Alphabetter Juice by Roy Blount Jr.
A bit precious, your patience may be tried a few times in these pages. Blount’s discourse on the subject of the letter L, for example, is similarly laboured. “This letter ought not to be so angular,” Blount writes. “The L sound goes with long, slow, flowing, relaxed, languorous lolling.”Note how Blount ends his last sentence with six words full of long vowels, particularly O’s, and with bunches of L’s. Sound echoes sense, as poets advocate. But this business of contrasting the “angularity” of the written or printed letter with its languorous sound is strained cleverness. It’s the critical equivalent of crocheting lace doilies.
This objection stated, I will make no more unkind remarks about the book. It is for the most part a sensible and highly entertaining follow-up to the equally entertaining 2008 Alphabet Juice , and the author of numerous and varied works. In form, the book is encyclopedic, beginning with the letter A and the word abacus, and going through the alphabet to end with the letter Z and the word zythum (an ancient Egyptian beer brewed from malt and wheat). A volume to dip into from time to time rather than read cover to cover, it is a very superior form of bathroom book.
The form allows Blount to go anywhere, to ramble in the fields of language to his heart’s content. But behind this rambling lurks an argument. At the outset, Blount urges his readers to “dwell upon the literality and physicality of language,” to notice words that “significantly engage the senses,” to savour “the juice inherent in letters and their combinations.” He has invented the term “sonicky,” to “combine sonic (evocative of sound) and kinaesthetic (evocative of body movement).” Alphabetter Juice is a manifesto for sonicky writing.
This campaign prompts him to take issue with the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who stated that the connection between words and their meaning is arbitrary. I don’t know if Saussure felt he was audaciously destroying a popular illusion — our inclination to think there is some intrinsic relationship of the word tree to objects with trunks and leaves and branches — but his followers seem to have a smug belief that Saussure was striking a blow for progressive, rational thought. This is why I like Blount’s description of Saussure’s principle as “tin-eared.” Blount writes, “The sounds of letters and the words they constitute, and the kinetics involved in their oral utterance, and the rhythms of their combinations, have inherent significant value.” And this value is connected to meaning. Blount points to the word ox. “This strong, stolid animal might feel better about the loss of his testicles, and his consignment to hard labour, if he knew that no other animal has everything … summed up so succinctly in its name.
Ferdinand De Saussure - News
This campaign prompts him to take issue with the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who stated that the connection between words and their meaning is arbitrary. I don't know if Saussure felt he was audaciously destroying a popular illusion — our
La primera parte tendrá como temática las articulaciones del psicoanálisis con autores como Ferdinand de Saussure, Román Jackobson y Charles S. Peirce mientras que el día sábado continuará con una actualización de las tesis de Claude Levi-Strauss.
Die methodische Vielfalt, die sich im Rahmen dieser »Folge von Antworten« komplex aufspannt, umfasst ausgehend von einer strukturalen Ideologiekritik (orientiert an Jean-Paul Sartre) bzw. einer an Ferdinand de Saussure angelehnten Semiotik die
Sfruttando una brillante intuizione di Ferdinand de Saussure, si può affermare che nella sua arte significante e significato diventano cosa sola. Il pattern ornamentale che viene a crearsi ha il duplice importantissimo compito di fornire sia una
what is semiotics & why is it important for Media Studies? What is a sign? who is ferdinand de saussure & what is his legacy
Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics" (Transl. W. Baskin. Ed. P. Meisel, H.Saussy), Columbia Uni... 
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Hablando de Ferdinand de Saussure por BBM. Nerd. Full time.Ferdinand De Saussure - Bookshelf
Ferdinand de Saussure
Significant additions come in discussion of Saussure's debt to Hippolyte Taine, in the treatment of Saussure's work on anagrams, and in the account of ...Course in general linguistics
The Cours de linguistique generale, reconstructed from students' notes after Saussure's death in 1913, founded modern linguistic theory by breaking the study of ...Course in general linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de saussure, origin and development of his linguistic theory in western studies of language - a critical evaluation of the evolution of saussurean principles and their relevance to contempor ary linguistic theories
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Ferdinand de Saussure - Wikipedia
User-generated article about Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist known as a founder of modern linguistics.
Ferdinand de Saussure: Biography from Answers.com
Ferdinand de Saussure (born Nov. 26, 1857, Geneva, Switz. — died Feb. 22, 1913, Geneva) Swiss linguist
Saussure, Ferdinand de
Ferdinand de Saussure (pronounced [fɛr.di.nã.dɘ.so.ˈsyr]) (November ... Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1857, Ferdinand de Saussure was interested in languages early in his life. ...
Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) is a summary of his lectures ... 1Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, edited by Charler Bally ...
Ferdinand de Saussure Biography - Foundations of Linguistics
Ferdinand de Saussure was born in Geneva into a family of well-known scientists. ... De Saussure was only eight years younger than Karl Brugmann, and he died some ...