Benveniste-Saussure: A Never-Ending Affiliation Relationship

ABSTRACT In this article, we discuss the concept of affiliation in the theoretical-methodological framework of Discourse Analysis to analyze the relationship between Benvenistian thought and Saussurian thought as a relationship of affiliation within the history of ideas that delimits the field of language studies. The analysis, which cuts out paraphrastic formulations from the Course in General Linguistics and Problems in General Linguistics, allowed the understanding of this affiliation relationship as a dialogue, in which a constitutive paradoxical relationship is materialized. This relationship signifies the movement of approximation and displacement/detachment of Benvenistian thought to Saussurian thought. This understanding showed that the different ways of reading the Benveniste-Saussure relationship, already historicized in some way within the history of linguistic ideas belongs to the order of the effect of interpretation in the dispute of the history of science games.