Last Lectures

Émile Benveniste (1902-1976) was a French linguist and semiotician and he was Professor of Linguistics at the Collège de France until 1969. His authored works include Problems in General Linguistics published in English in 1973 by the University of Miami Press and the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society published in English in 2016 by HAU. Jean-Claude Coquet is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Semiotics in the Université de Paris 8. Irène Fenoglio directs the Linguistics section of the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes of the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique. John E. Joseph is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and currently holds a three-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. His previous book, Language and Identity (2004) has found a wide readership among sociologists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists and others besides linguists, many of whom will want to read his Language and Politics as its successor and complement.

Thanks to the efforts of Irène Fenoglio and Jean-Claude Coquet, Benveniste's last lectures have been made accessible to a large audience. [...] an accurate, elegant and highly readable translation.

• Editors’ AcknowledgmentsBiographical TimelineTranslator’s Introduction, John E. JosephPreface: Émile Benveniste, a linguist who neither says nor hides, but signifies, Julia KristevaEditor’s Introduction, Jean-Claude Coquet and Irène FenoglioChapter One: SemiologyChapter Two: Languages and WritingChapter Three: Final Lecture, Final NotesAnnex 1: Bio-bibliography of Émile Benveniste, Georges RedardAnnex 2: The Émile Benveniste Papers, Émilie BrunetAfterword: Émile Benveniste, a scholar’s fate, Tzvetan TodorovIndex