Language: The Unknown: An Initiation Into Linguistics

by Julia Kristeva

Overview

In this wide-ranging introduction, Julia Kristeva presents the evolution and emergence of linguistics. For Kristeva, the object of linguistic investigation is not “What is language?” but rather “How can language be thought?” In a series of carefully documented analyses, she examines the links between philosophical speculation and linguistic practice. She traces postmodern linguistic theory back to its roots, using sources that range from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan and Phoenician writings, and the Hebrew Bible to the Prague School of Structuralism. Thorough and far-reaching in its analysis, Language: The Unknown provides fascinating insights into the history of graphic cultures, philosophy, anthropology, and semiotics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231216791
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	01/14/2025
Series:	European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”

Table of Contents

Preface
Part I. Introduction to Linguistics
Introduction
1. Language, La Langue, Speech, and Discourse
2. The Linguistic Sign
3. The Materiality of Language
Part II. Language in History
Introduction
4. Anthropology and Linguistics: The Knowledge of Language in So-Called Primitive Societies
5. The Egyptians: Their Writing
6. Mesopotamian Civilization: The Sumerians and Akkadians
7. China: Writing as Science
8. Indian Linguistics
9. The Phoenician Alphabet
10. The Hebrews: The Bible and the Cabala
11. Logical Greece
12. Rome: The Transmission of Greek Grammar
13. Arab Grammar
14. Medieval Speculations
15. Humanists and Grammarians of the Renaissance
16. The Grammar of Port-Royal
17. The Encyclopédie: La Langue and Nature
18. Language as History
19. Structural Linguistics
Part III. Language and Languages
20. Psychoanalysis and Language
21. The Practice of Language
22. Semiotics
Conclusion
Notes
Works Principally Relied On
Index

Editorial Reviews

It is a pleasure to read a study that maintains a sophisticated theoretical stance with such clarity, care, and intellectual brilliance.

Lawrence Kritzman

[Kristeva's] graceful and lucid history of language ranges over vast intellectual territory—Egyptian hieroglyphs to psychoanalytic discourse, Crates of Mallos to Benveniste to Lévi-Strauss and Lacan. Guaranteed jargon-free.

Voice Literary Supplement

Stimulating and eminently readable.

Signs

The renowned psychoanalyst, theorist, and linguist's first and perhaps most lucid and accessible work presents the evolution and emergence of linguistics as a human science. Translated from the French (Le langage, cet inconnu, Editions du Seuil, 1981). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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