Book review

Review of Les Cours de Roman Jakobson à l’École libre des hautes études: New York, 1942–1946. By Pierre-Yves Testenoire (Études de linguistique française, vol. 8).

Berlin & Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2025. 448 pp. US$ 131.99. ISBN 978-3-11-914700-2HB 978-3-11-221060-4PDF 978-3-11-221062-8EPUB

This volume is as impressive as it is welcome. It tells not one but multiple histories, all central to an understanding of structuralism, within linguistics and beyond. In the autumn of 1941 the USA had not yet entered WWII, but few Americans doubted that it was coming.11.Which is why my parents, like countless other young American couples, got married then in a surge of (forlorn) hope that it would protect the boys from the draft. The Rockefeller Foundation set up the École Libre des Hautes Études (Free School of Advanced Studies), within New York’s New School of Social Research, for the benefit of European refugees, from students to established scholars.22.The Libre ‘free’ was a not-so-subtle dig at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the leading institution for linguistics and many other fields in German-occupied Paris, and had other resonances noted by Testenoire (p. 13, n. 25). The New School of Social Research has existed since 1919, when it was founded (originally as simply The New School) by a group of prominent scholars who had been censured by the president of Columbia University for their opposition to the US entry into WWI in 1917. The lectures given there by one such scholar, Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), whose ship had docked on 4 June 1941, would have a resounding impact across a range of fields for decades to come. His publication of some of the lectures thirty years later (Jakobson 1976Jakobson, Roman 1976 Six leçons sur le son et le sens. Paris: Minuit. English version, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, trans. by John Mepham. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press 1978.Jakobson, Roman 1976 Six leçons sur le son et le sens. Paris: Minuit. English version, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, trans. by John Mepham. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press 1978.) attracted global attention, and gave rise to the false impression that what lay unpublished was of only minor interest.

Along with general linguistics, Jakobson gave courses on Slavic philology, and collaborated on courses offered by others across a range of disciplines. His interactions with Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) would lead directly to the development of a structuralism that extended beyond linguistics. Jakobson, whose mother tongue was Russian, lectured in French, and Testenoire has wisely not tampered with his interlanguage. Just laying out Jakobson’s activities in the École libre takes up eight pages here (21–28). Little that was going on in that extraordinary milieu eludes Testenoire’s notice, but his main concern is with Jakobson’s general linguistics courses, which were:

During this time Jakobson was also appointed to a post at Columbia University, and held a grant, so it is not as though he had to lecture at the École libre to keep the wolf from the door. Until reading this book I had imagined the École libre as a motley crew of a few dozen linguists and anthropologists, when in fact it attracted over a thousand scholars across many fields.

The present book’s title, although accurate, may lead to some misunderstanding. “1942–1946” suggests that this was the full range of Jakobson’s courses at the École libre, though as the list shows, there was an afterlife. Moreover, given that Testenoire is named as the author, one may well expect a book about the courses, rather than the text of the courses themselves. We do indeed get a very thorough study of them (the first 238 pages), but also Jakobson’s notes for four of the courses from 1942–1943: General linguistics, Phonology, Language change, Affinity and relatedness of languages (157 pages). These are amply annotated by Testenoire, based on his intensive research in Jakobson’s archives and well beyond. Testenoire was prepared for this undertaking by long years of work on Saussure’s anagram manuscripts (see Saussure 2013Saussure, Ferdinand de 2013 Anagrammes homériques. Ed. By Pierre-Yves Testenoire. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.Saussure, Ferdinand de 2013 Anagrammes homériques. Ed. By Pierre-Yves Testenoire. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas., Testenoire 2013Testenoire, Pierre-Yves 2013 Ferdinand de Saussure à la recherche des anagrammes. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.Testenoire, Pierre-Yves 2013 Ferdinand de Saussure à la recherche des anagrammes. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.), where again an earlier partial publication (Starobinski 1971Starobinski, Jean 1971 Les mots sous les mots: Les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure. Paris: Gallimard. English version, Words upon Words: The Anagrams of Ferdinand de Saussure, trans. By Olivia Emmet, New Haven: Yale University Press 1979.Starobinski, Jean 1971 Les mots sous les mots: Les anagrammes de Ferdinand de Saussure. Paris: Gallimard. English version, Words upon Words: The Anagrams of Ferdinand de Saussure, trans. By Olivia Emmet, New Haven: Yale University Press 1979.) had created the impression that little of significance remained to be done.

To give a sense of the riches to be found here, I shall reproduce and translate a passage from Jakobson’s Phonology course (p. 331) on the key question of whether the phoneme is, following Saussure (1916)Saussure, Ferdinand de 1916 Cours de linguistique générale. Ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Paris and Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed. 1922; subsequent eds essentially unchanged). English version, Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library 1959.Saussure, Ferdinand de 1916 Cours de linguistique générale. Ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Paris and Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed. 1922; subsequent eds essentially unchanged). English version, Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library 1959.,33.As discussed in Gambarara & Joseph (2025Gambarara, Daniele & John E. Joseph 2025 “Introduction, General Principles and Synchronic Linguistics”. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Saussure, ed. by John E. Joseph, 89–119. London: Bloomsbury.Gambarara, Daniele & John E. Joseph 2025 “Introduction, General Principles and Synchronic Linguistics”. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Saussure, ed. by John E. Joseph, 89–119. London: Bloomsbury.: 98–99), the treatment of the phoneme in Saussure (1916)Saussure, Ferdinand de 1916 Cours de linguistique générale. Ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Paris and Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed. 1922; subsequent eds essentially unchanged). English version, Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library 1959.Saussure, Ferdinand de 1916 Cours de linguistique générale. Ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Paris and Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed. 1922; subsequent eds essentially unchanged). English version, Course in General Linguistics, trans. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library 1959. is muddled by the editors’ decision to include as an Appendix to the Introduction material from 1897 lectures by Saussure which take a phonetically-based approach rather than the phonemic, i.e. psychological one of his lectures from 1907 to 1911 which are the essential basis of the Cours. a unitary value, or instead a bundle of features:

En analysant la combinaison des éléments différentiels sur l’axe des successivités d’une part et sur l’axe des simultanéités de l’autre, nous constatons un parallélisme complet.

A côté des éléments différentiels nous observons dans les deux formes de groupement des caractères supplémentaires, des Gestalt-qualités.

Si on a trop souvent méconnu la portée de ce parallélisme, cela s’explique par une attitude phonétique qu’on a été habitué à prendre envers le faisceau simultané des éléments différentiels, c’est-à-dire envers le phonème. L’enchaînement des éléments différentiels sur l’axe des simultanéités et par conséquent leur analyse présente les mêmes caractères que l’enchaînement de ces éléments sur l’axe des successivités. La méconnaissance de ce parallélisme a amené à des résultats paradoxaux.

Analysing the combination of differential elements on the axis of successivities on the one hand and on the axis of simultaneities on the other, we note a complete parallelism.

Alongside the differential elements we observe supplementary characteristics in the two forms of grouping, Gestalt-qualities.

If the significance of this parallelism has been too often overlooked, the reason is a phonetic attitude that we have become accustomed to take toward the simultaneous bundle of differential elements, in other words, toward the phoneme. The sequential linking of the differential elements on the axis of simultaneities and consequently their analysis presents the same characteristics as the sequential linking of these elements on the axis of successivities. Overlooking this parallelism has led to paradoxical results.(My translation)

Here now is Testenoire’s footnote comment to the second paragraph above; the fact that it is footnote number 625 indicates how extensive the commentary is:

Il est fait ici écho au passage de Sprachtheorie de Bühler consacré au phonème (Bühler, 2009 [1934] : 416–436). Le psychologue viennois critique la conception combinatoire des phonèmes et développe la notion gestaltiste de physionomie acoustique. Bühler parle de Gestaltqualitäten [qualités de forme] pour certaines caractéristiques globales des sons, « par exemple la mélodie, c’est-à-dire le contour intonatoire vocal du flux sonore, puis l’empreinte rythmique (fort/faible, bref/long), et enfin les ondes d’acuité et de saturation des voyelles » (Bühler, 2009 [1934] : 430).(Testenoire 2025: 331, n. 625)

This echoes a passage from Bühler’s Sprachtheorie devoted to the phoneme (Bühler 2009 [1934]: 416–436). The Viennese psychologist criticises the combinatory conception of the phoneme and develops the Gestaltist notion of acoustic physiognomy. Bühler speaks of Gestaltqualitäten [qualities of form] for certain global characteristics of sounds, “for example melody, that is, the vocal intonation contour of the sound stream, then the rhythmic imprint (strong/weak, short/long), and finally the waves of acuity and saturation of the vowels” (Bühler 2009 [1934]: 430).(My translation)

Testenoire resists the temptation to criticise Jakobson for “echoing” Karl Bühler (1879–1963) without citing him. It would not be the first time Jakobson has been taken to task, rightly or wrongly, for not acknowledging a perceived debt to Bühler,44.A notable case concerns the extent to which Jakobson’s (1960) influential model of the functions of language may draw upon Bühler’s (1934)Bühler, Karl 1934 Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer. French version, Théorie du langage: La fonction représentationnelle, trans. by Didier Samain, Marseille: Agone 2009 English version, Theory of Language: The representational function of language, trans. by Donald Fraser Goodwin, in collaboration with Achim Eschbach, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2011.Bühler, Karl 1934 Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer. French version, Théorie du langage: La fonction représentationnelle, trans. by Didier Samain, Marseille: Agone 2009 English version, Theory of Language: The representational function of language, trans. by Donald Fraser Goodwin, in collaboration with Achim Eschbach, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2011. Organon model without giving due credit (see Joseph 2025Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52/1.1–40. Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52/11.1–40. : 25–26). and one would like to know what Testenoire thinks about that. But his discretion is understandable in the context of these lecture notes, since, for all we know, maybe Jakobson did mention Bühler in the actual lecture, of which we have no full recording or transcription.

I have noted potential ambiguities in the book’s title, but it has the justifying virtue of simplicity. The same cannot be said of the indexing. Here is a guide for navigating it.

1. When you look something up in the index, what you find is not the page of this book where the term or name appears, but instead an abbreviation of which of the courses the item appears in, followed by the number of the paragraph in that course. For example, if you want to find Gestalt, look in the Index rerum des cours, where you see, not “p. 331”, but “Phon VII : 55”.

2. Now flip back to find the full title of the course in the left-hand page running header, and then the number of the lecture, VII, in the right-hand page running header, and then locate the paragraph number, 55, which is given in boldface brackets at the start of the paragraph.

3. More dauntingly, if you want to find where Bühler’s name appears in the book, go to the Index nominum des cours, where again you will see, not the pages which mention him, but “Son & Sens : 73, 77; Ling : 131–132, 138–139; Phon II : 10b”. Again you must flip back to find the course title, lecture number and paragraph number. But… this index does not include the footnotes, so it will not lead you to Testenoire’s commentary at p. 331, n. 625, which I have cited above. Nor do the indexes cover Testenoire’s introduction, only Jakobson’s courses.

4. Note too the line at the top of the Index nominum saying that the mentions of Son & Sens refer not to this book but to Jakobson (1976)Jakobson, Roman 1976 Six leçons sur le son et le sens. Paris: Minuit. English version, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, trans. by John Mepham. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press 1978.Jakobson, Roman 1976 Six leçons sur le son et le sens. Paris: Minuit. English version, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, trans. by John Mepham. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press 1978.. That may be confusing if you happen not to have spotted it.

These are intended not as criticisms (does my frustration show?) but to smooth a bit the waters of a transatlantic journey that is well worth the fare. Chapeau bas au capitaine Testenoire for a truly great contribution to the history of 20th-century linguistics.