What do you think?
Rate this book
Reading Saussure: A Critical Commentary on the "Cours De Linguistique Generale"
Book by Harris, Roy
266 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1987
22 people want to read
About the author
Roy Harris
148 books15 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He has also held university teaching posts in Hong Kong, Boston and Paris and visiting fellowships at universities in South Africa and Australia, and at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford and Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall. He has also held university teaching posts in Hong Kong, Boston and Paris and visiting fellowships at universities in South Africa and Australia, and at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 12, 2022
A chapter-by-chapter commentary on the CLG, followed by a shortish section of more general reflections.
Much of RH's discussion argues that FdS took the positions he did - in this famous attempt to sketch out the scope and parameters of a projected "general linguistics", which subsequently became absurdly famous as an ur-text of 20th century structuralism (and more) - less because of any radical intellectual originality and more in response to various more reactive impulses. Thus, he was concerned to situate his endeavour in relation to the language-scholarship tradition in which he had been educated, differentiating his project from what had gone before, much of which he severely criticised; also, he had to define the object of linguistic theory in a way that simultaneously made it a respectable and coherent scientific object and escaped opening itself to the same criticisms he made of the neogrammarians et al.
It's a fairly close reading, if mercifully not quite line-by-line. The exposition and argumentation are not always easy to follow, or they weren't for me, but mostly I felt I got the picture with a bit of effort.
What Harris never says quite flat-out openly, though he comes close occasionally, and spends the entire book patiently demonstrating, is that Saussure's key concepts - langue, parole, diachrony/synchrony and the refinements thereof, the system of signs, and perhaps a couple more - in fact can't be made to fit together in a coherent and viable theory. A fix in one corner opens up a hole in another. Harris shows this repeatedly and, it seems to me, conclusively.
He also argues, less thoroughly but still convincingly, that the inherent unviability of FdS's theory is inherited by later dominant linguistic theories, notably including the generative tradition.
I have to say these conclusions, with respect to either Saussure or Chomsky, seem to me "uncontroversial" (as Noam likes to say); but Harris did us a favour in weighing in with his Oxford-professor-of-linguistics status and, more to the point, his wide and deep understanding of the field. If you don't believe me, read this book.
Much of RH's discussion argues that FdS took the positions he did - in this famous attempt to sketch out the scope and parameters of a projected "general linguistics", which subsequently became absurdly famous as an ur-text of 20th century structuralism (and more) - less because of any radical intellectual originality and more in response to various more reactive impulses. Thus, he was concerned to situate his endeavour in relation to the language-scholarship tradition in which he had been educated, differentiating his project from what had gone before, much of which he severely criticised; also, he had to define the object of linguistic theory in a way that simultaneously made it a respectable and coherent scientific object and escaped opening itself to the same criticisms he made of the neogrammarians et al.
It's a fairly close reading, if mercifully not quite line-by-line. The exposition and argumentation are not always easy to follow, or they weren't for me, but mostly I felt I got the picture with a bit of effort.
What Harris never says quite flat-out openly, though he comes close occasionally, and spends the entire book patiently demonstrating, is that Saussure's key concepts - langue, parole, diachrony/synchrony and the refinements thereof, the system of signs, and perhaps a couple more - in fact can't be made to fit together in a coherent and viable theory. A fix in one corner opens up a hole in another. Harris shows this repeatedly and, it seems to me, conclusively.
He also argues, less thoroughly but still convincingly, that the inherent unviability of FdS's theory is inherited by later dominant linguistic theories, notably including the generative tradition.
I have to say these conclusions, with respect to either Saussure or Chomsky, seem to me "uncontroversial" (as Noam likes to say); but Harris did us a favour in weighing in with his Oxford-professor-of-linguistics status and, more to the point, his wide and deep understanding of the field. If you don't believe me, read this book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review