Saussure for Beginners

From the point of view of teaching Saussure's famous (and obscure) Course in General Linguistics, this is a good book. It is particularly well developed, even for the "For Beginners" series. With a little concentration, one should emerge from this book with a basic grasp of Saussure's linguistics. Further, the book briefly touches on Saussure's influence on later thinkers such as Levi-Strauss or Derrida. The book disappointed, however, in answering (or failing to answer) the question, "What is it all FOR?" I shall try to expand briefly on this: Saussure defines a "sign" as "anything that tells us something other than itself". For instance, "the jagged line on a graph isn't there to make you think about jagged lines; it's there to show sales going up and down". It was Saussure's view that such signs derive their meaning from their relationships to other signs. He gave the example of a chess game. All the pieces (the signs) form a system, and it is the interaction between the pieces, or their relationships, that creates their value. Supposing, then, that we should apply this to a philosophy of life. Saussure's system of signs could show how people make sense of their world by the value they attribute to various signs. Further, all of these signs would hold meaning only insofar as they related to the whole system. Or supposing that one should desacralise religion, and reinterpret it all in terms of signs -- one would have a whole new way of looking at religion. This is an excellent book, yet the relationships between Saussure's linguistics and various other systems of meaning are not brought out well. This is arguably what Saussure has become most famous for.

If you have not read Saussure before, this is a great advance organizer on his thinking. If you have read him, it is a fine review. You finish the book with a good practical knowledge of Saussure's language and concepts, grounded in the confidence to leap into Structuralism and Deconstruction.

Saussure for Beginners is an excellent intro to the man whom is credited with as the the creator of modern linguistics. Well written and somewhat easy. This book will surely be taken in stride if you intend to understand exactly what Saussure was saying. As a beginner myself, I found some of the theories confusing. Yet, as I found out later, it was not the writing, it was the theory itself because linguistics is a tricky subject if not approached with some caution. I dont know of any other book that would be a good introduction to the subject, not only of Saussure, but of linguistics itself. Saussure has influenced so many others from Chomsky, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes and so many others. Overall not as fun as many other For Beginners books, however there is certainly more information displayed here. I definately reccomend this book before any other books on linguistics (yes, even before Saussures own posthumous book 'Course on General Linguistics').

First I will talk about the content and then I will say what I think about the book in all.The book is 122 pages long including the index. It basically talks about this man Saussure (1857-1913) and his theories of language. The book starts of with a brief history of "linguistics" and briefly explains how the word linguistic came about. The book also talks about the way people studied languages before Saussure. The book then gives a brief biography of Saussure and how his works were put together. The rest of the book is devoted to his ideas. The book is formated in certain pages so that a question is on the top and the answer is the entire page. For example one of the question is "how come nobody studied the language the Saussure did." The book then tries to answer that question on one page. The book defines certain terms of what you need to know. It tells you what a SIGN is and what ARBITARY is. The majority of the book is formed in the folowing style: A statement in black letters is on the top of the page. For example a statment might be like this: All sings are arbitary. The entire page is then devoted to explain that. I think the book is pretty good but it can get very confusing and you should use extra sources in the definitions that they try to explain. For example, I couldn't understand what the heck a sign was in terms of linguistics. So I consulted an internet dictionary. The book is very good for somone who is taking a course which includes Saussure. The book is for a realtively familiar beginners with linguistics and I am not one so that is why I was confused. But all in all, it is probably the best book on introducing Saussure.