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Saussure
John E. Joseph
800 pages
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246x171mm
978-0-19-969565-2
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Hardback
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22 March 2012
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- First comprehensive biography of Ferdinand de Saussure
- Explores how Saussure developed his ideas
- Opens paths through a fascinating period in European history
"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.Readership: Linguists, semiologists, philosophers, and historians, as well as all those interested in the man behind Saussurean ideas.
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John E. Joseph, Head of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh John E. Joseph is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Head of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Language and Politics (2006), Language and Identity (2004) and, with Nigel Love and Talbot J. Taylor, Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II: The Western Tradition in the Twentieth Century (2001). He is also the editor of Language and Politics: Major Themes in English Studies, 4 Vl (2010) and (with Talbot J. Taylor) of the journal Language & Communication.
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"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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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 Mémoire
4: 1857-73
5: 1873-6
6: 1876-8
7: The Mémoire 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
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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