Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale [Course in General Linguistics]

Pierre-Alexis Mevel (University of Nottingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.06: French Writing and Culture: Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Language & Linguistics

Dates

First circulation or publication 1915

Places

France (Publication/ performance)
Switzerland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

For Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) – as for many others – the act of writing was fraught with difficulties: how can one put into writing a thinking process that never ceases to evolve? Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale – to this day his most enduring and celebrated work – was in fact edited posthumously (1916) by two of Saussure’s own students, Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye, in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger.

The Cours de linguistique générale is a relatively short work written in clear French prose, which continues to prevail as a key text in contemporary Social and Human Sciences. Saussure is widely acknowledged as the father of structuralism (though he himself never used the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2038 words

Citation: Mevel, Pierre-Alexis. "Cours de linguistique générale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19828, accessed 25 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here