Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology

In Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology: The Course in General Linguistics after a Century (Palgrave Macmillan), Beata Stawarska guides us to consider Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics anew.

By delving into Saussure’s autograph notes, letters, and student lecture notes Stawarska reframes all of the hierarchical pairs promoted as part of his doctrine—the signifier and the signified, la langue and la parole, synchrony and diachrony.

The book performs reading and writing without borders that it also argues Saussure thought necessary to think about language. Along the way, it questions sedimented ideas about structuralism, post-structuralism, phenomenology, and the object of linguistics, which is to say, language.

Beata Stawarska is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, USA.