Saussure: a escrita e a tradução dos conceitos de linguagem, língua e fala

Abstract

Founded by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) the modern linguistics has attracted the whole world attention after the publication of Saussure‟s posthumous work, the Course on General Linguistics. Among all concepts ruling this science, there are three that are crucial to the delimitation of the linguistics‟ object and of great importance in the work of the genevan linguist, which are: langage, langue and parole. These concepts took shape in Saussure‟s work, as we can for instance observe in his manuscripts one of their processes of construction which was renamed by Tullio de Mauro (1967) as conceptual tripartion. Langage, langue and parole underwent many moments of elaboration and took their mostly known shape in the Course on General Linguistics, from the classes that the genevan linguist taught at the University of Geneva, starting from 1907. Since then, Saussure‟s book has been well known worldwide in translations to different languages. The conceptual tripartion, that owns concepts which are essential to the linguistics, has nevertheless become difficult to understand in many of the translations. We organized this work into two different moments: the first one, in which we work with the terms langage, langue and parole in what concerns the construction and distinction of their concepts; and the second moment, which is dedicated to the translations, especially the two controversial translations to English. Thus, in the first chapter we will work with the process of writing the concepts of langage, langue and parole, by using some saussurian manuscripts from 1891 to 1908 and we will also relate these manuscripts to the way those concepts are approached in the Course on General Linguistics. In the second chapter, we will discuss how the conceptual tripartion has been translated to different languages. We will focus, in a broader way, on the languages to which the translation of the three terms were difficult, and, in a more specific way, on two of the translated version of the book where the translations of the terms to English are controversial. Besides that, some theoretical assumptions are also presented to support our research regarding the difficulties with translations faced by the two translators of the Saussure‟s posthumous work to English. In the third chapter, we will show how the concepts of langage, langue and parole are disposed in the Course on General Linguistics and how the English translation of these three terms can provide a terminological imprecision that leads to complications in the definition and distinction of concepts that are so important to the linguistics. This way, we will dissert about the process of writing and the translation of the saussurian‟s tripartion concepts, as well as the importance they have to the understanding of Saussure‟s work and also the critics about the two controversial translations of these concepts to English.