Architecture of Signification. Systematic Reading of the Saussurian Corpus

Abstract

The recent publication of the original manuscripts of Ferdinand de Saussure (Engler, 1989; Bouquet and Engler, 2001) have permitted a long-awaited renewal of the whole of Saussurian studies. The structuralist conceptions that have dominated the reading of the Saussurian corpus during nearly a century, are strongly questioned today. The very idea that Saussure could be considered the “father” of structuralism can hardly be defended now. A “post-structuralist” reading of the corpus imposes itself in which the concept of reading, never mentioned by Saussure, yields its place to the concept of system, in the present meanings given to the term: sign system, but above all the system of pure values.

This article proposes a systematic reading of the corpus of Saussurian general linguistics that replaces the structuralist interpretations known up to the present time. This reading follows the Saussurian text step by step and sheds light to a totally new theory of which, however, we can find some elements in the Problèmes de Linguistique Générale by Benvéniste (PLG 1960) and in the analysis de Lacan (Lacan, Séminaires).