"In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916.) No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can be readily quoted, debated, memorized, and examined. One can argue the ideas expressed above - that language is composed of a system of acoustic oppositions (the signifier) matched by social convention to a system of conceptual oppositions (the signified) - have in some sense become "Saussure", while the human being, in all his complexity, has disappeared. In the first comprehensive biography of Ferdinand de Saussure, John Joseph restores the full character and history of a man who is considered the founder of modern linguistics and whose ideas have influenced literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies, and virtually every other branch of humanities and the social sciences. Through a far-reaching account of Saussure's life and the time in which he lived, we learn about the history of Geneva, of Genevese educational institutions, of linguistics, about Saussure's ancestry, about his childhood, his education, the fortunes of his relatives, and his personal life in Paris. John Joseph intersperses all these discussions with accounts of Saussure's research and the courses he taught highlighting the ways in which knowing about his friendships and family history can help us understand not only his thoughts and ideas but also his utter failure to publish any major work after the age of twenty-one.
| ISBN | 0199695652 | | Pages | 800 | | ISBN13 | 9780199695652
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 1536 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Height (mm) | 251 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 181 | | Publication date | 22 Mar 2012 | | Spine width (mm) | 50 | | DEWEY | 410.92 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC23 | |
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PART I: THE WORLD INTO WHICH HE WAS BORN ; 1. Rising to Prominence ; 2. His Grandparents' and Parents' Generations ; 3. The Heritage of Linguistics and Semiology ; PART II: EARLY YEARS TO THE MEMOIRE ; 4. 1857-73 ; 5. 1873-6 ; 6. 1876-8 ; 7. The Memoire on the Original Vowel System of the Indo-European Languages ; PART III: DOCTORATE AND PARIS YEARS ; 8. 1879-81 ; 9. 1881-4 ; 10. 1884-8 ; 11. 1888-91 ; PART IV: RETURN TO GENEVA ; 12. 1891-4 ; 13. 1894-9 ; 14. 1899-1903 ; 15. 1903-6 ; 16. 1907-8 ; PART V: FINAL FLOURISH ; 17. 1908-9 ; 18. 1909-11 537 ; 19. The End: 1911-13 ; 20. Opus Posthumus ; Bibliography ; Index
The present work is now the biography of Saussure. There is, quite simply, no other work today in English that has the breadth and range of this one in laying out the personal details of Saussure's life...this is a substantive and erudite overview, analysis, and assessment of the life and work of this seminal linguist. D.B. Boersema, Choice Joseph's massive, meticulous book is a heroic biography, tightly focused on its protagonist and with a melodramatic, if not tragic, tone of knowing retrospection. Michael Silverstein, London Review of Books This book will be essential reading for any student of Saussure. Colin MacCabe, New Statesman John E. Joseph's biography is a rich, scholarly account, exhaustively detailed, pursuing the Saussure family back into the fifteenth century and forward to the present day Patrick Wilcken, Literary Review Each serious study of a great scientist's life is bound to leave us reflecting on that truth, and linguist John E. Joseph's monumental Saussure is no exception. ... This rich account - sympathetic, respectful and sensitive to political and intellectual context - reveals how Saussure, a dazzling and driven scholar from a bourgeois Swiss family, blazed trails to new vistas of social science that opened out in the century after his death. John A. Goldsmith, Nature John Joseph has made excellent use of the manuscripts preserved in the Geneva library Roy Harris, Times Literary Supplement
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