Language, the unknown
The book is an introduction to linguistics which presents the reader with an incredible amount of information, ranging from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the communication of dolphins, from the anatomy of the vocal apparatus to the basic mechanisms of the unconscious in dreamwork. The bulk of the book is devoted to a review of the different systems used by various societies to think about their languages (primitive societies, the Egyptians, the Sumerians and the Akkadians, China, India, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews) and then continues with a description of linguistic theories in the West through the ages (Greece, Rome, Arab Grammar, Medieval theories, Renaissance theories, the seventeenth century and the grammar of Port Royal, the eighteenth century and the Encyclopédie, the nineteenth century, structural linguistics in the twentieth century). Throughout this survey Kristeva's main purpose is to show the different ways in which different societies, or different ages, thought of the relation between the concept, the sound, and the thing (Saussure's signified, signifier, and referent). -- from www.jstor.org (Feb. 5, 2014).