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Book Chapter: The Return Of The Repressed: Saussure And Swift On Language And History, Tony Crowley

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Departures in linguistics are nothing new of course. Ideas come and go, "facts" appear and disappear along with the theories which first brought them to light, trends shift and alter. The language used to describe the history of the field, a field which once constituted a new departure in its own right, is replete with the language of innovation: "breakthrough," "advance," "progress," and even "revolution" are familiar enough epithets. In the face of all this novelty then the question must be, how to do something new? The answer which is proposed here might appear somewhat odd for the intention is …