French Influences on Saussure

Abstract

0.1 For some ten years now, it has been my claim that it was through linguistic writings of his time, and not through extra-linguistic publications, that Saussure’s views took shape. This is not to say that there was no influence on him from disciplines other than linguistics, but this kind of influence was due to what I have termed the “climate of opinion” of the period, and it remained largely at the surface of things, certain frequently reiterated claims of a strong impact of Durkheim’s sociology, Tarde’s as well as Walras’ political economy, etc. notwithstanding (cf. Rijlaarsdam 1978: 260-64; Bierbach 1978 passim). Saussure’s acquaintance with disciplines outside linguistics, I maintain, was at best second-hand and remained superficial. This is not only true of the psychologism underlying his theoretical argument, a psychologism found elsewhere in the linguistic literature (e.g., Paul 1880, 1909; Baudouin de Courtenay 1894), but also of his sociologism, his repeated statement that language was a “fait social”. In short, if we want to place Saussure’s theory of language-and of linguistics for that matter-in an epistemological context, we would do better by acquainting ourselves with the linguistic literature of his day rather than deducing from certain superficial similarities and terminological borrowings a direct influence of a field outside the study of language on Saussure’s linguistic reasoning. (We should remember that Saussure never wrote a book on general linguistics, but that he was trying, through comparisons, metaphors, and references to what was general knowledge of his day, to convey his largely novel ideas to twenty-year-old students.)