Discussion with Claudia Mejía Quijano

Claudia Mejía Quijano has a PhD in general linguistics. She taught at the Faculty of Literature and at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva. She also worked as a researcher in child psychiatry at SUPEA (CHUV) in Lausanne. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Antioquia (Colombia).

Specialist of a new Saussurian theory of language – that we discovered through manuscripts the past twenty years only – she developed a Saussurian project of diachronic semiology based on two aspects. On the one hand, questioning diachronic principles by their application in various fields related to language. On the other hand, dealing with diachronic methods, especially by establishing a clinical research methodology, an analysis of discourse including the temporal aspects of speech, and a theory of practical knowledge transmission based on the notion of future in opposition to the notion of destiny.

Combining these two aspects, she published in 2008 the first biography of Ferdinand de Saussure thanks to the joint consideration of Freudian and Saussurian principles.