2 - The Heritage of the CLG: Saussure, saussureanisms, structuralisms

 

Organizer: CHRISTIAN PUECH, Département de Littérature et Linguistique Françaises et Latines, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, UMR HTL, Labex EFL.

 

DESCRIPTION OF THE SESSION

What does linguistics owe to the publication of the Course in General Linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure? Does the impertinence of the question stem from our not knowing the answer, or that it is for the most part blatantly obvious? This session, focused on the Course, is aimed at producing an inventory that can be oriented in several directions:

1) The evaluation of the (astonishing) career of this text of which Ferdinand de Saussure is neither the author nor the non-author demands our constantly renewed attention. Sometimes embalmed in the Museum of Linguistic Antiquities, sometimes monumentalized for the purposes of present-day legitimation, sometimes recapitalized with new problems following the (re)discovery of documents of all sorts (manuscripts, students’ notes, etc…), sometimes turned into heritage or, the reverse, denounced as “outmoded”, but most often ignored today by “linguistics in the making”, the CLG has all the characteristics of a dysfunctional heritage, or of a “semiological object”.  Can we in 2016, a century on, apply to it the dichotomy of the “sanctioned” and the “sidelined”? Regarding which of its aspects and objects?

2) Concerning semiological objects, Saussure said rightly that they exist only through circulation and transmission and that they therefore exist almost exclusively because they have existed. If we bear in mind that the representation we have of the Course today depends largely on the retrospectively “constructed reference” of the three principal Schools of linguistic structuralism (Prague, Copenhagen, New York), it becomes apparent, despite the efforts of researchers/editors such as Tullio De Mauro, Rudolf Engler and many others currently at work that we do not yet entirely know how to re-place the CLG in the context of its time. To what extent does the recent, renewed historiography of linguistic structuralisms allow us to modify the image constructed in the 1950s and 1960s?

3) There are at least two ways of considering the genealogy of Saussurean thought. Reading Saussure’s manuscripts, comparison with the Course in General Linguistics, the indispensable attempts to restore the full itinerary of Saussure (in particular John Joseph, 2012) make it possible to sketch what could be a genealogy of his thought up through his final courses (see Session 11). But “genealogy” can also be understood as the long process of the formation of Saussurean thought in the history of linguistic ideas. In this latter case, we are dealing with the itinerary of a “dispossessed” thinking. Whether one considers the text as a “forgery”, as a “vulgate” or an “apocrypha”… the Course in General Linguistics is the key text for most of the currents of 20th-century linguistics. Actively (in the structuralisms, but also in Gustave Guillaume or Émile Benveniste) or reactively (in generativism, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics…), the Course in General Linguistics constitutes a major landmark in the contemporary history of linguistic ideas (and of ideas generally…). How can we today evaluate the presence/absence of the Course in General Linguistics on the horizon of retrospection of the most current trends in linguistics? Assimilation ? Outmodedness? Opposition? Ignorance?

 

Contributions in this session corresponded to any of the following themes:

  1. System and structure in Saussure, in the CLG, in his contemporaries and those who have followed in his wake
  2. The CLG and European linguistics (Paris, Geneva, Moscow, Prague, etc.)
  3. The CLG and linguistics beyond Europe
  4. What does it mean to be anti-Saussurean? Non-Saussurean? Yesterday? Today?
  5. The CLG, linguistic structuralisms and post-structuralisms
  6. The CLG and philosophies of language

 

 

PLENARY SPEAKERS

Sylvain Auroux (Directeur de Recherche émérite, UMR CNRS HTL, Labex EFL) : Que peut dire un historien des sciences sur Saussure ?

Jürgen Trabant (Professeur, Université de Brême), Page web : http://juergen-trabant.de/

 

Selected papers for parallel sessions

15.07.2016   09:30 -10:30

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Christian PUECH

09:30 - 10:00 Giuseppe D'OTTAVI
Le cours du commentaire
> read abstract...
10:00 - 10:30 Didier SAMAIN
L'invention du seuil saussurien
> read abstract...

15.07.2016   11:30 -11:45 - Pause

15.07.2016   11:45 -12:45

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Christian PUECH

11:45 - 12:15 Claudia STANCATI
Système et structure chez Saussure : synonymie ou quelle différence ?
> read abstract...
12:15 - 12:45 Klaas WILLEMS
A comparison of the figures representing the “fait linguistique” in the Cours (1916) and its sources
> read abstract...

15.07.2016   12:45 -13:45 - Repas

15.07.2016   14:00 -15:30

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Jürgen TRABANT

14:00 - 14:30 Marcio Alexandre CRUZ
Saussure, système, histoire: le point de vue historiographique
> read abstract...
14:30 - 15:00 Marina DE PALO
Saussure et Bühler: phénoménologie et structuralisme
> read abstract...
15:00 - 15:30 Claire FOREL & Giuseppe COSENZA
Un lecteur attentif du CLG : Rulon S. Wells
> read abstract...

15.07.2016   15:30 -15:45 - Pause

15.07.2016   15:45 -16:15

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Jürgen TRABANT

15:45 - 16:15 Chiara ROMAGNOLI
Saussure’s “travel” to China: history, debate and legacy
> read abstract...

16.07.2016   10:30 -11:30

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Sylvain AUROUX

10:30 - 11:00 Anamaria CUREA
Les « linguistiques de l’expression » à Genève (Ch. Bally, A. Sechehaye et H. Frei) ou comment expliquer la mouvance de l’institué
> read abstract...
11:00 - 11:30 Antonino BONDI
Le thème de la variation et le tournant géologique en linguistique. Du CLG à la sémio-pragmatique de Deleuze & Guattari.
> read abstract...

16.07.2016   11:30 -11:45 - Pause

16.07.2016   11:45 -12:45

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Sylvain AUROUX

11:45 - 12:15 Micaela COELHO
Tha Brazilian preface for the « Cours de Linguistique Générale »
> read abstract...
12:15 - 12:45 Marie-José BÉGUELIN
Saussure face au changement grammatical: une doctrine sans héritage?
> read abstract...

16.07.2016   12:45 -13:45 - Repas

16.07.2016   14:00 -15:00

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Antonino BONDÌ

14:00 - 14:30 Tomas KOBLIZEK
Saussure et Benveniste sur la mutabilité de la langue
> read abstract...
14:30 - 15:00 Emanuele FADDA
Why a Peircean scholar should not stand against Saussure
> read abstract...

16.07.2016   15:00 -15:15 - Pause

16.07.2016   15:15 -16:15

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Antonino BONDÌ

15:15 - 15:45 Clemilton LOPES PINHEIRO
Les manifestations de la linguistique saussurienne au Brésil au début du 21e siècle
> read abstract...
15:45 - 16:15 David PIOTROWSKI
Morphodynamique du signe saussurien : construction et perspectives
> read abstract...

17.07.2016   10:30 -11:30

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Marina DE PALO

10:30 - 11:00 Jean-Paul BRONCKART
Du coût du Cours III... et du CLG
> read abstract...
11:00 - 11:30 Amanda Eloina SCHERER & Maria Iraci SOUSA COSTA, Caroline MALLMANN SCHNEIDERS
Le CLG : avant et après le disciplinaire de la linguistique dans au Brésil
> read abstract...

17.07.2016   11:30 -11:45 - Pause

17.07.2016   11:45 -12:45

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Marina DE PALO

11:45 - 12:15 Anne-Gaëlle TOUTAIN
Qu’est-ce qu’être a-saussurien ?
> read abstract...
12:15 - 12:45 Mohamad Amin SHAKERI
A Contribution to Epistemology: Immanency in Saussure and Hjelmslev
> read abstract...

17.07.2016   12:45 -13:45 - Repas

17.07.2016   14:00 -15:00

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Anamaria CUREA

14:00 - 14:30 Eliane SILVEIRA
Le statut épistémologique du Cours de Linguistique Générale dans les manuels brésiliens entre 1930 et 1980
> read abstract...
14:30 - 15:00 Elena SIMONATO
Le CLG au miroir déformé. Les idées phonologiques de Saussure et leur réception par les phonologues soviétiques
> read abstract...

17.07.2016   15:00 -15:15 - Pause

17.07.2016   15:15 -16:15

Title: L’héritage du CLG: Saussure, saussurismes, structuralismes (Ch. PUECH)
Chair: Anamaria CUREA

15:15 - 15:45 Beata STAWARSKA
Derrida’s reception of the Cours de Linguistique Générale (1916): after a century, a plea for a philosophical rapprochement
> read abstract...
15:45 - 16:15 Pierre-Yves TESTENOIRE
Lorsque le Cours de linguistique générale rencontre les anagrammes : 1960-1980
> read abstract...