Saussure, Ferdinand de
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913)A Swiss linguist who is generally considered to have been the founder of modern structural linguistics and, therefore, the grandfather of structuralism. The revolutionary nature of Saussure's work only became clear somewhat fortuitously when, three years after his death, some of his former students published a book based upon notes they had taken in the course of his lectures. This is the text that has come down to us as The Course in General Linguistics.
According to the traditional representational theory, language consists of humanly created and ceaselessly modified symbols which name, and so may be understood more or less complicatedly and problematically to stand for, the things and happenings that humans wish to talk about.
Saussure deploys two sets of oppositions (langue versus parole and...
[The entire page is 604 words long]
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