"Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another"
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Saussure is making a power play: he wants linguistics to stop behaving like a stamp-collecting hobby and start acting like a science with principles sturdy enough to travel. In the late 19th and early 20th century, language study was dominated by historical-comparative work, brilliant at tracing family trees but often allergic to big theory. His insistence on “laws operating universally” is a bid to shift the discipline from cataloguing changes to explaining how language functions as a system.
The phrasing matters. “Will have to recognise” isn’t a suggestion; it’s a deadline. He’s framing the field as immature until it can distinguish “general phenomena” from what’s merely “restricted” to a language branch. That’s the subtext: scholars are confusing local quirks for deep structure, and mistaking philological detail for understanding. The line also smuggles in Saussure’s signature move: treat language less as a museum of words and more as an organized set of relations. Universals, for him, aren’t just shared features; they’re constraints and patterns that make a language intelligible at all.
“Strictly rational manner” signals another agenda: legitimacy. He’s writing at a moment when disciplines were professionalizing, borrowing the prestige of scientific method. Saussure’s rationalism is partly methodological hygiene, partly institutional ambition. If linguistics can cleanly separate the general from the particular, it earns the right to speak with authority about the human capacity for meaning - not just the history of Indo-European vowels.
The phrasing matters. “Will have to recognise” isn’t a suggestion; it’s a deadline. He’s framing the field as immature until it can distinguish “general phenomena” from what’s merely “restricted” to a language branch. That’s the subtext: scholars are confusing local quirks for deep structure, and mistaking philological detail for understanding. The line also smuggles in Saussure’s signature move: treat language less as a museum of words and more as an organized set of relations. Universals, for him, aren’t just shared features; they’re constraints and patterns that make a language intelligible at all.
“Strictly rational manner” signals another agenda: legitimacy. He’s writing at a moment when disciplines were professionalizing, borrowing the prestige of scientific method. Saussure’s rationalism is partly methodological hygiene, partly institutional ambition. If linguistics can cleanly separate the general from the particular, it earns the right to speak with authority about the human capacity for meaning - not just the history of Indo-European vowels.
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| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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