Ferdinand de Saussure et Gustave Guillaume

Abstract

At first glance, Gustave Guillaume belongs to the structuralist tradition because he himself often refers to Ferdinand de Saussure. But if we carefully read the works of the conceiver of the Psychomecanics of Language we realize that the many references to the author of "Cours de Linguistique Generale", if they often are a tr ibute paid to Saussure, are also a way to utilize his view of language analysis. Guillaume's works concerning the act of speech, systematics and the relations man/language prove it. Guillaume goes much farther than Saussure whose definition of Linguistic field is too limitative. It appears so, that Psychomecanics is more powerful, epistemologically speaking. It is not only structuralism. It is Linguistics in the wider meaning of the word.