Course in General Linguistics, Introduction

Ferdinand de Saussure, (1986) [1916] Course in General Linguistics. Open Court, La Salle, IL.

Summary of Introduction

Saussure lays out his project for linguistics in the context of his time, somewhat explained in the prefaces by the editors and the translator. After two brief survey chapters, he gets to the heart of it in Chapter 3, “The Object of Study.” Here, he notes the diverse things linguists could be distracted by and asserts that the core of the project should be the study of linguistic structure (9). He establishes his core distinction between language (langue) and speech (parole) (13ff). He is thus able to isolate the “structure” he wishes to study from its individual and changeable instantiations (and specific languages), variations, and context of use. (All the steps which D&G are critical of). He ends the chapter by situating linguistics within semiology, the broader science of “signs as part of social life” (15).

Chapter IV continues elaborating the distinction between speech and linguistic structure. Throughout the introduction, S deploys some great metaphors to capture the difference he has in mind:

In this respect one may compare a language to a symphony. The symphony has a reality of its own, which is independent of the way in which it is performed. The mistakes which musicians may make in performance in no way compromise that reality. (18)

A language, as a collective phenomenon, takes the form of a totality of imprints in everyone’s brain, rather like a dictionary of which each individual has an identical copy. … Thus is it something which is in each individual, but is none the less common to all. At the same time it is out of the reach of any deliberate interference by individuals. (19)

Chapter V turns this into a distinction between “internal linguistics” (the study of linguistic structure) vs “external linguistics” (every other aspect, comparatively inessential). Here is metaphor is chess: the rules of chess are internal, but the question of its origins, or whether the pieces happen to be made of wood or of ivory, are external. “Everything is internal which alters the system in any degree whatsoever” (23).

Chapter VI tackles the relevance of writing, taking grammarians to task for misunderstanding the true, secondary position of writing relative to speech. Chapter VII treats of phonetics, or rather of “physiological phonetics,” as S notes the original sense of the term phonetics as the study of changes in sound through history (32). Again his emphasis is on the system of sounds at a given time, rather than the specific sounds per se:

A language is a system based upon psychological contrasts between these auditory impressions, just as a tapestry is a work of art based upon the visual contrast between strands of different colours. What is important for an analysis is the effect of these contrasts, and not the processes by which the colours were obtained in the first place. (33)