of Empiricism": "Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word." Later in the twentieth century, philosophers like Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity drew metaphysical conclusions from closely analyzing language. Continental philosophy Decisive for the linguistic turn in the humanities were the works of yet another tradition, namely the continental structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, an approach introduced in his Cours de linguistique générale, published posthumously in 1916. He said language is a system of signs, comparable to writing systems, sign systems used by the deaf, and systems of symbolic rites and can therefore be studied systematically. He proposed the new science semiology—from the Greek semeion meaning the sign. It was later called semiotics, the science of signs. Prior to the work of Saussure in the early twentieth century, linguistics focused mainly on etymology, an historical analysis (also called a diachronic analysis) tracing the history of the meanings of individual words. Saussure was critical of the comparative philologists of the 19th century—basing their investigations only on Indo-European languages—whose conclusions, he said, had "no basis in reality." At that time "language was to be a "fourth natural kingdom." Saussure approached language by examining the present functioning of language (a synchronic analysis)—a relational approach in which he looked at the "system of relations between words as the source of meanings." Saussure described the synchronic, as the static side of the science of linguistics, in contrast to the diachronic, which has to do with evolution. By comparing different languages, Saussure demonstrated that there is "no fixed bond" between the signified—for example the real chair—and the signifier—the 'chair', 'chaise', etc. Spontaneous expressions of reality are not dictated by "natural forces". Saussure demonstrated the grammatical consequences of phonetic evolution by illustrating how diachronic facts take on different forms, for example chaise 'chair' and chair 'desk', and chaire 'pulpit'. Structuralism was the initial outcome of Saussure's linguistic turn, which later led to poststructuralism with the input of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas. Influential poststructuralist theorists include Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The power of language, more specifically of certain metahistorical tropes, in historical discourse was explored by Hayden White. See also Aretaic turn Cultural turn Formal semantics (natural language) Historical turn Semiotics Structural linguistics References Further reading Neil Gross (2008), Richard Rorty, The Making of an American Philosopher. The