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PEIRCE OR SAUSSURE Contemporary research on the sign proceeds from two sources: Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) who is at the origin of the semiotic trend, and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) who is at the origin of the semiological trend. That there are two trends is simply that Peirce’s and Saussure’s a priori conditions for thinking are different. I am going to explain why I have preferred to follow Peirce rather than Saussure. This will entail some repetition, but some things are better said twice than once; I shall also appear sometimes to be stating what is perhaps obvious , but is better said than left unsaid. First some preliminary remarks. The standard Saussurean theory of signs was publicized by the Course of General Linguistics which is a posthumous reconstruction based on lecture notes taken by students. Although the publication of Peirce’s writings is also partly posthumous, and although we do not know what Peirce would have retained or rejected, all the texts of the Collected Papers are by Peirce himself. A pioneer in many ¤elds, Peirce continued all his life to elaborate his theory of signs, even when he seemed to be giving his attention to other subjects. He gave a ¤rst version of it in 1867 and 1868, developed the “pragmatic” aspect of it in 1877 and 1878, provided it with a new logical foundation between 1880 and 1885, and developed it on this new basis from 1894 to the end of his life. Saussure did not mention the subject before giving his second course of general linguistics in 1908–1909, even if he did, as it would seem, have the idea before 1901 (according to Adrien Naville). Historically, Peirce’s priority to Saussure is unquestionable. - 9 Semeiotic and Semiology peirce and saussure Let us not precide our conclusions beyond what our premisses de¤nitely warrant. —Peirce (8.244) Saussure was essentially a linguist, more inclined to study languages than to elaborate theories about language. Thus his linguistics is based on the analyses of languages, and semiology only comes later as a general theory of linguistic signs. And even this was not his main interest, as he was at the same time (1909– 1911) carrying out research on Saturnian verse, and this took much more of his time than the preparation of his lectures on general linguistics. After his death, nothing or practically nothing about linguistics and semiology was found in his papers, which, however, contained a hundred and ¤fty books of notes on Saturnian verse. The ¤rst problem—and it is to this that I shall con¤ne myself here—encountered by the reader of Peirce or Saussure is that of the context in which Peircean semiotics and Saussurean semiology originated and developed. Of Saussure, Georges Mounin says that he was “a man of his time” (Mounin 1968: 21). Which means that the Saussurean theory ¤nds its a priori conditions for thinking within the framework of the associationistic psychology which was still very much alive, and Durkheim’s sociology which came into fashion around the turn of the century. Now, as Mounin remarks, to say, as Saussure said, that “the linguistic sign unites not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (66) is to base “linguistic facts” on mental facts “considered as well-known and accepted” and about which the linguist “knows probably less than he does about language” (Mounin 1968: 21). Nonetheless, the linguistic fact is for Saussure a “psychological entity” (66). From Durkheim he borrows the idea that “language is a social fact” (6) without realizing perhaps that it is contradictory to assert that “language is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself ,” and, at the same time, that “it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community” (14). But is this not to dodge the question at the risk of complicating the system without resolving the contradiction of the impossible union of psychologism and sociologism? For what are these members? Individual or social beings? Saussure’s answer lies in the famous distinction between language which is social and speech which is individual (13). But how can an individual who can never create nor modify language be “its master,” the “executive side” of language (13)? Peirce, Saussure’s contemporary, is in advance of his time. He denounces psychologism—which enables him, as we shall see, to adopt a coherent...

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