Review of Fadda & Cosenza (2026): Ferdinand de Saussure: Storia di una teoria del linguaggio
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Swiss scholars have always held pride of place in Saussurean studies.Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye assembled the Cours de linguistique générale (Saussure 1916).Robert Godel (1902-1984) first laid out its manuscript sources, Rudolf Engler produced the great critical edition, and René Amacker published many of the manuscripts, including Saussure (2011).Italian scholars have come an impressive second, starting with Tullio De Mauro's annotated Italian translation of the Cours in 1967 (with his notes translated into French in 1972, since when it has been the definitive version), and continuing with the work of De Mauro's students, including Daniele Gambarara.The authors of the book under review are amongst Gambarara's many students who have become prominent in the field.With the collaboration of their teacher and mentor, Cosenza and Fadda have established a centre for Saussurean studies in the Università della Calabria, where they work.It houses an impressive collection of books and documents, occupying a room appropriately named for De Mauro.Subtitled "History of a theory of language" (this and the following are my translations), the book straddles the line between biography and textual criticism and, with one foot in each, achieves a good balance.Readers will find it both erudite and engaging, whether their interests are centred in linguistics, semiotics or neither.The structure is chronological, though not rigidly so, given the overlaps in time between numerous chapters (as noted below), where the temporal breaks align with shifts in Saussure's thinking about language.Chapter 1 is focussed on his years in Leipzig and the Mémoire (Saussure 1879), the radical reimagining of the Proto-Indo-European vowel system which he wrote and published there, and which established his international scholarly reputation when he was 22 years old.The Mémoire is dauntingly complex, and explaining it for a non-specialist audience is so challenging that even De Mauro barely tried.Fadda and Cosenza certainly make an effort, but not to the point of
Source: Historiographia Linguistica
DOI: 10.1075/hl.00198.jos
Author: John E. Joseph
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7168785182