Saussure

With Freud and Weber, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) is one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century.

In the three courses of lectures that he delivered at the University of Geneva between 1907 and 1911, which were published posthumously from students’ notes as the 'Course in General Linguistics', he revolutionized the study of language and laid the foundations of modern linguistics.

But even more important are the implications of Saussure’s ideas for the social sciences. For in outlining a general science of signs, semiology, he provided a means of analyzing the systems of conventions which give significance to human behaviour.