/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16872369]

Anyone read this? saw it recommended on here a week ago. what are your thoughts?

[Anonymous No.16872381]

>>16872369

Haven't read it but I heard it's compiled from his students' lecture notes.

[Anonymous No.16873085]

>>16872369
It's definitely a good book, but it doesn't flow very well, and I wouldn't recommend it for someone new to linguistics. It's kind of dry and you need to be very familiar with the terminology and notation of phonology, and it would help to have a rudimentary understanding of historical and anthropological linguistics the concept of language families. The phonology is probably going to be the biggest barrier for someone new to linguistics, but I imagine anyone could read the first few chapters (which are very short iIRC). It's definitely an important work, and every linguist should read it, but its not the best place to start.

If you are primarily interested in it from a linguistic perspective, then you'd probably be better off starting with more contemporary linguistics. The field has changed and developed quite a bit. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics have underwent dramatic developments since the 1950s. Historical and anthropological linguistics has been slower to develop, but in the last 15 years, things have really picked up the pace and changed quite a lot. It's really moving towards being more of a STEM field that is closely tied to anthropology, and involves a lot of archaeological data and computational models (e.g. of migrations, of language change, etc).

On the other hand, if you are primarily interest in reading the Cours for philosophical purposes, then I honestly think you can just skip ahead a few decades to people like Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Claud Levi Strauss, etc. The reason I say that, is because if you are interested in learning more about structuralism and the philosophy of language, although Saussure was very influential on those fields, only about 20 pages or so of the Cours are actually devoted to laying out the ideas and methodology that would serve as the basis for the development of structuralism.

It's a great book and historically very important and influential, but I would mainly recommend reading it if you are interested in the history of linguistics or the history of structuralism. However, if you are mainly looking to develop a deep understanding linguistic theory or structuralism, then you should look to later sources.

[Anonymous No.16873309]

>>16872369
Reading right now, it’s pretty good.

[Anonymous No.16873319]

>>16872369
Mogged by Peirce

[Anonymous No.16873431]

>>16872369
It gets you to learn what a lingüistic sign is, most of /lit/ doesn't know what is that

[Anonymous No.16873442]

>>16873085
You don't even try to describe this book...read it

[Anonymous No.16873704]

>>16872369
The only real reason to read it is if you are looking to read other thinkers in the structuralist and post-structuralist traditions. If you want to read people like Levi-Strauss, Lacan, or Derrida it’s a very helpful thing to have read.

If your goal is trying to learn Linguistics, it’s not a particularly good starting point.

[Anonymous No.16873752]

>>16873704
Wow, another cuck who doesn't know what is the book about, read it, because you don't point any argurment against this course

[Anonymous No.16873768]

>>16873752
I agree with him that it's mostly for people interested in French continental philosophy but that doesn't mean it is a poor introduction to linguistics. There is no linguistics without the sign and the signified. It would be like telling someone interested in politics not to read Plato's Republic because it's a philosophy work.

[Anonymous No.16873903]

>>16873768
Again, most /lit/ lurkers don't know what a lingüistic sign is, and don't even argue with facts.