Difference and history

Linguistic values arise from differences between linguistic items in a system, Saussure argues. But on what basis do we conclude that those differences are differences between items at one moment? What can’t value and meaning arise in the difference between a word’s value now and a word’s value a century ago? Why flatten out the network of difference?

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Letters

Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…

The Revival of Patristics

Stephen O. Presley

On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…

The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics

Itxu Díaz

Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…