Includes bibliographical references and index.

In Structures of Languages Joan Casser presents Michel Pêcheux’s materialist theory of discourse with reference to a number of significant scholars in the field of linguistics. Some implications of the Saussurian break are outlined to address the ideological ubiquity of self-evident meaning.

This annotated commentary of Pêcheux’s materialist theory of discourse anticipates the formation of a real social science which supersedes the metaphysical meanings of the empirical ideologies ‘always-already-there’. Structures of Language presents Pêcheux’s theory in reference to Ferdinand de Saussure’s epistemological breakthrough that founded the science of linguistics: the theoretical separation of sound from meaning. Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, John Searle’s philosophy of language, B.F. Skinner’s indwelling agents, J.L. Austin’s speech situations, Lacan’s symbolic order, and the influential theories of other linguistic researchers, are cited to explain the functioning of semantic ideology.

Description based on print version record.