Poslední přednášky na Collége de France 1968 a 1969 - Sémiologie, jazyk a písmo – Benveniste Émile (2021)

In 1969, the French linguist Émile Benveniste gave his last lecture at the Collège de France. At the beginning of the winter semester, he fell seriously ill, preventing him from continuing his work on the theory of speech and the foundations of writing theory, which he was working on at the time, as well as his teaching duties. His notes for the final course, supplemented and clarified thanks to preserved student notes, form the main part of this posthumously published book. In his theory of speech, Benveniste contrasts the general meanings of words that we share as speakers of a language with the unique meaning of a statement, which always arises from the transformation of these general meanings within a specific speaking situation. The author's theory of writing is based on his research into various writing systems as they developed in different cultures. Benveniste argues that writing originally referred directly to things and that it transformed into a representation of speech only after the inventors of writing began to distinguish recurring elements of language in spoken discourse. Benveniste's lectures represent an important source for linguists, semiologists, philosophers of language, and literary scholars, but thanks to the author's clear style, they are also easily accessible to readers who are not well-versed in these fields. The text of the Last Lectures is complemented by an introductory study by Tzvetan...