Most of Saussureans, in recent years, have become to consider that “Le cours de linguistique Générale (The Lectures on General Linguistics)” does not necessarily describe Saussure’s own thought, and that they should analyse original documents, such as Saussure’s autograph drafts and/or audience notes by students, to know Saussure’s true thoughts. This paper describes modernity in the deaf-mute contexts observed in the original documents through analysing them to break through conventional Saussurean studies: (1) Saussure considered that science of languages includes le langage des sourds-muets, (2) le langage des sourds-muets was characterised as historical, physical, and/or traditional time, and (3) le langage des sourds-muets had linguistic norms with the identity/subject of the deaf-mute.

This paper focuses on little-known but important differences between the Japanese word “a-sha (唖者[mute])”and its English equivalent“dumb.” In Japan“a-sha”is not considered a discriminatory term, but very few people use it now, mainly because“ro-a-sha (聾唖者[deaf-mute])”was almost replaced by“ro-sha (聾者[deaf])”soon after World War II under the influence of the American deaf education. On the contrary, in America the word “dumb” is regarded as derogatory when used to mean“speechless,” but apparently many Americans do not hesitate to use it in another sense:“stupid.” This must seem a little strange to Japanese people. To examine more thoroughly why this happens in America, I shed some light on the usage of the word “dumb” itself as well as its derivatives and synonyms including “Dumbo,” “dummy,” “dumbbell”and “dumbwaiter.”