Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society

by Émile Benveniste, Elizabeth Palmer (Translator)

Since its publication in 1969, Émile Benveniste’s Vocabulaire―here with a new introduction by Giorgio Agamben―has been the classic reference for tracing the institutional and conceptual genealogy of the sociocultural worlds of gifts, contracts, sacrifice, hospitality, authority, freedom, ancient economy, and kinship. A comprehensive and comparative history of words with analyses of their underlying neglected genealogies and structures of signification―and this via a masterful journey through Germanic, Romance, Indo-Iranian, Latin, and Greek languages―Benveniste’s dictionary is a must-read for anthropologists, linguists, literary theorists, classicists, and philosophers alike.

This book has famously inspired a wealth of thinkers, including Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Giorgio Agamben, François Jullien, and many others. In this new volume, Benveniste’s masterpiece on the study of language and society finds new life for a new generation of scholars. As political fictions continue to separate and reify differences between European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian societies, Benveniste reminds us just how historically deep their interconnections are and that understanding the way our institutions are evoked through the words that describe them is more necessary than ever.

Genres: History, Linguistics, Reference, France, Language, Anthropology

594 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Émile Benveniste (French: [bɛ̃venist]; 27 March 1902 – 3 October 1976) was a French structural linguist and semiotician. He is best known for his work on Indo-European languages and his critical reformulation of the linguistic paradigm established by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Reviews

[Ron Me]

Despite the grandiloquent title, this isn't a dictionary. In total perhaps three or four dozen words are conjectured. There is some little bit of derivations of possible IE concepts and society, but this could have been fit in 50 pages. Way too technical for almost everyone.