Charles Bally

Charles Bally (February 4, 1865, Geneva – April 10, 1947) was a French linguist. He lived from 1865 to 1947 and was, like Ferdinand de Saussure, from Switzerland. His parents were Jean Gabriel, a teacher, and Henriette, the owner of a cloth store. Bally was married three times: first with Valentine Leirens, followed by Irma Baptistine Doutre, who was sent into a mental institution in 1915, and finally with Alice Bellicot. In addition to his now controversial edition of de Saussure's lectures, Course in General Linguistics, Charles Bally also played an important role in linguistics.

From 1883 to 1885 he studied classic language and literature in Geneva. He continued his studies from 1886 to 1889 in Berlin where he was awarded a Ph.D. After his studies he worked as a private teacher for the royal family of Greece from 1889 to 1893. Bally returned to Geneva and taught at a business school from 1893 on and moved to the Progymnasium, a grammar school, from 1913 to 1939. At the same time, he worked as PD at the university form 1893 to 1913. Finally from 1913 to 1939 he had a professorship for general linguistic and comparative Indo-German studies which he took over from Ferdinand de Saussure.

Besides his works about subjectivity in the French Language he also wrote about the crisis in French language and language classes. Today Charles Bally is regarded as the founding-father of linguistic theories of style and much hounored for his theories of phraseology. Also, in terms of modern stylistics he dealt with the expressive function of signs, adding (what is now a well known label) actualisation to those signs which, out of some conditioned reason, exalt their expressive function over the basic communicative one.

Recommended Literature about Bally's theories

 * G. Redard, Bibliographie chronologique des publications de Charles Bally, in Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 36, 1982, 25-41
 * W. Hellmann, Charles Bally, 1988
 * S. Durrer, Introduction à la linguistique de Charles Bally, 1998