ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the mythological concerns of the other 'science of language' in this period. In fact 'mythology' would have been an interesting name for the new 'science of language' and not simply for etymological reasons. Saussure argues that, given the importance of language, then, along with the Baconian warning that 'no other subject has fostered more absurd notions, more prejudices, more illusions, or more fantasies'. It follows that it is necessary to rule out all extraneous factors in its study. The task will be to bring to light the repressions necessary to sustain the new science of language and its newly found object and to examine its alleged scientific neutrality. The 'Science of Language', Max Muller argued in 1861, 'is a science of very modern date'. He was referring to comparative philology and its late entrance to British intellectual life. In Bakhtin's view, the 'orientation toward unity' has diverted this form of thought away from the nature of language.
