De Saussure

La contribution importante de l'un des spécialistes principaux du Saussurismo contemporain qui nous apporte des commentaires critiques à propos de l'influence du Cours de linguistique générale au XXe siècle, et en particulier les manuscrits de 1996. Comment devons-nous recevoir ces deux métatextes ?  François Rastier nous répond à cela et d'autres questions.

Our approach to translation is based on Eugenio Coseriu’s linguistic theory and on the American cognitive view of extralinguistic semantics. In order to illustrate the translation from Romanian into French of metaphors used in spoken language, we propose a selection of metaphors organised into six specific traditional fields. The case study regarding certain metaphors aims at demonstrating the fact that the object of translation is not the meaning, but the designation and the significance, which highlight differences that are rather cultural than lexical. So as to have access to the designation, we will make use of the work methods which are specific to Lakovian cognitive semantics: the conceptual metaphor and the conceptual mapping.

Znameniti švicarski lingvist Ferdinand de Saussure umro je 22. februara 1913. godine. Budući da se 2013. navršilo jedno stoljeće od njegove smrti – i to stoljeće u kome je razvoj lingvistike umnogome bio obilježen De Saussureovim učenjem i utjecajem – u ovom je tekstu ukazano na neke od najznačajnijih činjenica koje se tiču njegova lika i djela.

Pentru a pune bazele lingvisticii integrale, Eugeniu Coşeriu propune, cum se ştie, o modificare radicală a perspectivei asupra limbajului, respectiv explorarea întregului câmp fenomenal al "faptelor" lingvistice din punctul de vedere al vorbirii, nu al limbii, avansând, drept cadru preliminar al acestei explorări, o schemă generală a planurilor care se disting în vorbire, precum şi a competenţelor lingvistice corespunzătoare. Capacitatea generală de expresie conţine elementele nonverbale care acompaniază vorbirea şi competenţa lingvistică în totalitatea sa, care este, pe de o parte, psihofizică, iar pe de altă parte, culturală. "Nivelul cultural" al vorbirii este caracterizat drept activitate umană universală, care se realizează în situaţii determinate prin vorbitori individuali, ca reprezentanţi ai unor comunităţi lingvistice tradiţionale. Sunt distinse în acest fel cele trei planuri pe care se manifestă activitatea culturală a vorbirii: cel universal, comun tuturor limbilor, cel istoric, ce contine vorbirea într-o anumită limbă, si planul individual. În ceea ce priveste palierul individual, Coseriu subliniază că vorbirea este întotdeauna o executie individuală, nu „corală”, iar pe de altă parte, ea are loc întotdeauna într-o situatie determinată.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."

Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights.

This paper presents the results of a study in the field of speech linguistics, which studies linguistic phenomena starting from the activity of speaking, not from language. From the perspective of the three linguistic levels proposed by Eugenio Coseriu, the creation of metaphors is situated at the universal level. This paper investigates the common ground that integral linguistics and cognitive semantics share. An illustrative case study is proposed in order to highlight the manner in which the two semantic approaches may complement one another to the benefit of research in the field of metaphor.

Ongoing discussion of this paper here: https://www.academia.edu/s/cf13d33860?source=link
Philosophy – whether traditional or contemporary – has nothing to say about the human metaphysical predicament, and cannot even offer a basic phenomenology of the human condition. Part of the problem is the ongoing confusion as to what philosophy actually amounts to, and what it can achieve. It is necessary to demystify philosophy, and have it restricted to the discipline of critical thinking, and it should not be thought of as possessing any substantial theoretical content of its own. It is a method, a skillset, a series of techniques, not a repository of various highbrow theories, whether about mind, epistemology, ontology, cosmology, science, or anything else. Metaphysics is an entirely distinct and separate field of inquiry, and concerns the human predicament, and ultimate human fulfilment, and it is to this end that critical thinking skills can usefully be applied. The purpose of this short study is to give some help to those hoping to gain an insight into the metaphysical realms of their being, and who would like some guidance with regard to those formal and academic disciplines supposedly geared to dealing with that very subject.

Saussure’s lifetime goal was to define the scientific criteria for linguistics, the study of languages. In light of this, this paper looks at Saussure’s discussion of analogy as the source for the various aspects of his theory about the nature of human languages. As part of this study, this paper introduces the history of the concept of analogy, from the classical grammarians and concluding with Saussure clarifying Saussure's position in the history of linguistics. According to the proposal, Saussure was less as a revolutionary and more as a theorist of his time who dealt with the challenges of his contemporaries. His uniqueness, accordingly, is in his ability to recognize the consequences of the conclusions from the conceptual analysis of analogies. Furthermore, this portrayal of Saussure’s theory touches on his epistemological and ontological assumptions, more specifically it examines his thoughts concerning the question of what justifies the scientific value of a linguistic inquiry.

Jakob Brücker (1696- 1770), “Historia critica philosophiae a mundi incunabulis ad nostram usque aetatem deducta” (Leipzig 1742-1744) adlı kitabında felsefenin başlangıcını “beşik”e (daha doğrusu ilk insanın kundaklanmasına) kadar götürür. Kitabın I. cildinin ilk sayfasında bir resim vardır; bir ayı tek pençesi ile bir şey yer gibi tasvir olunmaktadır. Buna ilişkin ifade ise “ipsa alimenta sibi”dir yani “O, kendi(si) kendisinin yemeğidir.” Bu ifade Horaz kökenli sanılmasına rağmen aslen Properz III, 24, 4’tendir. Sextus Propertius’un mısrası şu şekildedir: “Ipse alimenta sibi maxima praebet amor” yani felsefe başka bir gıdaya ihtiyacı olmaksızın (yani evvelki bilim ve sanatlara muhtaç bulunmaksızın) inkişaf edebilme kabiliyetine; kendi kendine yetebilme tavrına sahiptir. Yani felsefe kendi kendinden huruç etmektedir.
En işlevsel metafor teorilerinden olan Kittay’ın “İçeriği İkiye Katlama Teorisi” semiotiğin imkânlarından faydalanmak sureti ile metaforu izah bakımından diğer teorilerden ayrılır. Dolayısı ile bir tarafta Richards, Black, İpsen, Jolles, Trier, Porzig, Coseriu ve Weinrich gibi metafor teorisyenleri dururken diğer tarafta da Peirce, Morris, Cassirer ve Eco gibi semiotikçiler vardır. Kittay tam olarak bu iki tarafı birleştirmeye muvaffak olmuştur, denebilir. “Metafor ve Semiyotik” isimli çalışmamızda evvela teoriyi tanımladık. Daha sonra “semiotik”, metafor bağlantısı koparılmadan izah edilmiştir. Bu minvalde “göstergebilim” yanlış adlandırması, sembol- simge farkı ve semiotik imlasının (y’siz) doğruluğu da ihmal edilmemiştir. Akabinde Kittay için temel olan etkileşim ve alan teorileri ele alındı.
Metafor ve semiotik bağlantısı idrak edilmekle sadece ayı ve elindeki şey değil; ağaçlar, orman, ormandaki diğer hayvanlar ve birbirleri ile olan rabıtaları, beslenme şekilleri ve dahi sindirim sistemi vb. hakkında da malumat edinilebilecektir.

Le Cours de linguistique générale (CLG) de Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), publié en 1916, est à l'origine d'une vaste vague structuraliste en sciences humaines. L'édition posthume, réalisée par Charles Bally et Albert Sechehaye, est basée sur les trois cours de linguistique générale que Saussure a donnés à l'Université de Genève entre 1907 et 1911. L'exégèse de la pensée linguistique de Saussure, qui dans les dernières décennies s'est constituée en un domaine de haute spécialisation philologique, avait déjà abouti au constat d'un important effort de reconstruction systématisante et homogénéisante de la part des deux éditeurs, mais n'était pas parvenue à préciser la nature de «l'avant-texte» sous-tendant l'édition définitive. Or, cet «avant-texte», ou du moins un jalon crucial dans son élaboration, est la «collation» effectuée par Albert Sechehaye et revue par Charles Bally; ce texte de travail, qui est à la base de l'édition du CLG, est conservé comme manuscrit à la Bibliothèque de Genève. C'est le texte de la «Collation Sechehaye» qui est publié ici en facsimilé et en transcription. L'édition rigoureusement philologique, en conformité avec les principes de la «génétique des textes», est précédée d'une longue introduction historique, retraçant la genèse du CLG.

No projeto teórico de Saussure, a linguagem é abordada a partir de óticas distintas, embora seus objetos de investigação estabeleçam uma relação entre si. Por isso a análise dos materiais que apresentam a trajetória de elaboração da teorização de Saussure exige que tomemos como central seu processo, em vez de toma-la como algo acabado. Tendo isso em vista, neste artigo buscamos analisar e explicitar alguns aspectos do tratamento dos documentos saussurianos e também da própria teorização neles apresentada. Para tanto, utilizaremos o trabalho de Silveira (2007), para tratar das especificidades encontradas nos materiais que atestam o processo de elaboração de Saussure. Em seguida, trataremos da questão do corte epistemológico possibilitado pela teorização e pelos princípios saussurianos, pautando-nos principalmente no trabalho de Normand (2011) e de Milner (1989; 2002), para apresentar os elementos do projeto teórico de Saussure que permitiram que a Linguística se estabelecesse enquanto ciência.

In 1916, three years after the death of Ferdinand de Saussure, the Cours de linguistique générale (CLG) was published in Geneva. This foundational work marked the beginning of a discipline that has profoundly influenced the development of the humanities ever since. What sources influenced the CLG? Do the main concepts of this seminal work have the same validity today as they did in 1916? How has the recent development of language sciences influenced its reception? How does this text account for meaning and communication within the context of speech (parole)? In order to explore these questions, one hundred years after the publication of Ferdinand de Saussure’s seminal work on General Linguistics, Polis—The Jerusalem Institute of Languages and Humanities held an interdisciplinary conference that gathered 14 international specialists from various disciplines: general linguistics, pragmatics, philology, dialectology, translation studies, terminology, and philosophy.

This study demonstrates how semiotics, which constitutes the “linguistic turn ” in human sciences, is a powerful tool for revealing concealed meanings in Internet marketing. Semiotics deals with symbols in the form of text and pictures, and also with their underlying meaning. Hence, since Internet marketing makes extensive use of symbols in order to affect product awareness and cultural meaning, semiotics is a very effective and efficient tool for interpreting online marketing. This paper analyzes two examples of Internet marketing and explains how potential consumers with different cultural backgrounds perceive the advertised product.