Language and Languages

Abstract

The editorial organization of the contents of the Course in General Linguistics contributed to establishing the primacy of the language system (la langue) by situating it above the empirical plurality of world languages (les langues). La langue is defined by means of dogmatic, axiom-like statements with little empirical justification or background early on in the book. A survey of concrete data pertaining to linguistic diversity is found only toward the end, and it seems to offer a series of contingent variations on the basic theme of a pre-existent language structure. The validity of such a central language structure is assumed a priori, and the diversity of linguistic practices around the world is considered a posteriori as a set of factual consequences. This presentation is fueled largely by the editors’ methodological commitments, especially Sechehaye’s self-avowed “taste for great abstractions,” and it is at odds with a more nuanced view developed in Saussure’s Nachlass. In the student lecture notes, the order of presentation moves from a detailed survey of several languages (les langues) to a concluding, hypothetical notion of language (la langue) as such. La langue is a generalization from out of a vast linguistic plurality and not an a priori axiom.