IN THE “LIMITS” OF FERDINAND SAUSSURE: COSERIU, WEINREICH, LABOV AND HERZOG

Abstract

When we think of Ferdinand de Saussure, at the side of the known antonomasia from the sort of “father of modern linguistics”, immediately the “saussurean dichotomies” come to mind: synchrony -diachrony; language-speech; syntagma-paradigm. It is possible this recollection extends to those who have never read the Course in General Linguistics (CGL). This paper reflects about the understanding of some readers of Saussure on certain specific ideas – all related to the famous dichotomies -, namely “change”, “system” and “homogeneity”; they are special readers, Coseriu (1979) and Weinreich, Labov & Herzog [WLH] (2006). We think about ideas developed in two of their works: a more  integrative relationship  between synchrony  and diachrony proposed by Coseriu (1979); the integration between system and heterogeneity set by WLH (2006). We intend to show, however, that in the CGL itself (Saussure, 1995) this integrative relationship was already set, despite the very notion of dichotomy and the methodological cuts imposed by Saussure to study the language and put linguistics within the sciences have favored a look of not integrating the notion of "system" and "homogeneity", for example. We have considered, in order to follow the traditional mark of the linguistic historiography, only the Course in General Linguistics – as a product of a canonic, divulged and orthonymous Saussure, even for the less orthonymous that, strictly speaking, can be considered the author of a work that holds in its construction the potential of apocryphal writing – letting, for a while, in “silence” the saussurean manuscripts, recently come to the public eye.