The arbre-tree sign: Pictures and words in counterpoint in the Cours de linguistique générale
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John E. Joseph
Abstract
In his three courses of lectures on general linguistics given between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) sometimes drew diagrams and figures on the chalkboard to add a visual dimension to the novel and challenging theoretical concepts he was laying out. Those which the editors redrew for inclusion in the Cours de linguistique générale (1916) – in some cases with significant changes – have had a surprisingly strong impact on readers ever since. If Saussure hoped that the drawings would clear up ambiguities in his verbal text, he might have been disappointed; for while they extend a hand to students and readers to guide them into his conceptual world via the stepping-stones of the semi-familiar, accessible and concrete, they have opened up whole new realms of ambiguity, and strengthened the ones already present in the verbal text. This article examines seven of the illustrations or sets of illustrations in the CLG and the various interpretations to which they have given or could give rise, treating these not as erroneous but as contrapuntal to the text when the two appear to be in contradiction.
Acknowledgement
My main title is a bow to Levin (1989), which, as noted on its first page, began as a paper he gave in 1985 at the University of California at Davis, in which he argued unforgettably that the idea of the linguistic sign being arbitrary came to Saussure when, having drawn a tree to illustrate a point about language, he started to think about the French and English words for it: Arbre, tree, arbre-tree, arbritree … arbitrary. Although Levin’s published paper contains no mention of this, or indeed of the word arbre, its ghost haunts his paper’s title – and now mine.
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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
