ABSTRACT
Linguistics is a term of no great antiquity. It came into fashion in the nineteenth century when scholars began to distinguish between various possible approaches to the study of language and languages. Many, including Saussure, insisted on a distinction between traditional philology, focused on the study of literary and other texts (particularly those of earlier periods) and a more general form of inquiry which sought to study languages themselves, irrespective of whether they had produced texts of literary or cultural importance, or of whether they had produced any texts at all. Linguistics eventually emerged as the preferred term for this more general form of inquiry, of which the prospectus and methods were set out in Saussure’s posthumously published Cours de linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics). This key treatise appeared in 1916, having been compiled from the notes taken by Saussure’s students at courses of lectures that he gave at the University of Geneva in the years 1907-11.
