Saussure and His Interpreters by Roy Harris (review)

Abstract

1064 Reviews 'external' historical approach also obscures family resemblances between texts distant from each other in time. Queneau's exploitation of contrasts of language register, of serious and grotesque, recall, without imitating, the style of Rabelais's giant narra? tives; the formalist methods of OULIPO members Roubaud and Perec echo those of the 'rhetoriqueurs' and the numerological preoccupations of medieval authors. The thirtypages (!) on literature to 1500 could well have been written before 1900. They make no mention of recent developments in the reading of this amazingly rich and influential tradition which have explored the semiotics of its words, images, and sounds. Though the book capitalizes on extended definitions of the 'literary' in the twenti? eth century, what about the generic promiscuity of medieval writing and the labile boundaries between text, sung text, theatre, manuscript illumination, stained glass, wall-painting, heraldry, and so forthin the Middle Ages? The 'multimedia' nature of medieval creativity throws up striking parallels with the electronic age. A genuinely 'postmodern' stance would impose a reappraisal of the relevance of a purely chrono? logical treatment. While we do need to know that it was not Freud who influenced Thomas d'Angleterre, historical relationships are of secondary relevance in consider? ing why we are still watching Tartuffeinstead of a play by Dorimond or Rotrou. For modern readers, questions of literary value foreground structure rather than history. Since this book is apparently aimed at students reading mainly in the modern period, much would have been gained in encouraging the spirit of adventure by emphasizing the mysterious affinitiesbetween the all too familiar and the apparently strange. Why not, in the interests of ideological hygiene, an Inverse History of French Literature, beginning with Cinema and working backwards to the Old French epic? Hertford College, Oxford Roger Pensom Saussure and his Interpreters. By Roy Harris. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2001. vi + 224pp. ?44. ISBN 0-7486-1308-0. In a very readable study, Roy Harris examines the mis/representation of Saussurean ideas by certain linguists and by French thinkers ofa Structuralist and post-structura? list persuasion. This is thereforeessentially a study in intellectual history dealing with the thorny question of 'influence' of one thinker's ideas on another. In this context, various issues arise, such as the difnculty of evaluating the transmission of ideas between one discipline and another, or indeed between one cultural and intellectual tradition and another. Can one chide Barthes as much as one would a linguist for his misinterpretations, and is it any surprise that Bloomfield understands the Cours de linguistique generale less well than Bally? If the choice of each individual 'interpreter' can be justified (though the author does not attempt to do this), nevertheless the overall tendency has been to choose thinkers who misuse rather than use Saussure's ideas, making them relatively easy targets. This is not, ofcourse, to say that this misuse should not be documented, and a number of critics have done just that in individual cases, but not in the thoroughgoing, meticulous and coherent manner of this volume. In terms of straightforward unscholarly twisting of sources, Barthes and Derrida take the prize, as in Derrida's truncating a Cours de linguistique generale quotation taken out of context on the sound-meaning relation {De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit , 1967), p. 53). Both the crucial distinction between langue/parole/langage and Saussure's notion ofthe sign are referredto in a cavalier fashion by numerous writers, Barthes claiming (in complete contradistinction to Saussure) that there could never be a linguistique de la parole, and Derrida reproducing Jakobson's erroneous phrase 'le langage est un systeme de signes'. But even here a distinction has to be made between (careless or wilful?) misinterpretation and alternative suggestions: Barthes's MLR, 99.4, 2004 1065 suggestion that semiology be considered part of linguistics is traced back to Hjelmslev by Harris and, while it constitutes a reversal of Saussure's proposal, it fitscoherently in Barthes's scheme of things and at least merits discussion. Harris is good at outlining what can only be called the opportunism of some, such as Jakobson, who evokes a Cours de linguistiquegenerale to suit his purposes according to the continent on which he finds himself...