Re-Reading Saussure
Subtitle: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life
Publisher: Routledge
Published: December 6, 1996
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780415104104
First sentence: Commentators such as Jonathan Culler (1976) and Terence Hawkes (1977) have tended to emphasize the Copernican revolution, as Roy Harris (in Saussure 1983: ix) puts it, which was inaugurated with the posthumous publication of Saussure's CLG.
Description: Through a detailed re-reading of Saussure's work in the light of contemporary developments in the human, life and physical sciences, Paul Thibault provides us with the means to re-define and re-focus our theories of social meaning-making.

Saussure's theory of language is generally considered to be a formal theory of abstract sign-types and systems, separate from our individual and social practices of making meaning. In this challenging book, Thibault presents a different view of Saussure. Paying close attention to the original texts, including Cours de linguistique generale, he demonstrates that Saussure was centrally concerned with trying to formulate a theory of how meanings are made.

Re-reading Saussure does more than simply engage with Saussure's theory in a new and up-to-date way. In addition to demonstrating the continuing viability of Saussure's thinking through a range of examples, it makes an important intervention in contemporary linguistic and semiotic debate.