Joseph, John E. "What If Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?" TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT April 14, 2011.

Daylight, Russell.  What If Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?.  Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011.

This book is the first systematic analysis of all of Derrida's published pronouncements on Saussure's Cours, including its impassioned rejection of writing as only a secondary representation of language, the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign and the problem of its existence in time. The last is, more precisely, one of the topics pursued seriously by Saussure that Derrida never took up - thus allowing him to depict Saussure as implying certain ideas that in fact he directly rejected.

Daylight patiently combs through the fine silk weave on which Derrida has painted his broad brushstrokes. He leads us step by step through each of Derrida's readings of Saussure, then sometimes back again through the same texts as we proceed to the next set of Derridean claims. Daylight sees his task not as defending Saussure from falsehoods, but showing that Derrida's interpretation is by no means the only possible one. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415785&c=1.

Pub: Fadda, Emanuele, ed. "Saussure, Philosopher of Language." RIFL: RIVISTA ITALIANA DI FILOSOFIA DEL LINGUAGGIO 3 (2010).

• Emanuele Fadda, Introduzione
• Tullio De Mauro, "Che ne è di Saussure, oggi?: intervista di Felice Cimatti"
• Daniele Gambarara, "Per una filosofia del linguaggio e delle lingue. Intervista di Emanuele Fadda"

Articoli:

• Michel Arrivé, "Saussure: un langage sans voix?"
• Antonino Bondì, "Il linguaggio come «fenomeno»: L'esperienza linguistica tra Saussure e la fenomenologia"
• Simon Bouquet, "D’une épistémologie néosaussurienne de la linguistique à la question des droits de l’homme"
• Davide Bruzzese, "La riflessione anagrammatica di Ferdinand de Saussure: un’altra riflessione sul segno"
• Cosimo Caputo, "Linguistica e filosofia del linguaggio in Saussure"
• Felice Cimatti, "Concetto e significato. Saussure e la natura umana"
• Manuel Gustavo Isaac, "Les paradoxes de l’arbitraire"
• Emiliano La Licata, "Saussure e il disordine della langue"
• Robin M. Muller, "Kant and Saussure"
• Thomas Robert, "Saussure et l’origine du langage: un interdit à dépasser par la philosophie linguistique"
• Horst Ruthrof, "Linguistic Arbitrariness and the ‘Nebulous’ World of Vorstellung in Saussure"
• Gildas Salmon, "Les conditions d’une science de l’intertextualité: réflexion sur les apories du comparatisme Saussurien"

Recensioni e Note:

• Andrea D’Urso, Caputo, Hjelmslev e la semiotica
• Emanuele Fadda, Nota sugli atti del convegno "Révolutions saussuriennes"

Download the essays here: http://www.rifl.unical.it/index.php/component/content/article/1-ultime/86-saussure-filosofo-del-linguaggio-numero-32010.

Cfp: RIVISTA ITALIANA DI FILOSOFIA DEL LINGUAGGIO 3 (2010).

Scholars generally know – but very rarely work on – Ferdinand de Saussure essentially as a linguist and author of the Course in General Linguistics, a book widespread in XXth century, but empty of any significance for actual research. In fact, he is considered as a subject for handbooks of History of
Linguistics, not at all as a reference for actual debate in philosophy of language. Nonetheless, this issue of RIFL will present Saussure as a philosopher of language. Namely, we are interested in the relation between language faculty (biologically rooted) and languages/les langues (as the fundamental, but not the only, semiological objects), and in how this relation determines human nature. This perspective on Saussure as a philosopher (of language) is not shared by many historians of linguistics (who think that Saussure’s legacy is once and for all circumscribed), neither by mainstream philosophers of language (who would deny to Saussure every relevance for their studies). We think they all are mistaken.

The aim of this issue of RIFL is that of testing the impact of a Saussurean approach on the main themes of contemporary philosophy of language, as:

• relation between language and mind, language and cognition, language and emotions and language and body
• language(s) acquisition
• social and institutional nature of language
• relation between language and other definitional characters of human being

The manuscripts should have a theoretical rather than an experimental focus. Papers from the following areas are accepted: philosophy of language, semiotics, history of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and social sciences, psychology, neuroscience. Submissions may be in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Russian. All submissions must be prepared for blind review. The author's name, the institutional affiliation and the title’s paper must be placed in a separate file. Papers must be sent as Microsoft Word file (.doc or .rtf) to: segreteria.rifl@gmail.com.

Instructions for Authors:

Max length: 40000 characters (including spaces) for articles (included bibliography); 20000 characters (including spaces) for interviews; 10000 characters (including spaces) for reviews.

Deadline submission: 15th October 2010

Notification of acceptance: 15th November 2010

Final version due: 9th December 2010

Issue publication: December 2010

For further information: http://www.rifl.unical.it/; info.rifl@unical.it.

Joseph, John E. " . . . Ferdinand de Saussure, the Father of Structuralism, Owed Much to Hobbes and Mill. . . ." TIMES ONLINE November 14, 2007.

. . . None of this information has been published before. It has come to light in papers discovered in 1996, only a very few of which have made their way into print. The Writings in General Linguistics, first published by Gallimard in 2002 (English translation from Oxford University Press, 2006), consists mainly of texts already published in 1974 or earlier. The new material in Writings, including the brief fragments found in twelve envelopes marked “On the Double Essence” or “On the Eessence”, does not differ on any essential point from the previously known manuscripts. Saussure was consistent in his conception of language throughout his life. More revealing is the personal information in the papers. His claims to Englishness are surprising because he seems so archetypically Continental, standing as he does at the head of all the structuralism and poststructuralism that followed in his wake. Yet Geneva, the city of Calvin and Frankenstein (for whom Ferdinand’s great-grandfather Horace-Bénédict de Saussure may have been a model), was described in 1814 by the historian and political economist J. C. Simonde de Sismondi as “a sort of British city on the continent . . . a city where people think and feel in English, though they speak and write in French”. Saussure’s most characteristic ideas have British or American sources, including the most distinctively Saussurean idea of all: "In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system" (from the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916). . . . For the late nineteenth century the locus classicus of differentiality was John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865), a scathing attack that brought far more attention to Hamilton’s writings than their author had managed during his lifetime. Hamilton’s “relativity of human knowledge” was one of the few things Mill agreed with, summarizing it as follows: "We only know anything by knowing it as distinguished from something else; all consciousness is of difference; two objects are the smallest number required to constitute consciousness; a thing is only seen to be what it is by contrast with what it is not." . . . Saussure had come into contact with the English and Scottish philosophical traditions in his teens, reading Pictet’s survey of them in his book on aesthetics, Du Beau. That background left him receptive to the Hamilton–Mill doctrine when he was introduced to it, at the start of the 1890s, via his younger brother. . . . Read the entire article here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article2869724.ece.