Course In General Linguistics By Ferdinand De Saussure Pdf Download

admin 03.08.2019

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Course in General Linguistics” as Want to Read:

Rate this book

See a Problem?

We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Not the book you’re looking for?

Preview — Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure

(Seri ILDEP #35)

The Cours de linguistique generale, reconstructed from students' notes after Saussure's death in 1913, founded modern linguistic theory by breaking the study of language free from a merely historical and comparativist approach. Saussure's new method, now known as Structuralism, has since been applied to such diverse areas as art, architecture, folklore, literary criticism,

...more

Published 1998 by Open Court (first published 1915)

To see what your friends thought of this book,please sign up.

To ask other readers questions aboutCourse in General Linguistics,please sign up.

Popular Answered Questions

Darkness1107you can find it in another library..!?

Best Books about Linguistics

132 books — 175 voters

Best European Literature

716 books — 339 voters

More lists with this book...

Rating details

Aug 29, 2008Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it liked it

[image error]
Q: I’ve recently become particulary interested in structural linguistics, more specifically laryngeal theory. I’m wondering if anyone has read something on why the original laryngeals have disappeared? ...assuming they existed, of course.
And then my A: All I’m familiar with regarding structural linguistics is the foundational text of Saussure’s, Course in General Linguistics, which when I read it a few year ago I mostly found to be tedious and unsurprising. I can appreciate it as a...more

Aug 28, 2008Jimmy rated it liked it

Short of calling it a pioneer text, it's difficult to really say much else about Saussure's Course in General Linguistics. As dated as most of the ideas contained within this book are, most of them stand as the founding concepts of linguistics, semiotics, and structuralism. Or, a more grammatically apt way to put it would be to say that it is Saussure's particular methodology that has been the most influential aspect of his thought. His central aim above all else is to analyze language as a syst...more

Oct 05, 2010Andrea rated it really liked it

Can't believe it took me so long to read this! It's so foundational to so much theory, and when you read it you will see how (it's not the same hearing about that, but isn't that always true?). And only reading it did I fully realize that I wasn't reading Saussure at all, but what his students and colleagues thought was Saussure, which clearly is something different and quite collective and thus possibly cooler than Saussure. So no one should just throw the name around as he's not a person anymo...more

Feb 21, 2019Bohdan Pechenyak rated it really liked it

A classical study of linguistics that laid the foundation of the modern science. A bit heavy on examples that break up the flow of the text, but a must-read for anyone interested in studying language and meaning.

Apr 16, 2013Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of this book. It is significant not only for laying down a radical vision of linguistics as a discipline for the 20th and 21st centuries, but it also lays the foundations for all modern approaches to semiotics. Certainly Peirce had made a similar breakthrough in semiotics at around the same time, but his theory was not backed up by such a rich understanding of the study of linguistics - its sub-fields and divisions, the progress it had made, it...more

Jan 14, 2017Denton Peter McCabe rated it it was amazing

After wrapping up my readings of Heidegger and Husserl, I found Saussure to be rather refreshing, probably the most influential thinker on my large critical theory reading list since Gramsci. Backing up just a little bit, Heidegger really seemed to have just contributed a convoluted discussion of the word Dasein and its meaning, which at different times could encompass being, revelation, existence, human being, the universe, etc. I feel Heidegger is too open to interpretation and a discussion of...more

This is not actually a work by de Saussure, but rather (a translation of) a posthumous reconstruction of his teaching by Bally and Sechehaye based on student notes of three separate courses of lectures (given between 1906 and 1911) plus some other writings of de Saussure; nevertheless, it is one of the founding texts of what is now known as 'structural linguistics.' I took an introductory course in structural linguistics at Columbia about 1973, or more than sixty years after this material was de...more

Oct 13, 2010Mike rated it it was amazing

This is an interesting book. The thinker behind the ideas within it was dead when it was written, and it was composed by former students from lecture notes. While reading it, one begins to presume a singular, living voice behind the ideas within; ideas that have been discussed, dissected, and evaluated to the point where this original formulation has lost its currency and its value is now that of an artefact or touchstone. The sad thing of monuments is that they are never free from piss; the fac...more

Jul 28, 2011Phillip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I want to preface this by mentioning that I only read the parts of this text that seemed to be about semiotics, rather than the parts about linguistics as such. De Saussure's text is really important to the foundations of semiotics as a discipline, and I was especially pleased to get clarification on the relationship between the sign, the signifier, and the signified. Otherwise, he had some smart insights on various things, but I think a general intro to semiology would be as useful. Obviously d...more

Oct 21, 2016Shafiq Razak Rajan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Definitely not for the uninitiated. If you want to read this and understand more than half of it, its better you get acquainted with Linguistics 101.
What I learned:
1. A language item (like a word) is a sign. A sign, in turn, is composed of two parts: the signal (letters, sound) and the signified (meaning, ideas, concept).
The between the sign and the signified is largely arbritary. Thus, there is no logical explanation on why a dog is called a dog, and spelt as d o g, but in Malay, it is called a...more

Jan 15, 2019Alexander Smith rated it really liked it

I, in some ways, have two very different opinions about this book:
First, I realize that this is a historically important perspective that is really novel in its approach to semiotics and linguistics. This is one of the most concise, well arranged, and innovative arguments for its time on language and meaning making. Also some parts of this ring true, even if I have axiomatic differences.
That said, secondly, many of the fundamental arguments of this work seem under-motivated by overly simplified...more

Aug 11, 2017David Balfour rated it really liked it

The section on synchronic linguistics is brilliant, but the latter half of the book - on diachronic linguistics - is a little pointless for someone who isn't actually interested in the history of languages. Also, the specific linguistic examples are a bit overwhelming for someone who isn't already immersed in the field. Fortunately, it's easy to skim over them and get the general gist of the argument.
It doesn't feel like Saussure was aware of how profound some of his ideas are, particularly his...more

Jun 10, 2019Stevie von Uexküll rated it liked it

Saussure proudly takes the cake as the most tedious and boring 'philosopher' (not technically a philosopher, mind you) that I've read. I shouldn't bash him too hard, though, since this was a bunch of lecture notes transcribed by a couple of his students, but nonetheless, this makes the structure and tone of the book quite frustrating.
A lot of the times Saussure brings up discredited linguistics and specific examples (which will most likely fly over your head, if you're not a linguistics student-...more

Aug 09, 2015Basilius rated it really liked it

A particular word is like the center of a constellation; it is the point of convergence of an indefinite number of co-ordinated terms.
I once wondered how cavemen thought without language. Did they think in images? And for a person who’s bilingual: which language do they reason in? While in both cases I took for granted the thinking-in-words phenomenon I didn’t put 2+2 together. I didn’t realize, not fully, how integrated language and abstraction were. Little did I know that Ferdinand de Saussure...more

Very nice book for a semiotic beginner.

Sign Language: Form and Meaning
- semiotics, signified, signifier
- Syntagmatic relations
- signs are arbitrary
- etc.

Apr 30, 2016Chris Via rated it liked it

For literary critic, author, and professor Terry Eagleton, Structuralism is 'rather like killing a person in order to examine more conveniently the circulation of the blood' (Literary Theory: An Introduction, 95), and indeed Roland Barthes had something like this analogy in mind when he wrote the monumental little essay 'The Death of the Author.' As Mary Klages defines it, 'In any field, a structuralist is interested in discovering the elements - the units - that make up any system, and in disco...more

Sep 11, 2016Daniel Cheng rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I always have a difficult time articulating my views on a book as canonical and influential as the Cours, especially when it's in a rather technical field that I have negligible amounts of experience with. Despite this, it's impossible to read this book and not see why it had the influence it did. Prefiguring Baudrillard's notion of the simulacrum, Saussure's revelations about language transforms it into a network of simulacra that can't be referred to some definitive 'truth' or 'reality.' The r...more

I can't but rate such book by full stars. It's simply a reference to all who's interested in linguistic studies, simple enough for an amateur and essential for a professional. As we all know it's not Saussure himself who wrote this book, which is an amazing fact for its own account, for now we're reading the believes and the understanding of his students about this subject matter.
The great thing about the general course of linguistic is that it tackles all the important parts of this fields, it...more

The book is fun to read, although the material is extremely dated. The work Saussure does in this book hardly looks like contemporary linguistics. But, for the student of history, and to better understand the origins of linguistics today, this book presents itself as an interesting read.
Also, the book is fun because it covers Saussure's famous 'signifier' and 'signified.' The theory is not as technically brutal as contemporary linguistics, but it still gets your mind working!
One more thing, an...more

Jan 20, 2016Roger Green rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a brilliant book that is foundational for the discipline of linguistics. Reading it today I'm struck by the impulse to create a 'science,' something paralleled in the work of thinkers like Freud and (a bit later) Heidegger and what came to be known as existentialism. I'm also struck by the later reception in France as a political move in the postwar years. To me, as Structuralism gains momentum in the late 1940s and 1950s it is aligned with a 'revived' 'liberal humanist' Marxism followin...more

Dec 04, 2016Harun Celik rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone interested in an introduction to semiotics

I wasn't very interested in Linguistics until I started this book and can now say that I'm hooked to both Linguistics and to studies of Semiotics.
The book has a very wide remit of common subjects in Linguistics and Language altogether. More interestingly though are Saussure's ideas on semiology and the function of linguistic structures through the works of signs. Saussure is brilliant in surreptitiously explaining how much of the world we axiomatically take through signs and language and the arb...more

I jumped into this because he is so important to the structuralist movement, but honestly this is nothing but a pile of arcane linguistics.
If you know nothing about linguistics and have no real interest in it avoid this. If you are interested in it's impacts on philosophy like I was, I would recommend reading a philosophy book that summarizes this book as opposed to actually reading it.
Reading this book did nothing for my understanding and just made me more confused.

Course In General Linguistics By Ferdinand De Saussure Pdf Download Torrent

One of the most foundational books in the modern approach to linguistics, especially when it represents a pure structuralist approach; which, while considered as refuted by the Chomskyan approach, still is useful as a perceptual lens. It also is one of the founding texts of the modern approach to semiotics, and thus is an essential read to anyone who wishes to have some understanding of topics and outdated schools of linguistics.

Jan 09, 2013Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Good. Of specific note, the eBook edition was very well formatted for the media. In my readings, I've run across many a book which were obviously hastily converted for eBook distribution. These eBooks suffer from typographical errors and sloppy formatting. The 'Course in General Linguistics,' though, bucked the trend. Well done.
As for the content itself: It was good, I suppose. I read it a might bit quick, so I would prefer to go over it and re-read some sections.

Jan 25, 2009Amanda rated it really liked it

A very clear (despite some translation inconsistencies, apparently) outline of semiotics and the structure of language. Though not really how linguistics works anymore, a very useful book if you're at all interested in understanding how signs work. Plus the influence of Saussure on other humanities disciplines (ie film studies) is not to be underestimated.

Fantastic piece of mind-revolutionizing theory--i actually was introduced to Saussure through course work at uni. But I went and read this entire book for a project later. The ideas Saussure puts forth in his thinking about language are foundational to post-structural thinking. Grasping his framework and applying it to life was an intellectually liberating experience--a bit dry though sometimes.

Dec 16, 2007Adam Lindberg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone interested in sturcturalism or semiotics

The classic study of the subject. A worthwhile investment for anyone interested in questions about how language works. Of note: the Baskin versus the Harris translation is a difficult problem to solve. Each succeeds the other at certain points in their renderings. If possible, my recommendation would be to read them side-by-side. If I had to pick one, I'd say go with the Baskin.

I'm not sure how I feel about Saussure; he's often credited with distinguishing between referents and their signifiers but he wasn't the only one at his time making this argument (e.g., Frege). I find him particularly obscure on the process by which we understand names. Nonetheless, he's an engaging read and I'd have to say I'd be interested in reading him again.

Jul 31, 2010Natalie rated it liked it · review of another edition

thank you, Prof. Paul Kockelman, for opening Pandora's Box on my research/study habits/curiosity: this led me to Barthes, which led me to Antonioni, which led me to Bachelard and Perec, and now... Drew Barrymore's autobio, 'Little Girl Lost.' Couldn't have done it without ya, Kock. thanks for all of the semiomemories...

topics	posts	views	last activity
Abook downloading	3	26	Mar 26, 2013 06:54PM

Recommend ItStatsRecent Status Updates

See similar books…

See top shelves…

136followers

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics and his ideas have had a monumental impact throughout the humanities and social sciences.

Seri ILDEP(1 - 10 of 64 books)

“Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.” — 64 likes

“Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.” — 23 likes

More quotes…