What is Ferdinand de Saussure?
{{wikify|date=January 2018}} {{Infobox philosopher |region = [[Western philosophy]] |era = [[19th-century philosophy]] |image = Ferdinand de Saussure by Jullien Restored.png |caption = |name = Ferdinand de Saussure |birth_date = {{birth date|1857|11|26|df=y}} |birth_place = [[Geneva]], [[Switzerland]] |death_date = {{death date and age|1913|2|22|1857|11|26|df=y}} |death_place = [[Vufflens-le-Château]], [[Canton of Vaud|Vaud]], Switzerland |alma_mater = [[University of Geneva]]<br>[[Leipzig University]] (PhD, 1880)<br>[[University of Berlin]] |institutions = [[École pratique des hautes études|EPHE]]<br>[[University of Geneva]] |school_tradition = [[Structuralism]], [[linguistic turn]],<ref>David Kreps, ''Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence'', Springer, 2015, p. 92.</ref> [[semiotics]] |main_interests = [[Linguistics]] |notable_ideas = [[Structural linguistics]]<br>[[Semiology]]<br>[[Langue and parole|''Langue'' and ''parole'']]<br>[[Signified and signifier]]<br>[[Synchrony and diachrony]]<br>[[Linguistic sign]]<br>[[Semiotic arbitrariness]]<br>[[Laryngeal theory]] |influences = [[Émile Durkheim|Durkheim]],<ref>Mark Aronoff, Janie Rees-Miller (eds.), ''The Handbook of Linguistics'', John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p. 96. However, [[E. F. K. Koerner]] maintains that Saussure was not influenced by Durkheim (''Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and Development of His Linguistic Thought in Western Studies of Language. A contribution to the history and theory of linguistics'', Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn [Oxford & Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press], 1973, pp. 45–61.)</ref> [[August Leskien|Leskien]], [[Heinrich Zimmer|Zimmer]], [[Hermann Oldenberg|Oldenberg]], [[Pāṇini]] |influenced = [[Roland Barthes|Barthes]], [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]], [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan]], [[Louis Althusser|Althusser]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Jacques Derrida|Derrida]], [[Ernesto Laclau|Laclau]], [[Leonard Bloomfield|Bloomf