Abstract
The text presents the articulation of the notion of “linguistic feeling” in Saussure, focusing on its normative side (distinct from the cognitive one, yet inseparable from it). In order to better frame it, the link with morphology, and the conditions of the emergence of linguistic feeling (which are also the conditions of the ontogeny of language) are also taken into account.
There is a sense in which you could say […] that nothing can be abstract in the language; you could justify this terminology by saying in the language everything is concrete that is present to the consciousness of the speakers.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1993, pp. 84a–85a).
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Notes
- 1.
The French language does not have a pair of terms analogous to the English pair “feeling” versus “sentiment.” The choice of uniformly translating sentiment linguistique or sentiment de la langue by “linguistic feeling” is recommended for reasons of practicality and fidelity to established terminological traditions, but it must also be pointed out that many of the occurrences of these expressions could be better translated into English by “sentiment.” Actually, linguistic feeling refers to (or, to some extent, is) stable, shared knowledge. But the word “feeling” is appropriate when we focus on the punctual aspect of its showing itself to the speaking subject.
- 2.
Among the scholars who have explicitly addressed the Saussurean notion of sentiment de la langue, we can mention Laplantine (2005), Chidichimo (2009), Depecker (2009), Courbon (2012), and Testenoire (2018). Finally, a collective work specifically dedicated to the subject has recently been published (Siouffi 2021), whose introduction outlines the current state of play in this field.
- 3.
The term “epilinguistic” was popularized in linguistics by Antoine Culioli (see David Romand’s remarks on epilinguistic activity in the introductory chapter). Here I use it in a broad sense, to denote all linguistic knowledge and consciousness of the speaker that do not reach explicitness and self-awareness.
- 4.
- 5.
In this chapter, I will always cite Saussure translated into English, providing the references to the French sources (including philological editions) where present, and translating into English myself when there is no available translation. Existing English translations, however, are highly inconsistent, and sometimes may lead to ambiguity, or do not let the relationship between the terms used by Saussure shine through (e.g., “to be aware of” for “avoir conscience de,” or “thought” for “réflexion,” or “sanction” for “consécration,” whereas Saussure systematically contrasts sanction and consécration); in these cases, I will also insert into square brackets the original French expressions.
- 6.
I will leave aside the issue of the strong similarity between this passage and the preface of Bréal’s Essai de sémantique (1897, p. 7, my translation): “[…] the only real cause […] is human intelligence and will.”
- 7.
The lecture I quoted from earlier belongs to a group of three texts, conceived—as everything suggests—for a publication. I am not concerned here with the actual manner in which these lectures were delivered: what is of concern is the role they play.
- 8.
See “collective intelligence” [intelligence collective] in Saussure (2005, p. 236); unfortunately it is not included by the editors of the Course.
- 9.
The general designation of “Notes on Whitney” is used to denote a set of theoretical texts (only some of which were actually conceived as part of an obituary for the American Sanskritist), contained in a notebook where non-scientific texts are also found. Reproductions of the sheets of this notebook are contained in volume 60 of Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure.
- 10.
By the term “reprise” (resumption) many Saussure scholars refer to an originally unplanned section of the third general linguistics course that the professor added in May–June 1911, asking students to insert it into their notebook at an earlier point. From this section is derived a large portion of the “General Principles” part in the Course in General Linguistics.
- 11.
See note 18 below.
- 12.
See Godel (1957, pp. 40–41) and Saussure (2002, p. 180ff.). Godel also prepared a first edition of the text (Saussure 1969, pp. 26–38), which I also checked for my Italian translation (Fadda 2017b, pp. 99–110). The date of the text is uncertain, and several have been proposed (often corresponding to some of the Greek-Latin morphology courses), but I am inclined to give it a date of no earlier than 1891, for the reasons I show below in note 13.
- 13.
A selection of passages from the part of the same course devoted to phonetics has been published by Marie-José Béguelin (Saussure 1981).
- 14.
Riedlinger’s version is detailed but not complete, Patois’ version complete but not detailed. Constantin’s version is the only one that is both complete and detailed. Godel chooses to cite Riedlinger in his Sources manuscrites (using the abbreviation Morph R), but we know that he was unaware of the existence of Constantin’s papers (Émile Constantin decided to make them available to scholars only after the publication of Godel’s work, and because of that).
- 15.
- 16.
On the other hand, if it is a criterion from the operational point of view, it is also a principle from the theoretical point of view, because “its consequences are numberless” (Saussure 1959, p. 68 = 1922, p. 100).
- 17.
The notion of analogy has great relevance in late nineteenth century linguistics. Hermann Paul closely links it to Sprachgefühl. On the role of analogy in Saussure and Paul, see the contributions of Frank Unterberg and Gilles Siouffi in this book.
- 18.
Saussure points it out clearly in a letter to Gaston Paris dated December 30, 1891. Cf. Saussure (1994, pp. 78–81, my translation): “the topic of these conferences led me to a completely new work […] I believe that there is no historical morphology (or grammar), and that reciprocally there is no momentary phonetics. […] There would be a primordial opposition, and incompatibility, between the phonetic view of the language, which presupposes ‘succession’ and ‘total abstraction of the meaning’—and the morphological (grammatical) view which presupposes ‘unity of time’ and ‘consideration of the meaning, value, use’ […].”
- 19.
The expression (and the very idea of) “degree of consciousness” and the related concept had been, after Herbart, widely discussed in German-speaking psychology and, later, in the language sciences. It is likely that Saussure absorbed something of this debate during his years of study in Leipzig (and perhaps later).
- 20.
I have developed the comparison between the Saussurean and Chomskyan notions of instinct in more detail in Fadda (2022).
- 21.
The interruption in the middle of the sentence is by Saussure. This is quite common in the notes he wrote for himself.
- 22.
For those less well acquainted with Saussure’s terms, let me remind readers that with “langage” Saussure mainly means the natural faculty that allows us to speak, with “langue” he means one of the idioms present in the world (conceived as an abstract system mastered by the speaker), and with ‘‘parole” he means the individual and always contextual acts of speaking.
- 23.
In social ontology, this kind of praxis has been called by Passerini Glazel (2015) nomotrophic behavior (“behavior that feeds the norms”). Passerini Glazel mainly insists on the negative side of it (“a reaction to the (actual or possible) infringement of that norm”), but we could enlarge the notion so as to also include the positive side (the enforcement of the norm by the simple fact of systematically conforming to them).
- 24.
John Joseph, who systematically distinguishes, when translating into English, consecration and sanction, remarks (Joseph 2012, p. 506) that, in the particular context of the first Course, where—as I pointed out above—the individual language is in the foreground, the use of “consecration” denotes the fact that the individual enduringly internalizes a sign. This does not contradict my assumption: it is anyway a one-off passage from parole to langue.
- 25.
If we take a look at the notes for this part of the course, we see that the two points followed each other. In this case, we also have Saussure’s preparatory notes, in addition to the students’ notes: “this is, so to speak, the primary evidence, […] that which is immediately available to all. […] I say that this geographical diversity is the first fact that strikes either the linguist or anyone in general. Actually, while, for example, the variation of language in time necessarily escapes the observer at first, it is impossible for the variation in space to escape him. […] it is only the second one, I repeat, which is immediately given. […] And it is in that way, one can say, that any people, even if humble, become aware of the language. […] Now it must be added that regularly and of course each people gives superiority to its own idiom: […])” (Saussure 2005, pp. 94–95; my translation).
- 26.
As Saussure points out: “(Here, as a general feature, even the most civilized people nourish on every phenomenon in ordinary language a conception that is the most contrary to the common sense)” (Saussure 2005, p. 95).
- 27.
It is really difficult—especially for those who are not historians of philosophy—to understand how much this Saussurean stance is indebted to the Diltheyan air du temps of those years, and how much it derives from a personal reflection related to the actual work (even the most technical one) of the linguist. For my part, I would be inclined to assign more relevance to this latter factor.
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Fadda, E. (2023). On the Normative Side of Saussure’s “Linguistic Feeling”. In: Romand, D., Le Du, M. (eds) Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17913-6_4
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