Sign and Negativity: a saussurian revolution

Abstract

Saussure is the first western theoretician to make negativity the
foundation of the very definition of linguistic unity, breaking with
the positivity of substances as guarantors of reference since
Aristotle. The consequences of this break as it concerns the
model of signs barely begins to be understood in light of some
recently discovered manuscripts. There is now no more closure
for the sign and semiotics thus answers to a principle of
contextuality. In this more broad sense, it is culture that is
reached by this conceptual revolution that even concerns
philosophic anthropology.