la conception peircienne de l'objet du signe et du pragmatisme
- Ricœur and Saussure: On meaning and time
- Discernements et malentendus
- Sémiotique et herméneutique : Le texte et l'action
- Ricœur et la sémiotique : Une rencontre « improbable » ?
- Le parcours du sens : Ricœur et Benveniste
- De la narration à l'action : Inversion du cheminement mimétique ricœurien
- La philosophie face à l'univers des signes : Positions et propositions de Paul Ricœur sur la sémiotique et la sémiologie
