Course in General Linguistics

Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale) is an influential book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye that is based on notes taken from Ferdinand de Saussure's lectures at the University of Geneva between the years 1906 and 1911. It was published posthumously in 1916 and is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century but is now regarded by professional linguists as outdated. Though abandoned by linguists, Saussure's ideas are still widely used in some branches of academe. According to Norman N. Holland, "Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern...