This article is an invited paper, subjected to open review by the Editors and/or the Editorial Board

This article has been published in: Ocula 17, One hundred and one years of Barthes (1915-2016)

author: Emanuele Fadda (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici (DSU), Università della Calabria (IT))

Seeing Language: On Barthes’ Saussurianism

language: italian

abstract: This essay analyzes briefly the relationship between Saussure and Barthes. Its first focus is on the more properly scientific points of contact, such as the relationship between language and semiotics, and those between language, institutions and sociability. This is followed by a discussion of aspects seemingly unrelated to science and more concerned with the self-consciousness of the scholar as a general speaker and member of society, forming part of the common social fabric, and finally as a speaker within a scholarly environment pervaded by a shared consciousness. What emerges is a similarity between Saussure and Barthes of a shared socio-linguistic hypersensitivity – the “seeing” of language which takes on a form of “minor scietific drama” (that, at least, is the way in which the semiologist expresses it in relation to the linguist). This Barthesian empathy for Saussure is the basis of the relationship between these two fathers of semiology explored in this essay.

citation information: Emanuele Fadda, Vedere il linguaggio. Sul saussurismo di Barthes, "Ocula", vol.17, n.17, September 2016. DOI: 10.12977/ocula66

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