Talk:Ferdinand de Saussure

Intro paragraph needs reworking, pretty badly
The sentence beginning with "saussure is all but universally considered to be the father of modern ling..." is pretty bad. Too long, confused, comma splices, etc.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.113.186.5 (talk) 18:38, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Untitled
His entire name was Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.91.249.103 (talk) 22:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was Ferdinand Minge de Sassure? I was told that his middle name was actually referring to an obscure family relation, but was generally left out in modern publications due to semantic shift? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.24.53 (talk) 22:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit
I changed "Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics, though modern linguists generally consider his ideas outdated and inadequate" to "Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics, though at least two modern linguists generally consider his ideas outdated and inadequate." The reason why is because the references for the claim that "though modern linguists generally consider..." are inadequate. The references point to two works by two individuals, neither of which are even specifically evaluating the impact or relevance of Saussure. Rather, both citations are, in context, dismissive, throwaway quotes. In order to substantiate the claim that "modern linguists generally consider..." a more substantive citation should be provided from a source that addresses the issue of Saussure's impact and relevance today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.32.182.180 (talk) 19:34, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, excellent job catching this and making the changes. I'm in complete agreement with how you handled this. Of course, even as it stands (and even with additional "substantive citations") these observations don't belong in what Wikipedia calls "the Lead section". I'll have to look up the style sheet on this. I may revisit this on the talk page here in the future. But thanks again for catching this and making responsible changes. Christian Roess (talk) 20:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree entirely that the claim that "modern linguists and philosophers of language all but universally consider his ideas outdated and inadequate" is a preposterous misrepresentation of the esteem in which Saussure is held by contemporary linguists, the overwhelming majority of whom unquestionably recognize Saussure's historical importance and many contributions to the field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.231.116.205 (talk) 11:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)


 * But then we ran into citation overkill in that line. I've bundled the citations to make it more readable. Roseclearfield (talk) 05:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with everyone else here. Good job all. warshytalk 20:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Chomsky claims...
Chomsky tersely claims that, for Saussure, language is a "social product". Is there a simple answer to the question of what this might mean? This article and Structuralism are currently not of much help. --Ryguasu 02:20 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

This is absolutely true, and may be contrasted with Chomsky's claim that language is the exclusive product of the speaker's linguistic competence in the individual mind, or in other words, Chomsky's claim that language is a psychological product. For de Saussure, langue (the psychological ability to convert concepts to acoustic images, or for simplicity's sake, words) cannot exist without a kind of general agreement in a community as to what mental concept goes with what form of expression, and how those mental concepts are formulated linguistically. So, in comparision with Chomsky's exclusivly psychological "competence," de Saussure's "langue" includes both the psychological operations of expression, and the community's tacit agreement on how to express certain mental concepts. -- User: Joell
 * Would a person who lived his entire life in complete isolation use language? There would be no social need to do so. Chomsky might think that language is a brain function and operates regardless of whether there is anyone to hear the speech of a solitary person. The Chomskyan lonely guy walks around his deserted island talking to no one in particular, transmitting words when there are no receivers. If language, however, is a social product, as Saussure might say, then an asocial person would be silent, like an animal, because there is no sufficient reason to use language.Lestrade (talk) 00:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

I'm fairly certain Chomsky would have in some manner dealt with that objection, since there are several real life instances where children brought up in isolation have exhibited an inability to learn or use language. However, I'm unfamiliar with Chomsky's work (past my suspicion that it's fairly thorough), and the critiques (from the structuralist/post-structuralist tradition) I have read attack his work on more fundamental grounds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.24.53 (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I haven't read Chomsky but I have read Saussure, including a foreword by the translator (some guy at Oxford) that claimed the whole of Anglophone linguistics is based on a misunderstanding of Saussure. If what you say of Chomsky's characterisation of language is true, I would have a very low opinion of Chomsky's thought as that sounds absolutely ridiculous.
 * Language being a function of the social is rather obvious; it's something even Nietzsche (who was once the pre-eminent philologist) identified in "The Gay Science" where he argued that consciousness arises from taking the view of another unto yourself, much like Hegel. Language was what mediated this exchange for Nietzsche. And why would humanity ever have developed language for anything other than to socially interact?
 * Also, an asocial person that still lives among humans would probably still know language since their consciousness would be imbued by the linguistic exchange. I think you mean "isolated," not "asocial," unless you mean that word in the animalistic sense of say, sharks. 14.57.252.128 (talk) 15:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

POV?
I don't know much about Saussure, but some of the statements here seem to smack of POV:


 * It is surprisingly poorly recognized that ...


 * and has since then been presupposed by all linguistic science, try as Chomsky might to disavow it.


 * Their lack of linguistic expertise (and subsequent misunderstanding of Saussure) and the inappropriate character of their objects of analysis led to theoretical difficulties, eventually causing proclamations of the "death" of structuralism in those disciplines. Unfortunately, this state of affairs persists.

On the last part, it seems that to say unequivocally that Barthes, Lacan, etc. misunderstood Saussure and that this was responsible for proclamations against structuralism would to be know their minds, which is POV unless very well substantiated. And at any rate, it is not Wikipedia's place to say that this misunderstanding is 'unfortunate'. --Saforrest 20:25, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Uh yeah. "Says who" and also "why did they say it". And the sniggering at Chomsky would be better replaced by his actual objections, or deleted. For Christ's sake. - Echeneida

At this point the article appears perfectly NPOV to me. Why isn't the warning removed?

Here is a note about possibly reconciling Saussure and Chomsky. My recollection is that Chomsky sees the fact that all languages are just that--language--implies that there is something they all must have in common. He sees the thing in common as the "deep structure" of all language. And furthermore, that deep structure is part of the human psychological heritage--that is, it's within the genome--and is the same for all people of all continents. Every language that exists builds, in some different way, on that deep structure. The reasons for their differences have to be looked at historically. I think Chomsky was interested in grammatical structures that languages have in common and was not inclined to look at matters of phonology or what words sound like from language to language. Wasn't Saussure very interested in phonology?

The point of contact between Chomsky's approach and Saussure's, I expect, would be the binary oppositions implicit in Chomsky's ideas of deep structure and those which Saussure saw as essential. It would take a linguist to really comment on this, though. --Aperey 17:12, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So I'm responsible for the changes that led to dispute. Firstly, I'd like to concede that my changes did have too much POV. With respect to the particular points that Saforrest notes, however, consider the following.

1. I disagree that "It is surprisingly poorly recognized that..." expresses point of view, unless by that you mean merely that I haven't conducted a thorough, careful, well-sampled survey on the matter. My acquaintance with the literature, which is not small, and my discussions with friends in many different disciplines at many different universities who have all been supposedly taught 'structuralism', has aptly demonstrated, for me, that there is absolutely no widespread recognition of the deep (and not particularly esoteric!) theoretical relation between his philological work and his insights into general linguistics.

2. For those acquainted with the history of American grammatical theory, transformational grammar's (successful) attempt to distance itself from structuralism tends to cause sniggers or sad smiles. American linguistic theory was founded by Leonard Bloomfield's brilliant rewriting of the Cours. Neo-Bloomfielding structuralism was basically the only game in town. Zellig Harris, Chomsky's mentor, was right in the thick of it. He himself published several volumes on structural linguistics in which he pushed its formalist, purely distributional analyses, to their limits. It was his discovery of transformations, which appeared in a series of articles in the Bloomfieldian journal Language, that Chomsky seized upon (combining with Carnap's Logical Syntax) to make his extraordinary discoveries.

Saussurean distributional analysis *is* presupposed by any transformational theory insofar as a purely (at least, in theory) formalistic unitization of linguistic form, at ever increasing levels of abstraction, from lexicon up to constituent structure and the Sentence, by linear distribution of morphemes with respect to one another is the basis for *all* responsible linguistic theory to date. The only theories that don't model language so are reductionistic, in that they believe that there is no autonomous language as a system of relatively motivated distributions that does not reduce to cognitive, social, or stochastic mechanisms or principles. So I claim (without real expectation of dispute) that Chomsky and Saussure share: 1) a belief in an autonomous, abitrary, formal-distributional grammar (each generation of transformational theory being more rigorously formal than the one before) that is 2) separate from performance/parole.

The disavowal of Saussure was, on this basis, much more a career-building, political, or polemical move than a theoretical one. It had the function of aligning Chomsky with psychology and the hard sciences, against applied linguistics (language pedagogy had formed a significant part of the warrant for the birth of disciplinary linguistics in American), against the Europeans, against relativisms and with universalisms, and against the emerging (and increasingly disreputable) so-called structuralisms in non-linguistic domains. It did have theoretical consequences, too, of course, such as a turn from analyzing linguistic data to analyzing the consequences of unfoundable rule-formalisms. He laughably claims antecedents like Descartes, instead, focusing on his universalism and innatism. Plato, Descartes, Chomsky: the history of epistemology as Chomsky would like to see it? Anyway, the Chomskyian movement was, on the whole, successful, such that even its current detractors don't much understand what came before it (keep this in mind with respect to my last point, about 'unfortunate'-ness).

3. Finally, with regard to non-linguistic calques of structuralism, I think it is clearly wholly wrong to say I would need to know the minds of the various authors in order to say that they did not understand Saussure. Rather, if one understands what sort of entity Saussure claims language to be (and S isn't shy about telling you!) and then looks at the sorts of entities under description by, e.g. Levi-Strauss, Barthes, or the sort of inspired-by-the-words-S-used approach of Lacan (he doesn't even claim to be following Saussure), or Derrida's mere sleight-of-hand in On Grammatology, you immediately see that these other (post-)structuralisms have only a loose resemblance to Saussure's theory. Very briefly, simply, and incompletely, their objects do not follow either the first or the second principles of Saussure's description of langue: arbitrariness and linearity. Of course, how much the the collapse of extra-linguistic so-called structuralism into so-called post-structuralism (that has a unity only in *not* claiming descent from Saussure) has caused structuralism proper to fall into disrepute is hard to tell. Certainly there were other factors, such as the trends in disciplinary linguistics that I noted above, or American disciplinary philosophy's rejection of contemporary European thought, that I indeed should have mentioned. I say this forgetting of structuralism is "unfortunate" not because I really like structuralism (though I do) but because students learning the history of important 20th century thought today simply fail to comprehend the arguments of those who actually were familiar with structuralism when they are taught the caricatures that pass for it today, or, more likely, when they aren't taught structuralism at all. So I meant "a lack of historical knowledge affecting the thoroughness and understanding of contemporary scholarship," and, presuming we'd all find that unfortunate, called it so. Clearly, I shouldn't have done so.

I'm a little scared to re-edit the page now, and unsure if I ought to do so, since I'm pretty unclear on how to do a NPOV article, it seems. Anyway, I'm a lot happier with the page as it now stands than I was with it before I began. But I hope my discussion contribution was at least helpful. Any comments? --Adamzero


 * I think some of the reflections by Adamzero should go into the article. It would be a pity that the NPOV warning hinders him doing this as he seemingly knows a lot about the subject. Whoever put that NPOV warning in the article should step forward and help adding content to it. I propose to remove the NPOV warning for the time beeing. Hirzel 08:46, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I just find out that the NPOV warning was inserted by an anon (IP number 209.214.55.84) on the 29 May 2005. Later a large part of the article was deleted probably by the same user (IP numbers 209.214.55.92 and 209.214.55.92). In the change log the explanations "(Seriously)" and "(Not kidding)" are given. No further comment was inserted here in the talk page. I do not think that this is justification enough for this action so I revert to the version of May, 26th, 2005 to have a better base for further editing. Hirzel 09:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Adamzero's contributions do have value. One can learn a lot about Saussure from them.  However, they also have some POV elements in them.  Basically, the bits that Saforrest points out amount to not merely outlining a controversy over Saussure's work and legacy, but a declaration that one side is right and the other wrong.  The NPOV thing to do is to write up what one believes to be true, based on background knowledge and a good-faith reading of source material, but also to acknowledge any controversy that exists and to fairly represent any opposing viewpoints (if space allows) and their popularity.  Where an unresolved controversy exists, the article should not be made to take sides.  In some cases, this is extremely easy.  Rather than say "try as Chomsky might to disavow it," one could say "although this is disputed by Chomsky, among others."  If  Saussure's work is not seen by the majority of linguists as the origin of distributional analysis and thus a pillar of contemporary linguistics, then that needs to be known.  "Many linguists disagree" - NPOV.  "Many linguists disagree, but they are wrong" - POV.  Since most of us are not linguists or critical theorists (including myself) it is especially incumbent on those of us who are to write responsibly and not misrepresent either consensus or controversy within the field.  In the meantime, I'm editing those bits that I can actually tell are POV.  --Skoosh 29 June 2005 05:55 (UTC)


 * Sorry if I sounded a little harsh. I don't want to frighten you off, Adamzero, especially since you seem to have valuable expertise that Wikipedia could greatly benefit from.  Here's some guidance on how to achieve NPOV, if you're unsure how to go about it.  --Skoosh 29 June 2005 06:24 (UTC)

POV in "Later Critics" subsection
I find the second paragraph under the "Later critics" heading to suffer from strongly POV language throughout. I believe this section should be tagged NPOV but will await responses here before doing so. Lazarusloafer (talk) 04:13, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree and have tagged that subsection accordingly. --Lambiam 21:31, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Other Topics
According to our article on the Hittite Language, Ferdinand de Saussure announced in 1879, on theoretical grounds, that the Indo-European ancestral tongue contained a group of laryngeal sounds that did not occur in any known descendant tongue. This remained an interesting theoretical point for some thirty years, until the ancient language miscalled Hittite was deciphered and found to contain two of these sounds.

I think that de Saussure was also active in the auxiliary language (specifically Esperanto) movement, and himself proposed two separate modifications of Esperanto. Can anyone provide further information? J S Ayer 01:49, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Saussure's philosophical legacy isn't mentioned. Whilst he perhaps didn't always see his ideas in this context, they have influenced quite a few 20th century philosophers. --Nmcmurdo 01:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Saussure's relationship to Durkheim and Freud/Jung
Jonathan Culler, in his work on Saussure, says that Saussure was not familiar with Freud and Jung and that while it is has been theorized that Saussure was influenced by Durkheim there is no evidence for that apart from some similarities between their thoughts. This page claims otherwise. Anyone have any citations to back this page's claim about Saussure's relationship to those thinkers? Danielsilliman 22:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The section on the Course
is grotesque. It seems to have been written by a "wackyj" who has clearly not read the Course, and it should be replaced in its entirety. If no-one else can get there first, I will write something in a month or two. In the meantime, perhaps the page should revert to a pre-wacky form.

as the successor to Joseph Wertheimer
Would somebody write about the eppisode of Joseph Wertheimer? (Timetable, german) --Sheynhertzגעשׁ״ך 15:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Quotes
Please put reference / source in quotes. Typewritten 14:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

And... err... are you sure you want to put Saussure in "Critical Theory"?? Typewritten 22:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Translation of title
Is there a specific reason, or is it an oversight, that the title of de Saussure's Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européenes has not also been stated in English in the article? Athænara  ✉  09:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages found here and elsewhere. I have added it to the article.  Æ.   ✉  22:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

What the...
Who are the idiots that are ok with copying the opening line ("Ferdinand de Saussure [...] was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century.") straight from Encyclopedia Britannica ("Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century.") Sure, they are slightly different in content, but the syntax, structure, etc. are all intact from the original source. At the very best, this deserves a serious citation, and at the very worst, this deserves a total rewrite, one with a bit more content that isn't straight lifted from somewhere.--Blingice 02:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * To preempt the question "why don't you do it," the answer is that I have little to no knowledge of Saussure or linguistics, but I'm eager to begin a study soon. Perhaps I'll be able to up this article from Start-Class when I have a little more time.--Blingice 02:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Some culture
The "Cultural references" section has no value.Lestrade (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Lestrade
 * It has since been removed. -- Beland (talk) 15:33, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Changed an unencyclopedic sentence
Article said: "The impact of Saussure's ideas on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century cannot be overstated."

Easily falsifiable ("Saussure directly caused every discovery in theoretical linguistics from 1900-1950"--there, I overstated it) and unencyclopedic. Changed to: "Saussure's ideas had a major impact on on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century." 74.105.132.151 (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Influence outside linguistics
This page seems to give undue weight to Saussure's lasting contributions to linguistics, where his ideas are said to be outdated. However, his realm of influence is vast in the field of literary theory, and yet there is only one sentence regarding this influence. The sentence currently reads:
 * The principles and methods employed by structuralism were soon adopted by scholars and literary thinkers, such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Such scholars implemented Saussure's ideas in their areas of study (literary studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively).

Then, the article goes on to undercut this influence with an unreferenced claim:
 * However, their expansive interpretations of Saussure's theories and their application of those theories to non-linguistic fields of study such as sociology or anthropology led to proclamations of the end of structuralism in those two disciplines.

This is a major problem on the page of a hugely influential thinker. I am no expert, but I could do more work on this over the summer when I have time. Anyone else interested, please help balance the somewhat dismissive tone of this article. Roseclearfield (talk) 05:42, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Very good! I like your reading of these passages and of Saussure's huge influence on Structuralism. I am defitely interested in helping you with the project you outline. I should also be around over the summer and looking into stuff and brushing up a bit on my Saussure knowledge, which is a yet not so good. My interest in Saussure comes from my bigger interest so far in Claude Lévi-Strauss, some of whose works I've read a little more in depth. I feel some of his ideas are also today a bit underestimated, as are some of Saussure's. Very interested in what you may come up with. Enjoy your study! warshytalk 19:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Swerves from negative to positive in the lead, without explanation
It's a bit weird, the angle taken at the top. Sure, there might be mention of criticism, but not like that. Shouldn't the lead present the big picture first, and the details of the criticisms and positives be dealt with below? Tony  (talk)  15:48, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * In general terms I do agree with you, for one. But we would have to look at details and specific suggested edits, I believe, as a matter of procedure? warshytalk 17:08, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It might be effective to paste a proposed new lead, then, right here in this section. Would that be acceptable? Tony   (talk)  15:09, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, I think that would be the way to go! Thanks. warshytalk 16:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The use of Norman Holland's book as a critique of Saussure is very problematic. It can be found here: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/nholland/criti.htm The book has some serious misinterpretations of Saussure (that for instance, he basically held a 'dictionary' view of language; that his conception of signification is 'radical Skinnerian' stimulus response). This discussion of Saussure is put up to tear down and make way for the narrative of Chomsky coming along and revolutionizing linguistics (ho hum...). There is plenty of space on WP for people in the Chomsky tradition to explain his work; but it should not be a space for continuing the mythology of his 'revolution' in linguistics. On this mythology, see Ellis' book, 1993, Language, Thought and Logic. Northwestern U Press. Also, to quote Michael Halliday "...there are many linguists around the world who never accepted this dogma, but tried simply to get on with their own work - not that they stayed behind where they had been in the 1950s, but that they moved forward in significantly different directions" "A Recent View of "Missteps" In Linguistic Theory" in Functions of Language, 2.2. 1995, Reprinted in volume 3 of Halliday's Collected Works [Halliday, 2003/1995: 246] Annabelle Lukin 05:46, 26 January 2012 (UTC) This the basis for me removing the statement that Saussure's ideas are not held by any modern linguists, which is clearly nonsense.

I am pasting here a list of references which have been used to discredit Saussure. In keeping with many comments on this page, I have removed them to here. Maybe some people would like to debate this change with me. Annabelle Lukin 10:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Argument about the value of Saussure's conception of language are widespread:
 * "Saussure meets the brain", in R. Jonkers, E. Kaan, J. K. Wiegel, eds., Language and Cognition 5. Yearbook 1992 of the Research Group for Linguistic Theory and Knowledge Representation of the University of Groningen, Groningen, pp. 115–120.
 * Bredin, H. (1984) Sign and Value in Saussure. Philosophy, Vol. 59, No. 227 (Jan., 1984), pp. 67–77
 * Tallis, Raymond. Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory, Macmillan Press 1988, 2nd ed. 1995.
 * Tallis, Raymond. Theorrhoea and After, Macmillan, 1998
 * Evans, Dylan. (2005) "From Lacan to Darwin", in The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005, pp.38–55.
 * According to cognitive linguist Mark Turner, many of Saussure's concepts were "wrong on a grand scale." Turner, Mark. 1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. University of Chicago Press, p. 6.
 * Searle, John R. "Word Turned Upside Down." New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16· October 27, 1983.
 * Peregrin, Jaroslav. (1995) "Structuralist Linguistics and Formal Semantics" in E. Hajicovâ et al. (eds), Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, vol. 2, Benjamins: Amsterdam, pp. 85–97.
 * Graham, Joseph F and Richard Macksey (1992). Onomatopoetics: Theory of Language and Literature. MLN, Vol. 107, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1992), pp. 1098–1101.
 * Fabb, Nigel. (1988) Saussure and literary theory: from the perspective of linguistics. Critical Quarterly, Volume 30, Issue 2, pages 58–72, June 1988.
 * Patai, Daphne and Wilfrido Corral (eds). Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-13417-0.

Indy pop music relevance to article
What does some random indy pop band have to do with Ferdinand de Saussure? It is always cringeworthy to see such references on Wikipedia. Would Ferdinand de Saussure or his colleagues find it appropriate that some irrelevant pop band is tagged onto an encyclopedic article about his life and work? Why would anyone? It is nonsense that has nothing to do with de Saussure. It is a parasitical relationship, exploitation. There have been probably thousands of academic articles written about de Saussure and his work that actually provide something worthwhile, a counterargument, a clarification, an extension of his ideas, or whatever else you can think of. Such papers are not listed on the page, for understandable reasons, but at the same time some utterly meaningless reference in a pop song is supposed to qualify as important information? Such references should never be included in encyclopedic articles because they have no relevance at all. Anyone can mention the name of some thinker or book or whatever in a song, but it doesn't mean it should be automatically added to an encyclopedic article about said person, book, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.248.163 (talk) 13:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The reference has since been removed; readers can find such obscure references with the "What links here" tool. -- Beland (talk) 15:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Clarification needed
From the article:
 * languages have a relational conception of their elements: words and their meanings are defined by comparing and contrasting their meanings to one another. For instance, the sound images for and the conception of a book differ from the sound images for and the conception of a table.


 * What is a "sound image", another term for "sound of a word"?
 * What is the compare/contrast relationship between a book and a table? They seem unrelated.

-- Beland (talk) 16:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a paper to impress your doctorate advisor
How about not using a polysyllabic confabulation to disguise your ignorance of the subject. In other words, stop using words with four syllables when single syllable words would reveal more meaning; rather than disguising the fact you know less about the subject of creating meaning than you know about camouflaging ignorance.

This will prove incredibly useful. CORNFLICKER (talk) 06:03, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Sound law
The law of Saussure and Fortunatov seems to refer to Baltic and Slavonic languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.7.189 (talk) 11:16, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Changes made since yesterday to the section previously called "Arbitrareness of the sign"
First the name of the section was changed from "Arbitrareness of the sign" to "The binary sign." But then today, 3 whole paragraphs from that section were eliminated and replaced with new content with a very laconic and unclear edit summary of "changes from yesterday." Overall, I don't like the changes and I don't think they make the article about Saussure better or more clear. In my opinion all these changes make the article more confusing, because their aim seems to be to introduce more controversy.

Then also a whole new section called "Markedness and opposition theory" was added. Opposition theory is indeed part of Saussure's thinking in his Course in General Linguistics, but the concept of Markedness is not part of it at all, and the aim of the addition is really to introduce more controversy in the article about Saussure, instead of introducing more clarity about Saussure's own thinking.

I believe all these extensive changes needed to be discussed here first, paragraph by paragraph, instead of just going ahead and introducing new material that seems to me to be all referenced to a specific reading of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. Can you please clarify what your aim is and what your primary source is in introducing all this new material? Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 16:33, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The article has been written largely from the POV of American linguistics/generative grammar, and I've removed most of such problems. It's funny you should ask about my sources since I've actually (explicitly) sourced my text unlike much of what's been replaced. I think opposition theory, markedness theory, contrast, reciprocity, distinctiveness and otherness are very closely related terms, and that, in practice, different authors have chosen different names for more or less the same phenomenon. But some examples citing the sources that link Saussure with markedness theory:


 * "Just prior to the coining of the markedness terminology, Saussure's observation that "language can be content with opposing something to nothing" (1916:124) stimulated a number of structurally oriented linguists to look for phenomena in language which fit this description."


 * "Finally, within each articulation the different species of phonemes are marked by concomitant features—laryngeal sound and nasal resonance—which differentiate by their absence as well as by their presence."


 * The result is that today German has Gast: Gäste, Hand: Hände, and a whole group of words marked by the same difference between the singular and the plural.


 * Anyway, what I want to see is a reliable article that works as a reference for any student. Trust me, when I started it wasn't even closed to being that. And, if I may, I'd like to spend even more of my precious time (given the opportunity) to improve the article. Any shortcomings could be fixed later on with better sources. PS. I didn't add more controversy after fixing the criticism section. In The bilateral sign I'm only putting things into perspective. The original text claimed that Saussure's greatest achievement was inventing the arbitrariness of the sign (I thought that was Chomsky) although even that wasn't really his own idea (Weidorje (talk) 18:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC) post-add). Now it reads that it wasn't the arbitrariness but the bilaterality of the sign. Thanks.Weidorje (talk) 17:33, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, it is clear to me that you are coming in from a perspective that is not structuralist, and therefore a perspective that is against Saussure to begin with. Instead of claiming to be explaining Saussure I would rather prefer that you'd leave the structuralist perspective this article had originally, and would instead add separate criticism sections from the perspective you are coming from. Also, instead of working directly on the main Saussure article, you could first work out your antagonistic perspective on the Course in General Linguistics separate article, so the ideological issues could be worked out there first, before they are introduced here. In any case, since structuralist thought is not the field I work on most regularly on Wikipedia, I would have to spend an amount of time I do not have to catch up with your undeclared intentions here. But I just want you to be aware that I am going to be watching carefully what you try to do here. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:10, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * That's good because I thought the article was dead so I was half surprised anyone reacted in the first place. Level 4 importance and 'start class'. I suppose the 'structuralist' view you are advocating entails keeping it that way. (I'm here assuming you'd agree with Newmeyer's 'Defense of the Saussurean view of grammar' which I agree is hilarious). Nevertheless, I've agreed with some of your feedback and have made improvements based on them. Weidorje (talk) 09:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

anti-structuralism bias in the way this article is being rewritten.
Saussure himself was not a "structuralist," since the very concept of structuralism was not yet in existence at his time. Yet, his linguistics writings were a central piece in the thought of many important structuralists, particularly in the thinking of Claude Lévi-Strauss. My own interest in Saussure came from reading Levi-Strauss, not from reading Saussure himself. So, I really don't know much about Saussure and I don't have the time right now to go fill this important gap in my knowledge.

Yet, somehow I had this distinctive feeling, since User:Weidorje started heavily rewriting this article about a month ago, that he or she comes here not from a perspective that is inherently sympathetic to structuralist thinking. Quite the opposite. Since the beginning, and I expressed my concerns in this direction in the discussion section immediately above this one, I had the distinctive feeling that this rewriting of the page is being done from a perspective that is inherently antagonistic to structuralist thinking. The last edits that have now been done in the past few days, only confirm this distictive feeling once again. But the edits now got to the point of starting to remove bibliographical items from the article, and substituting them with alternative items that will support this antagonistic perspective.

Now, as I said, I myself do not have either the knowledge or the time to come here and defend structuralist thinking against this open attacks on it. And, this being the English Wikipedia, my feeling is also that there aren't many knowledgeable editors around who will be willing to spend time on trying to achieve some balance on the relative strenghts or weaknesses of structuralist thinking. All I can do, therefore, is try to record here once again my strong objections to the direction in which the rewriting of this article is being done. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 01:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks, warshy. I have to say I'm not following you well here. You're attributing structuralism to Lévi-Strauss, and claim that I'm attacking it/him in my rewrite, which I'm not. As stated, however, this article is about Saussure (who technically never called himself a structuralist). So, my sources are related to him.


 * When I started editing, there was a criticism section on Saussure which was tagged as biased. I didn't remove the text completely, but I changed the title to "A legacy of ideological disputes" because I think a 'criticism' section may not be as appropriate on a person. The original criticism was written from an American linguistics perspective, singing the usual song that Saussure's ideas are outdated and were replaced by Chomsky. Since then I've made several improvements on this start-class article. Warshy writes: "my feeling is also that there aren't many knowledgeable editors around who will be willing to spend time on trying to achieve some balance on the relative strenghts or weaknesses of structuralist thinking". Well, there's at least one because this is exactly what I've been doing, although I'm not making an evaluation, but a description. I'm trying to understand what you're talking about, but it's not easy. Weidorje (talk) 07:07, 9 July 2020 (UTC)


 * In fact, I'm wondering if warshy means that he prefers the 1960s version of structuralism and doesn't like post-structuralism. If that's so, the article briefly discusses some of the criticisms and reasons why the political movement changed, without clearly taking sides (although it's written more from Saussure's perspective). Weidorje (talk) 09:40, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

'Political controversies' reads like a right-wing conspiracy theory
The whole structuralist enterprise was and is primarily about theories and methods of the scientific study of the world. Structuralist ideas and methods (e.g. 'phonemes' in linguistics) have been and are used by people without any connection to their politics. Yes, some structuralists in some fields of science have connected their work and views to their politics in various ways during various historical periods, but there is no general political project normally associated with structuralism as such. That section, instead, makes it sound as the primary goal of structuralism was political and even the rise of various theories and philosophies that reject much of it (poststructuralism, deconstruction and so on) was also politically motivated - all apparently part of a single 'radical left' agenda to subvert everything that is dear to Jordan Peterson's heart or something.--87.126.23.130 (talk) 03:44, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * You're right, the politics you're talking about is only in "that section", not all over the article. So there were political disputes, too. It is a rather general argument that structuralism (note! this is article is not about Leonard Bloomfield!) was too "conservative" for the poststructuralists. That is, for their purposes of transforming the academic left. Therefore, you need to know this to understand the criticism from the poststructuralists. Like you said, the goal of structuralism was to establish a scientific humanism; and it was particularly this 'scientific' inclination that was considered as an obstacle for a politics of change. But post-structuralism is also based on Saussure's idea. Secondly, it's a historical fact that the Prague school were persecuted by the Marxists. This is not to say that the structuralists were "right wing", though. Weidorje (talk) 07:00, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't know who Jordan Peterson is. Neither do I know who Leonard Bloomfield is. But overall I agree much more with the argument made by the IP editor who started this thread, than with the regular user who has made most of the latest changes to this page. If I remember correctly, it was s/he who made that section a separate section with that title. If I had the time I would completely rewrite that section, including changing the misleading title. I also, made those remarks previously above, at the time this latest changes were made. warshy (¥¥) 15:34, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Right. But first, I'd like to know if you two guys actually agree. So, Warshy says he doesn't like post-structuralists and thinks of Claude Lévi-Strauss as a structuralist. Now we have the other person who likes post-structuralists and... to be honest, I'm not sure what kind of arguments are made here. There's clearly some confusion, but what? Weidorje (talk) 16:24, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Anyway, it's an undisputed fact that post-structuralism grew out of a criticism of structuralism. How hard is that to believe? I'll get the citations asap, but I'm busy just now. Weidorje (talk) 16:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

As I said (and lost), I don't know much about so-called post-structuralists and I really don't care about them, whoever they may be. Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of the major exponents of what came to be known as stucturalist thinking, and I've studied his writing and I do admire it. And he did study Saussure's linguistic theories in-depth and used them in his own thinking. Beyond that, 's editing of this page had a strong anti-structuralist bias, and as such has introduced an unneeded and unwarranted political bias to this page that really has no place here. I'd like to hear the new commenter's additional comments on how s/he thinks this unwarranted political bias that was recently introduced could possibly be cleaned up. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 16:51, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * warshy, I believe you act in good faith, but what you're saying is kind of nonsense. You're being clear enough that you're not an expert of Saussure or structural linguistics. So how do you think you're going to improve this article? I think you should at least read Course in General Linguistics. I have used that and other recommendable sources, too. Dosse's two volumes are highly accredited and represent the French structuralist viewpoint. I'm not an anti-structuralist or an anti-socialist. I'm an expert of structural linguistics and related theories, or at least trying to be. I have to repeat that I haven't written anything bad about Lévi-Strauss or the academic left. What I've done was to clean up the page which was not correct from the Saussurean point and tradition. It was claimed that Chomsky had replaced Saussure, and that structural linguistics had fallen into oblivion. That is not true. I renamed the criticism section because I don't think person bio's need a 'criticism'. Instead, I've been working on an account of different kinds of famous criticisms and added an answer that is satisfactory from the French structuralist perspective and which I believe represents the opinion of today's European structuralist institutions. This is however stuff that we're working on, not only here in Wikipedia, but also out there; to better understand the terminology and ideological history. Weidorje (talk) 19:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * At this point I am more interested in what the other commenter, who appears to have echoed what I asserted here before, would have to say about how to clean up this page from the unwarranted political bias that was recently introduced. I agree with everything s/he said above, as I wrote, and I'd hope s/he would have further ideas on how to improve the page. As for your views, I believe I understand where you're coming from, and overall I feel your contributions have not really improved the page. In fact, I think the page as it is today is actually less clear, straightforward, and encyclopedic than it was before your edits. But I've said this before, and I have also said I don't have the time to go into research into this area now, so this and other sections can be rewritten and improved. But maybe with the help of a new interested editor we can do something to really improve the page. Thanks, warshy (¥¥) 19:56, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I think this will help. warshy, since you agree 100% with the anonymous commenter, can you please explain to me what you guys mean exactly? Like, how does this page reflect a right-wing conspiracy theory or Jordan Peterson's opinions? Weidorje (talk) 08:28, 8 October 2020 (UTC)