Poll: No text is free of other texts.- Ferdinand de Saussure

Willbut

Language cannot exist in a vacuum, so I think he's right.

Casiopea

I believe Saussure was advocating that there are no novel ideas in the world; That is, a new idea is not only based within a old idea, and so on, but that even the language used to communicate new ideas is 'not free'.

tdol

As language is a continuum, there are always going to be connections, aren't there?

Joan

So nothing can be truly revolutionary?

italianbrother

As pessimistic as it may sound, we are living in a plagiarised world.

italianbrother

"So nothing can be truly revolutionary?" It of curse can be, but it is so easy to follow, to be conformist, rather than create etc… etc… it is the true anti-conformist that we need.

JT

Isn't the revolutionary, by definition, reacting against something. Therefore, the revolutionary text, while advocating a break with the past, is far from free of it.

said madhoun

That's fantastic

santhosh

Thoughts of each man have some sort of link to that of others. One cannot escape from this phenomenon when one express any thing.

Sena Jonathan

language forms a continuum, so that there is a sequence of relatedness all through texts, it's why i agree with Saussure.

Ben Curtis

Well, I don't know whether I disagree or not, as I haven't a bloody clue what he's saying (or even what he's trying to say).