The Influence of Saussure’s Linguistics on
Modern Literary Criticism
Sayah Djoudi 
Abstract. The emergence of the linguistics has had a significant impact on the literature, particularily on literary criticism, which has witnessed the development of a range of critical approches that have themselves expanded, spread, and gained wide currency such as the structuralist, semiotic, and stylistic approches. Accordingly, this study seeks to elucidates the impact of Saussurean linguistics on modern literary criticism. Surely Saussure's ideas were the cornerstone for structuralism and its various directions, and that through the famous opposing dualities that he brought and through which it is possible to describe linguistic systems. Certainly there is a relation between linguistics and Saussure's views in the modern linguistic lesson and modern literary criticism, and this is what this study seeks (to clarify the relation between them). Thus there is a strong relationship between literary criticism and linguistics—and a number of researchers have pointed to this relation. Surely Saussure's ideas were the cornerstone for structuralism and its various directions, and that through the famous opposing dualities that he brought and through which it is possible to describe linguistic systems. Certainly there is a relation between linguistics and Saussure's views in the modern linguistic lesson and modern literary criticism, and this is what this study seeks.
Keywords: linguistics, Saussure, literary criticism, structuralism, semiotic