CPLT 110 “Literary Criticism and Analysis” Winter 2019

Mid-Term Paper Assignment

Due Date: Sunday, Feb. 9, by 11:59pm via iLearn

Write a four-to-five-page paper (1000 to 1250 words, double-spaced) on ​one of the two topics listed below. Note that the following prompts contain questions to guide your thinking. Answering each question without extending or adding to them is not enough; you must formulate your own questions as well.

General reminders: present a strong, original thesis based on your reading of the texts (or film) and demonstrate the validity of your claim by providing direct evidence from the works in question (use textual evidence to support your claims ​instead of citing your own life-experience). Also, provide appropriate page numbers (or time stamp for films) for all quotations or background descriptions of specific passages, and include a works cited page to your paper following the MLA Style Guidelines (see iLearn under “Course Materials” for these guidelines). If you choose to consult secondary sources from the Library or Internet, you must​ cite them.

1) The Author: Rereading both Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” and Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author?,” analyze how Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” or E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” problematizes the figure of “the Author.” What do Barthes and Foucault argue and how do their arguments differ? How do these arguments relate to the figure of the author in either Hawthorne’s or Hoffmann’s short stories? How might the distinction between the subject of the enunciated and the subject of enunciation be of relevance to the question of authorship? In your paper, you must analyze at least two to three short passages Hawthorne’s or Hoffmann’s story to substantiate your claims.

2) The First Person:​ Re-reading Emile Benveniste’s essays “The Nature of Pronouns” and “Subjectivity in Language,” analyze how first personal utterances function or problematized in Tawada’s “The Bath.” What is an “I” according to Benveniste and how does it refer? What is its philosophical relevance Tawada’s narrative? How is subjectivity problematized in Tawada’s narrative and how might Benveniste’s arguments relate to this problematization? How might the distinction between the subject of the enunciated and the subject of enunciation be of relevance to the question of authorship?

IMAGE

MUSIC

TEXT
ROLAND BARTHES

Essays selected and translated by
Stephen Heath

b HILL AND WANG / NEW YORK
A division of Farmr, Straus and Giroux

Contents

Copyright 8 1977 by Roland Barthes
English translation 8 1977 by Stephen Heath
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Illustrations I, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, and XV are
from the collection of Vincent Pinel

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Baqhes, Roland. Image, music, text. Includes index.
CONTENTS: The photographic message.-Rhetoric of the image.-
The third meaning.-Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. [etc.]
1. Literature-Collected works. 2. Performing arts-Collected works.
I. Heath, Stephen. 11. Title.
PN37.B29H4 809 77-16702

Noonday Press edition, 1988
Seventeenth printing, 1995

The Photographic Message 15
Rhetoric of the Image 32
The Third Meaning 52

Research notes on some Eisenstein stills

Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein 69
Introduction to the Structural Analysis of

Narratives 79

The Struggle with the Angel 125
Textual analysis o f Genesis 32:22-32

The Death of the Author 142
Musica Practica 149
From Work to Text 155
Change the Object Itself 165

M y thology today

Lesson in Writing 170
The Grain of the Voice 179
Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers 190

The Death of the Author

In his story Sarrasine Balzac, describing a castrato disguised
as a woman, writes the following sentence: ‘This was
woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims,
her instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings,
and her delicious sensibility.’ Who is speaking thus? Is it
the hero of the story bent on remaining ignorant of the
castrato hidden beneath the woman? Is it Balzac the
individual, furnished by his personal experience with a
philosophy of Woman? Is it Balzac the author professing
‘literary’ ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom?
Romantic psychology? We shall never know, for the good
reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of
every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite,
oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative
where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity
of the body writing.

No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a
fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on
reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any
function other than that of the very practice of the symbol
itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin,
the author enters into his own death, writing begins. The
sense of this phenomenon, however, has varied; in ethno-
graphic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never
assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator
whose ‘performance’ – the mastery of the narrative code –
may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’. The author
is a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as,
emerging from the Middle Ages with English emptricism,

The Death of the Author 1 143
French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reforma-
tion, it discovered the prestige of the individual, of, as it is
more nobly put, the ‘human person’. It is thus logical that
in literature it should be this positivism, the epitome and
culmination of capitalist ideology, which has attached the
greatest importance to the ‘person’ of the author. The
author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of
writers, interviews, magazines, as in the very consciousness
of men of letters anxious to unite their person and their
work through diaries and memoirs. The image of literature
to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on
the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions, while
criticism still consists for the most part in saying that
Baudelaire’s work is the failure of Baudelaire the man,
Van Gogh’s his madness, Tchaikovsky’s his vice. The
explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman
who produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the
more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of
a single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us.

Though the sway of the Author remains powerful (the
new criticism has often done no more than consolidate it),
it goes without saying that certain writers have long since
attempted to loosen it. In France, Mallarme was doubtless
the first to see and to foresee in its full extent the necessity
to substitute language itself for the person who until then
had been supposed to be its owner. For him, for us too, it
is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through
a prerequisite impersonality (not at all to be confused with
the castrating objectivity of the realist novelist), to reach
that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not
‘me’. MallarmC’s entire poetics consists in suppressing the
author in the interests of writing (which is, as will be seen,
to restore the place of the reader). ValCry, encumbered by a
psychology of the Ego, considerably diluted MallarmC’s

The Death of the Author 1 145

theory but, his taste for classicism leading him to turn to
the lessons of rhetoric, he never stopped calling into question
and deriding the Author; he stressed the linguistic and, as it
were, ‘hazardous’ nature of his activity, and throughout his
prose works he militated in favour of the essentially verbal
condition of literature, in the face of which all recourse to
the writer’s interiority seemed to him pure superstition.
Proust himself, despite the apparently psychological
character of what are called his analyses, was visibly con-
cerned with the task of inexorably blurring, by an extreme
subtilization, the relation between the writer and his
characters; by making of the narrator not he who has seen
and felt nor even he who is writing, but he who is going to
write (the young man in the novel – but, in fact, how old is
he and who is he? – wants to write but cannot; the novel
ends when writing at last becomes possible), Proust gave
modern writing its epic. By a radical reversal, instead of
putting his life into his novel, as is so often maintained,
he made of his very life a work for which his own book was
the model; so that it is clear to us that Charlus does not
imitate Montesquiou but that Montesquiou – in his anec-
dotal, historical reality – is no more than a secondary
fragment, derived from Charlus. Lastly, to go no further
than this prehistory of modernity, Surrealism, though
unable to accord language a supreme place (language being
system and the aim of the movement being, romantically,
a direct subversion of codes – itself moreover illusory:
a code cannot be destroyed, only ‘played off’), contributed
to the desacrilization of the image of the Author by cease-
lessly recommending the abrupt disappointment of expecta-
tions of meaning (the famous surrealist Ijolt’), by entrusting
the hand with the task of writing as quickly as possible
what the head itself is unaware of (automatic writing), by
accepting the principle and the experience of several people
writing together. Leaving aside literature itself (such dis-

tinctions really becoming invalid), linguistics has recently
provided the destruction of the Author with a valuable
analytical tool by showing that the whole of the enunciation
is an empty process, functioning perfectly without there
being any need for it to be filled with the person of the inter-
locutors. Linguistically, the author is never more than the
instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance
saying I: language knows a ‘subject’, not a ‘person’, and
this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which
defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’, suffices,
that is to say, to exhaust it.

The removal of the Author (one could talk here with
Brecht of a veritable ‘distancing’, the Author diminishing
like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage) is not
merely an historical fact or an act of writing; it utterly
transforms the modern text (or – which is the same thing –
the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at
all its levels the author is absent). The temporality is different.
The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the
past of his own book: book and author stand automatically
on a single line divided into a before and an after. The
Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that
he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same
relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child.
In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simul-
taneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being
preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with
the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the
enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.
The fact is (or, it follows) that writing can no longer desig-
nate an opefation of recording, notation, representation,
‘depiction’ (as’the Classics would say); rather, it designates
exactly what linguists, referring to Oxford philosophy, call a
performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given in the
first person and in the present tense) in which the enuncia-

146 1 I M A G E – MUSIC – TEXT
tion has no other content (contains no other proposition)
than the act by which it is uttered – something like the I
declare of kings or the I sing of very ancient poets. Having
buried the Author, the modern scriptor can thus no longer
believe, as according to the pathetic view of his predecessors,
that this hand is too slow for his thought or passion and that
consequently, making a law of necessity, he must emphasize
this delay and indefinitely ‘polish’ his form. For him, on
the contrary, the hand, cut off from any voice, borne by a
pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a
field without origin – or which, at least, has no other origin
than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into
question all origins.

We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing
a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-
God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text
is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centrds
of culture. Similar to Bouvard and Phuchet, those eternal
copyists, at once sublime and comic and whose profound
ridiculousness indicates precisely the truth of writing,
the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior,
never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter
the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on
any one of them. Did he wish to express himself, he ought at
least to know that the inner ‘thing’ he thinks to ‘translate’
is itself only a ready-formed dictionary, its words only
explainable through other words, and so on indefinitely;
something experienced in exemplary fashion by the young
Thomas de Quincey, he who was so good at Greek that in
order to translate absolutely modern ideas and images into
that dead language, he had, so Baudelaire tells us (in Paradis
Artijciels), ‘created for himself an unfailing dictionary,
vastly more extensive and complex than those resulting
from the ordinary patience of purely literary themes’.

The Death ofthe Author 1 147
Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within
him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this
immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can
know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book,
and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation
that is lost, infinitely deferred.

Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text
becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose
a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to
close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very
well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of
discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history,
psycht, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has
been found, the text is ,’explained’ – victory -to the critic.
Hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the
reign of the Author has also been that of the Critic, nor
again in the fact that criticism (be it new) is today under-
mined along with the Author. In the multiplicity of writing,
everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered; the
structure can be followed, ‘run’ (like the thread of a stock-
ing) at every point and at every level, but there is nothing
beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not
pierced; writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to
evaporate it, carrying out a systematic exemption of
meaning. In precisely this way literature (it would be better
from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’,
an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text),
liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity,
an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to
fixmeaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases
– reason, science, law. –

Let us come back to the Balzac sentence. No one, no
‘person’, says it: its source, its voice, is not the true place of
the writing, which is reading. Another – very precise –

MIAMI LINGUISTICS SERIES

‘i

l

Germanic Studies in 110nor of Edward Henry Sehrt ”

”

Edited by Frithjof A. Raven,t Wolfram K. Legner and James c. KiI!.i
A Linguistic Study of the English Verb
By F. R. Palmer “

t¡

Multilingual Lexicon of LinguÍJtics and Philology: English, Russitifj
German, French ‘”
By Rose Nash
Studies in Spanish Phonology
By Tomás Navarro
Studies in English Adv”bial Usag,
‘By Sidney Greenbaum
General Character,’,tics of the Germanic Languages
By Antoine Meillet
Language: Its Structure and Evol’ltion
By Marcel Cohen
Problems in Genpral Linguiltics
By

Emile Benveniste

Linguistl’c Variability and Intellectual Development
By Wilhelm von Humboldt
Elicitation Experiments in English LinguÍltic Studies in Use an
Attitud,
By Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk

‘:i[f
‘,iJ’
:¡!,

Miami Linguistics Series No.8

Emile Benveniste

P’roblems in
‘General Linguistics

translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek

‘I

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University of Miami Press

Coral Gables, Florida

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The original French version, under the tide
Problèmes de linguistique générale, was published inParis.

© Edition&Gallimard, 1966
Copyright!Cl 1971 by

University of Miami Pro••
Library of Congre8s Catalog Card No. 77-102692

SBN 87024-13:a-X
All rights reserved, including rights of reproduotlon and u.e in any form or by an;,
means, including the making of copiee by any photo I!roce••, or by electroniccj’
mechanical device, printed or written or oral, or recordln. for .ound or visual reprodu~
tion or for use in any knowledge or retrieval .y.tem or device, unless permission i’
writing is obtained from the copyright proprieton. i,

Designed by Mary Llp.on
Manufactured in the United State. of America

Contents

reword vii
‘fllnslator’s Note ix
bUsher’s Note x
hllnges in Linguistics

I Recent Trends iil General Linguistics 3
2 A Look at the Development of Linguistics 17
3 Saussure after Half a Century .29

ommunication

4 The Nature of the Linguistic Sign 43
5 Animal Communication and Human Language 49
6 Categories of Thought and Language 55,
7 Remarks on the Function of Language in Freudian Theory 65

tructures and Analyses

8 “Structure” in Linguistics 79
9 The Classification of Languages 85
10 The Levels of Linguistic Analysis 101,
II The Sublogical System of Prepositions in Latin II3
12 Toward an Analysis of Case Functions: The Latin Genitive UI
yntactic Functi~ns

13 The Nominal Sentence 13

1

14 Active and Middle Voice in the Verb 145
IS The Passive Construction ‘of the Transitive Perfect 153
16 The Linguistic Functions of “ToBe” and “To Have” 163
17 The Relative Clause, a Problem of General Syntax 181

an and Language

18 Relationships of Person in the Verb 195
19 The Correlations oíTense in the French Verb 2~5

}

222 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

person” is its property of (I) combining with any object reference, (2) ~r
b~ing reflective of the instance of discourse, (3) admitting of a sometimes
rather large number of pronominal or demonstrative variants, and (4) not
being compatible with the paradigm of referential terms like here, now, etc.
Even a brief analysis of the forms that are imprecisely classed as pro-

nominal leads thus to the recognition among them of cla~ses of entirely dif-
ferent natures and, consequently, to the distinction between, on the one
hand, language as a repertory of signs and a system for combining them and,
on the other, language as an activity manifested in instances of discourse
which are characterized as such by particular signs.

From For Roman Jakobs()1I, Morris Halle, Horace G, Lunt, Hugh McLean, and
Comelis H. van Schooneveld, eds. (The Hague, 1956),pp. 34-37

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Subjectivity in Languag~

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IF LANGUAGEIS, as they say, the instrument of communication, to what does
it owe this property? The questioIi may cause surprise, as does everything
that seems to challenge an obvious fact, but it is sometimes useful to require
proof of the obvious. Two. answers come to mind. The one would be that
language is in fact employed as the instrument of communication, probably
,because merl have not found a better or more effective way in which to com-
municate. This amounts to stating what one wishes to unden¡tand. One
might also think of replying that language has such qualities as make it suited
to serve as an instrument; it lends itself to transmitting what I entrust to it-
an order, a question, an announcêment-and it elicits from the interlocutor
a behavior which is adequate each time. Developing a more technical aspect
of this idea, one might add that the behavior of language admits of a be-
haviorist description, in terms of stimulus and response, from which one
might draw conclusions as to the intermediary and instrumental nature of
language. But is it really language of which we are ~peaking here? Are we not
confusing it with discourse? If we posit that discourse is languagt

, .

224 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

is in the nature of man, and he did not fabricate it. Weare always inclined to
that naïve concept of a primordial period inwhich a complete man discovered
another one; equally complete, and between the two of them language was
worked out little by little. This is pure fiction. We can never get back to man
separated from language and we shall never see him inventing it. We shall
never get back to man reduced to himself and exercising his wits to conceive of
the existence of another. Itis a speaking man whom we findín the world, a man
speaking to another man, and language provides the very definition of man.
All the characteristics of language, its immaterial nature, its’ symbolic

functioning, its articulated arrangement, the fact that it has content, are in
themselves enough to render suspect this comparison of language to an
instrument, which tends to dissociate the property of language from man.
Certainly in everyday practice the give and take of speaking suggests an
exchange, hence a “thing” which we exchange, and speaking seems thus to
assume an instrumental or vehicular function which we are quick to hyposta-
size as an “object.” But, once again, this role belongs to the individual act
of speech.
Once this function is seen as belonging to the act of speech, it may be

asked what predisposition accounts for the fact that the act of speech should
have it. In order for speech to be the vehicle of “communication,'” it must
be so enabled by language, of which it is only the actualization. Indeed, it is
in language that we must search for the condition of this aptitude. It seems
to us that it resid~s in a property of language barely visible under the evidence
that conceals it, which only sketchily can we yet characterize.
It is in and through language that man constitutes himself as a subject,

because language alone establishes the concept of “ego” in reality, in its
reality which is that of the being. ,
The “subjectivity” we are discussing here is the capacity of the speaker

to posit himself as “subject.” It is defined not by the feeling which everyone
experiences of.being himself (this feeling, to the degree that it can be taken
note of, is only a reflection) but as the psychic unity that transcends the
totality of the actual experiences it assembles and that makes the permanence
of the consciousness. Now we hold that that “subjectivity,” whether it is
placed in phenomenology or in psychology, as one may wish, is only the
emergence in the being of a fundamental property of language. “Ego” is he
who says “ego.” Thát is where we see the foundation of “subjectivity,”
which is determined by the linguistic status of “person.”
Consciousness of self is only possible if it is experienced by contrast. I use

I only when I am speaking to someone who will be ayou in my address. It is
this condition of dialogue that’ is ‘¿o~siitutive of person, for it implies that
reciprocally I becomes you in the addre~of the one who in his turn desig-

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Subjectivity in Language 225

nates himself as 1. Here we see a principle whose consequences are to spread
out in all directions. Language is possible only because each speaker sets
himself up as a súbjectby referring to himself as I in his discourse. Because of
this, I posits another person, the one who, being, as he is, completely exterior
to “me,” becomes my echo to whom I sayyou and who saysyou to me. This
polarity of persons is the fundamental condition in language, of which the
process of communication, in which we share, is only a mere pragmatic
consequence. It is a polarity, moreover, very peculiar in itself, as it offers
a type of opposition whose equivalent is encountered nowhere else outside
of language. This polarity does not mean either equality or symmetry: “ego”
always has a position of transcendence with regard to you. Nevertheless,
neither of the terms can be conceived of without the other; they are comple-
mentary, although according to an “interior/exterior” oppqsition, and, at
the same time, they are reversible. Ifwe seek a parallel to this, we will not find
it. The condition of man in language is unique.
And so the old antinomies of “I” and “the other,” of the individual and

. society, f~lI. It is li duality which it is illegitimate and erroneous to reduce
to a single primordial term, whether this unique term be the “l,” which
must be established in the individual’s own consciousness in order to become
accessible to that of the fellow human being, or whether it be, on the .con-
trary, society, which as a totality would preexist the individual and from
which the individual could only be disengaged gradually, in proportion to his
acquisition of self-consciousness. It is in a dialectic’ reality that will incor-
porate the two terms and define them by mutual relationship that the lin-
guistic basis of subjectivity is discovered. ,
But must this basis be linguistic? By what right does language establish

the basis of subjectivity? ‘
As a matter of fact, language is responsible for it in all its parts. Language

is marked so deeply by the expression of subjectivity that one might ask if it
could still function and be called language if it were constructed otherwise.
We are of course talking of language in general, not simply of particular
languages. But the concordant facts of particular languages give evidence for
language. We shall give only a few of the most obvious examples.
The very terms we are using pere, I and you, are not to be taken as figures

but as linguistic forms indicating “person.” Itis a r~markable fact-but who
would notice it, since it is so familiar?-that the “personal pronouns” are’
µever missing from among the signs of a language, no matter what its type;
epoch, or region may be.’A language without the expression of person cannot
be imagined. It can only,’happen that incertai~ languages, under certain
circumstances, these “pronouns” are deliberately pOlitted; this is the case in
most of the Far Eastern societies, in which a convention of politeness imposes

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226 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

the use of periphrases or of special forms between certain groups of indi-
viduals in order to replace the direct personal references. But these usages
only serve to underline the value of the avoided forms; it is the implicit
iexistence of these pronouns that gives social and cultural’ value to the sub-
stitutes imposed by claSs relationships.
Now these pronouns are distinguished from all other designations a lan-

guage articulates in that they do not refer to a concept or to an ~ndividual.
There is no concept “I” lthat incorporates all the l’s that are’ uttered at

every moment in the mouths of all speaker!t, in the sense that there is a con-
cept “tree” to which all the individual uses of tree refer. The “l,” then, does
not denominate any lexical entity. Could it then be said that I refers to a
particular individual? If that were the case, a permanent contradiction would
be admitted into language” and anarchy into its use. How could the same
term refer indifferently to any individual whatsoever and still at the same time
-identify him in his individuality? We are in the presen~e of a class of words,
the “personal pronouns,” that escape the status of all the other signs of
language. Then, what does I refer to? To something very peculiar which is
exclusively linguistic: I refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is
pronounced, and by this it designates the speaker. It is a term that cannot be
identified except in what we have called elsewhere an instance of discourse
and that has only a momentary reference. The reality to which it refers is the
reality of the discourse. It is in the instance of discourse in which I designates
the speaker that the speaker proclaims himself as the “subject.” And so it is
literally true that the basis of subjectivity is in the exercise of language. If
one really thinks about it, one will see that there is no other o~y;e testi-
mony to the identity of the subject except that which he himself thus gives
about himself. ”
Language is so organized that it permits, each speaker to appropriate to

himself an entire language by designating himself as 1.
The personal pronouns provide the first step in this bringing out of sub-

jectivity in language. Other classes of pronouns that share the same status
depend in their turn upon these pronouns. These other classes are the indica-
tors of deixis, the demonstratives, adverbs, and adj~ctives, which organize the
spatial and temporal ,relation¡;¡hips’around the “subject” taken as referent:
“this, here, now,” and their numerous correlatives, “that, yesterday, last year,
tomorrow,” etc. They have in co,nrnon the feature of bei~g defined only with
respect to the instances ofdiscol,lrse in which they occur, that is, in depend-
ence upon the [which is proclaimed in the discourse.
It is easy to see that the domain of subjectivity is further expanded and

must take over the expression of temporality. No matter what the type of
language, there is everywhere to be observed a certain linguistic organization

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Subjectiv£ty in Language 227

of the notIon oftime. It matters little whether this notion is marked in the
inflection of the verb or by words of other classes (particles, adverbs, lexi-
cal variations, etc.); that’is a matter of formal structure. In one way or
another, a language always makes a distinction of “tenses”; whether it be
a past and a future, separated by a “present,” as in French [or English], or,
as in various Amerindian languages, of a preterite-present opposed to a future,
,or a present-future distinguished from a past, these distinètions being in
their tµrn capable of depending on variations of aspl;ct, etc. But the line of
separation is always a reference to the “present;” Now this “present” in its
turn has only a linguistic fact as temporal reference: the coincidence of the
event described with the i~stance of discourse that describes it. The temporal
referent of the present can only be internal to the discourse. The Dictionnaire
générale defines the “present”as “le tempsdu verbe qui exprime le temps où
l’on est.” But let,us beware of this; there is no other criterion and no other
expression by which to indicate “the time at which one is” except to take it as
“the tirpe at which one tS speáking.” This is the eternally “present” moment,
although’ it never relates to the same events of an “objective” ‘chronology
because it is determined for each speaker by each of the instances of discourse
related to it. Linguistic time is self-referential. Ultimately, human temporality
with all its linguistic apparatus reveals the subjectivity inherent in the very
,using of language. , ,
Language is accordingly the póssibility of subjectivity because it always

contams the linguistic forms appropriate to the expression of subjectivity,
,and discourse provokes the emergence of subjectivity because it consists of
discrete’instances. In some way language puts forth “empty” forms which
each speaker, in the exercise of discourse, appropriates to himself and which
he relates to his “person,” at the same time defining himself as Iand a partner
as you. The instance of discourse is thus constitutive of all the coordinates
‘that define the subject and of which we have briefly pointed out only the
most obvious.

í
‘~

f;
‘t4!
~,j,’- I
I

t,~ij
i..

l1,’,\ ;j~.
.¡

The establishment of i’subjectivity” in language creates the category of
person-bo~h in language and also, we believe, outside of it as well. More-
over, it has quite varied effeCts in ~he very, structure of languages, whether
it be in the arrangement of the fórms or in semantic relationships. Here we
must necessarily have particular languages in view in order to illustrate some
<:ffectsof the change of perspective which "subjectivity" can introduce. We cannot say what the range 'of the particular phenomena 'we are pointing out may be in the universe of real languages ; for the moment it is less important to delimit them than to reveal them. English provides several convenient examples.

228 P~OBLEMS IN GENJmAL LINGUISTICS

In a general way, when I use the present of a verb with three persons (to
use the traditional nomenclature), it seems that the difference in person does
not lead to any change of meaning in the conjugated verb form. ] eat, you eat,
and he eats have in ‘common and as a constant that the verb form presents
a description of an action, attributed respectively and in an identical fashion
to “l,” “you,” and “he.” Similarly, I suffer, you suffer, he suffers have the
description of the same state in common. This gives the impression of being
an obvious fact and even the formal alignment in the paradigm of the con-
jugation implies this.
Now a number of verbs do not have this permanence of meaning in the

changing of persons, such as.those verbs with which we denote dispositions
or mental operations. In saying I suffer, I describe my present condition. In
saying I feel (that the weather is going to change), I describe an impression
which I feel. But what happens if, instead of] feel (that the weather is going
to change), I say] believe (that the weather isgoing to change)? The formal sym-
metry between Ifeel and] believe is complete. Is it so for the meaning? Can
Iconsider] believe to be a description of myself of the same sort as] feeI? Am
I describing myself believing when I say I believe (that … )? Surely not. The
operation of thought is not at all the object of the utterance; ] believe (that … )
is equivalent to a mitigated assertion. By saying I believe (that … ), I convert
into a subjective utterance the fact asserted impersonally, namely, the weather
is going to change, which is the true proposition.
Let us consider further the following utterances: “You are .Mr. X., ]

suppose.” “] presume that John received my letter.” “He has left the hospital,
from which I conclude that he is cured.” These sentences contain verbs that
are verbs of operation: suppose, presume, and conclude are all logical opera-
tions. But suppose, presume, and conclude, put in the first person, do not
behave the way, for example, reason andreflect do, which seem, however, to
be very close. The forms ] reason and ] reflect describe me as reasoning and
reflecting. Quite different are I suppose, ] presume, and I conclude. In saying
I conclude (that … ), I do not describe myself as occupied in concluding;
what could the activity of “concluding” be? I do not represent myself as
being in the process of supposing aI)d presuming when I say ] suppose,
I presume. I conclude indicates· that, in .the situation’ set forth, I extracta
.relationship of conclusion touching on a given fact. It is this logical relation-
ship which is materialized in a personal verb. Similarly, I suppose and I pre-
sume, are veryfar from I pose and I resume. In I suppose and I presume, there
is an indication of attitude, not a description of an operation. By including
I suppose and I presume in my discourse, I imply that I am taking a certain
attitude with regard to th~utteraIicè that follows. It will have been noted
that all the verbs cited are followed by that and a proposition; this proposition

”

f.. ~:.”
II,

… ‘…..’.1′..1..:

1

…

1
I;,
i

··1·.·

··•········

‘.
r.

…..!’..;~.’~’.’
‘i~·

!,tœ ¡:~Ij;

Subjectivity in Language 229

is the real utterance, not the persónal verb form that governs it. But on the
other hand, that personal form is, one might say, the indicator of subjectivity.
It gives the assertion that follows the subjective context”c-doubt, presumption,
inference-suited to characterize the attitude of the speaker with respect to
the statement he is making. This manifestation of subjectivity does notstand
out except in the first person. One can hardly imagine similar verbs in the
second person except for taking up an argument again verbatim; thus, you
suppose that he has left is only a way of repeating what “you” has just said: “I
suppose that he has left.” But if onercmoves the expression of person; leaving
only “he supposes that … ,” we no longer have, from the point of view of Iwho
utters it, anything but a simple statement.
We will perceive the nature of this “subjectivity” even more clearly if we

consider the effect on the meaning produced by changing the person of certain
verbs of speaking. These are verbs that by their meaning denote an individual
act of social import: swear, promise, guarantee, certify, with locutional vari-
ants Iiké pledge t~ … , commit (oneself) to.•.. In the social conditions in
which a language is exercised, the acts denoted by these verbs are regarded
as binding. Now here the difference between the “subjective” utterance and
the “nonsubjective” is fully apparent as soon.as we notice the nature of the
opposition between the’ ‘persons” of the verb. We must bear in mind that the
“third person” is the form of the verbal (or pronominal) paradigm that does
not refer to a person because it refers to an object located outside direct
address. But it exists and is characterized only by its opposition to the person.
Iof the speaker who, in uttering it, situates it as “non-person.” Here is its
status. The form he … takès its value frornthe fact that it is necessarily part
of a discourse uttered.by “I.”
Now] swear is a form öf peculiar value in that it places the reality of the

oath uptm the one who says 1. This utterance is a performance; “to swear”
consists exactly of the utterance I swear, by which Ego is bound. The litter-
ance I swear is the very act which pledges me, not the description of the act
that I am performing. In saying I promise, I guarantee, I am actually making
a promise or a guarantee. The consequences (social, judicial, etc.) of my
swearing, of my promise, flow from the instance of discourse containing I
swear, 1 promise. The utterancé is identified with the act itself. But this con-
dition is not given in the meaning of the verb, it is the “subjectivity” afdis-
course which makes it possible. The difference will be seen when I swear
is replaced by he swears. While I swear is a pledge, he swears is simply a des-
cription, on the same plane as he runs, he smokes. Here it can be seen that,
within the conditions belonging to these expressions, the same verb, according
as it is assumed by a “subject”. or is placed outside “person,” takes on
a different value. This is a consequence of the fact that the instance of

f
it ,~

:,b!.t ..

~:~!
‘~
~

230 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

discourse that contains the verb establishes the act at the Same time that it sets
up the subject. Hence the act is performed by the instance of the utterance
.of its “name” (which is “swear”) at the same time that the subject is estab-
lished by the instance of the utterance of its indicator (which is “I”).
Many notions in linguistics, perhaps even in psychology, will appear in

a different light if one reestablishes them within the framework of discourse.
This is language in so far as it is taken over by the man who is speaking and
within the condition of intersubjectivity, which alone makes linguistic
communication possible.

.’
~ .. lit· .

. ¡
ill
,

:t ¡
J

From Journal de pSychologie 55 (July-September 1958) : 267ff l~1~
:j,1
“1

:f;1
.’~
:~r
j
;l

TWENTY.TWO

Analytical Philosophy and Language

PHILOSOPHICAL INTERPRETATIONS of langUage generally arouse a certain
apprehension in the linguist. Sincè he is little informed about the movement
of ideas, the linguist isprone to think that the problems belonging to language,
which are primarily formal problems, cannot attract the philosopher and”
conversely, that the philosopher is especially interested within language in
notions thát he, the linguist, cannot make use of. A certain timidity in the
face of general ideas probably enters into this attitude. But the aversion of
the linguist for everything that he summarily qualifies as “metaphysical”
proceeds above all from a more and more vivid awareness of the formal
specificity of linguistic facts, to which philosophers are not sensitive enough.
It is thus with all the more interest that the linguist will study the concepts

of the philosophy called analytic. The Oxford philosophers have devoted
themselves to the analysis of ()rdinary language, as it is spoken, in order to
renew the very basis of philosophy by freeing it from abstractions and con-
ventional frames of reference. A colloquium was held at Royaumont whose
object was precisely the exposition and discussion of this philosophy.!
According to one of its representatives; J. O; Drmson, the Oxford school
grants to natural languages the value of an .exceptional object that merits the
most elaborate investigations. The reasons were clearly stated. It is worth-
while to quote them:

… The Oxford philosophers; almost without exception, approach philo-‘
sophy after avery extended study of the classical humanities. They are thus
spontaneously interested in words, in syntax, in idioms. They would not
wish to utilize linguistic analysis for the sole purpose of solving problems
of philosophy, since the examination of a language interests them for itself.
Hence these philosophers are perhaps the more ready for and more inclined
to linguistic distinctions than other philosophers. .
For them, natural languages, which philosophers usually stigmatize as

awkward and unsuited to thought, contain in reality an abundance of con-
cepts and the most subtle distinctions, and fill avariety of functions to which
philosophers ordinarily remain blind. In addition, since these languages

rr.’

“

,f

¡I

~

.
f ..

I

;~~ ~~I!~,
,\ . MIAMI LINGUISTICS SERIES
!iJft_

No. r. Germanic Studies in Honor 01 Edluard Henry Sehrt
Edited by Frithjof A. Haven,t Wolfrnm K.Legner and James C. Kin,

1

No.2. A Linguistic Study of tJltlEtll/li.fJ, VtlTb
By F. R. Palmer

NO.3. Multilingual Lexicon of Linguistics and Philology: English,
German, French
By Rose Nash

NO.4. Studies in Spanish Phonology
By Tomás Navarro

NO.5. Studies in English Adverbial Usage
By Sidney Greenbaum

No.6. General Characteristics of the Germanic Languages
By Antoine Meillet

NO.7. Language: Its Structure and Evolution
By Marcel Cohen

No.8. Problems in General Linguistics
By

Emile Benveniste

NO.9. Linguistic Variability and Intellectual Development
By Wilhelm von Humboldt

No. 10. Elicitation Experiments in English Linguistic Studies in Use an
Attitude
By Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk

‘;¡.,:,¡
‘ill .'”ilil~,

‘.’lo ‘!….., ,Á

”

..oP’ltv

:~~{‘\’\
‘i1\ ~
<'

i~ ….
9…… ‘~~,..~
~””1″‘-\0’ ~

I>'” ‘

z

Miami Linguistics Series No.8

Emile Benveniste

Problems in
General ,Linguistics

translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek

ro
University of Miami Press

Coral Gables, Florida

/(*.
I:Y•illJ_

,::~(
>,,1

The original French version, under the tide
Problèmes de linguistique générale, was published in Paris.

© Editions Gallimard, 1966
Copyright © 1971 by

University of Miami Press
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 77-102692

SBN 87024-13Z-X
All rights reserved, including rights of reproduction and use in any form or by an,
means, including the makin¡ of copies by any photo process, or by electronic o~
mechanicaldevice,printedorwrittenororal,or recordingforsoundorvisualreproduc~
tion or for use In any knowled¡e or retrieval systemor device,unless permission if4iS
writing is obtained fromthe copyrightproprietors,’!!,

Deligned by Mary Lipson
Manufactured in the United States of America ,

Contents
i.p I
<. i" a~~1 '\

j

¡ü_

‘f’;\,’I::¡ . …'”

… {‘

Foreword vii
Translator’s Note ix
Publisher’s Note x
Changes in Linguistics

I Recent Trends in General Linguistics 3
2 A Look at the Development of Linguistics 17
3 Saussure after Half a Century 29

Communication

..
i~~-
“”‘.:’). ~

I~~<\' ,+-

4 The Nature of the Linguistic Sign 43
5 Animal Communication and Human Language 49
6 Categories of Thought and Language 55
7 Remarks on the Function of Language in Freudian Theory 65

Structures and Analyses

8 “Structure” in Linguistics 79
9 The Classification of Languages 85
10 The Levels of Linguistic Analysis 101
II The SublogicalSystem of Prepositions in Latin II3
12 Toward an Analysis of Case Functions: The Latin Genitive 121

yntactic Functions .

13 The Nominal Sentence 131
14 Active and Middle Voice in the Verb 145
IS The Passive Construction of the Transitive Perfect 153
16 The Linguistic Functions of “To Be” and)’To Have” 163
17 The Relative Clause, a Problem of General Syntax 181

an and Language

18 Relationships of P~rson in the Verb 195
19 The Correlations of Tense in the French Verb 205

f..
:~}~(,
‘\~
il·’

I
”

~
:WfJi:~

TWENTY

The Nature of Pronouns

IN THE 8TII.-L OPEN DEBATE on the nature of pronouns, it is usual to consider
these linguistic forms as constituting a class both formal and functional, in
the manner of nominal or verbal forms, for example. Now all languages
possess pronouns, and in all of them they are defined as referring to the same
categories of expression (personal pronouns, demonstratives, etc.). The
universality of these forms and these notions leads to the thought that the
problem of pronouns is both a problem of language in general and a problem
of individuallanguàges; or better, that it is a problem of individual languages
only because it is primarily a problem of language in general. It is as a
phenomenon of language that we pose the problem here, in order to show
that pronouns do not constitute a unitary class but arè of different types
depending on the mode of language of which they are the signs. Some belong
to the syntax of a language, others are characteristics of what we shall call
“instances of discourse,” that is, the discrete and always unique acts by
which the language is actualized in speech by a speaker.
The situation of the personal pronouns should be considered first. It is

not enough to distinguish them from the other pronouns by a denomination
that separates them. Itmust be seen that the ordinary definition of the per-
sonal prónouns as containing the three terms, I, you, and he, simply dei}troys
the notion of “person.” “Person” belongs only to I/you and is lacking in
he. This basic difference will be evident from an analysis of 1.
Between I and a noun referring to a lexical notion, there are not only the

greatly varying formal differences that the morphological and syntactic struc-
ture of particular languages imposes; there are also others that res~lt from
the very process of linguistic utterance and which are of a more general and
more basic nature. The utterançe containing I belongs ‘to that level or type of
language which Charles Mords calls pragmatic, which includes, with the signs,
those who make use of them. A linguistic text of great length-a scientific
treatise, for ex~ple–can be imagined in which I and you would not appear.
a single time; conversely, it would be difficult to conceive of a short spoken,

il
1

1
1
1

1
.1

:
,; ~

218 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

text in which they were not employed. But the other signs of a language are
distributed indifferently between these two types of texts. Besides ‘this con-
dition of use, which is itself distinctive, we shall call attention to a fundamental
and moreover obvious property of I and you in the referential organization
.of linguistic signs. Each instance of use of a noun is referred to a fixed and
“objective” notion, capable of remaining potential or of being actualized in
a p¡¡rticulat object and always identical with the mental image it awakens. But
~he instan~es of the use of I do not ~onstitute. a class of reference .si~ce t~ere ‘Ii
ISno “object” definable as I to which these mstances can refer m Idenocal . .
fashion ..Each I has its own reference and corresponds each time to a UniqUe…•.•..:1…,.
being who is set up as such. < What then is~h~reality to which I~ryou refers? It is solely a "realit! of dis-j l

course,” and thIS ISa very strange thmg. I cannot be defined except m terms.’:; !
of “locution,” not in terms of objects as a nominal sign is. I signifies “the
person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing J.”
This instance is unique by definition and has validity only in its uniqu~ness.
If I perceive. two successive instances of discourse containing I, uttered in
.the same voice, nothing guarantees to me that one of them is not a reported
discourse, a quotation in which I could be imputed to another. It is thus
necessary to stress this point: I can only be identified by the instance of dis-
course that contains it and by that alone. It has no value except in thé instance
in which it is produced. But in the same way it is also as an instance of form
that I must be taken; the form of I has no linguistic existence except in the
act of’ speaking in which it is uttered. There is thus a combined double j
instance in this process: the instance of I as referent anti the instance of I
discourse. containing I as the referee. The definition can now be stated pre- ‘.’ I
cisely as: I is “the individual who utters the present instance of discourse if
containing the linguistic instance J.” Consequently, by introducing the •….’1′
situation of “address,” We obtain a symmetrical definition for you as the,,, ;.
“individual spoken to in the ~resent instance of d.is.course containing the ” 1
linguistic instance you.” These definitions refer to I and you as a category
?f language ~d. are related ~otheir positi?n. in l~nguage. W.e.ar.e not .consider- l’
mg the speCIficfoi:ms of thIS category wlthm gIVenlanguages, and It matters
little whether .the.se…..f.OJ;TIlSmust figure. explicitly i.n the disc..ourse or may l’
remain implicit· in it; . ” ”
This constant ~dneéessary reference to the iristance~f discourse con-

stitutes the feature ~hat u,nit~s to l/you a series of “i~dicators”. which, from
their form and their systematic capacity, belong to different classes, some
being pronouns, others adverbs, and still others, adverbial locutions.
The demonstratives, this, etc., are such indicators inasmuch as their

organization correlates’ with that oL the indicators of person, as in Lat ..

{

The Nature of Pronouns 219

hie/iste. Here there is a new and distinctive feature in this series: it is the
identification of the object by an indicator uf ostension concomitant with the
instance of discourse containing the indicator of person. By simultaneous
ostension, this will be the object designated in the present instance of dis-
course and the reference implicit in the form (for example, hie as opposed
to iste), which associates it with I and you. Outside this class, but on the same
plane and associated in the same frame of reference, we find the adverbs here
and now. Their relationship with Twill be shown by defining them: here and
now delimit the spatial and temporal instance coextensive and contemporary
with the present instance of discourse containing 1. This series is not limited
to here and now; it is increased by a great number of simple or complex
terms that proceed from the same relationship: today, yesterday, tomorrow,
in three days, etc. It is pointless to define these terms and the demonstratives
in general by deixis, as is generally done, unless one adds that the deixis is I
contemporary with the instance of discourse that carries the indicator of
person; it is from this reference that the demonstrative takes its property of
being unique and particular each time, which is the uniqueness of the
instance of discourse to which it refers.
The essential thing, then, is the relation between the indicator (of person,

time, place, object shown, etc.) and the present instance of discourse.’ For
front the moment that one no longer refers, by the expression itself, to’ this
‘relation of the indicator to the unique instance that manifests it, the lànguage
has recourse to a series of distinct terms that have a one-to-one correspondence
with the first and which refer; not to the instance of discourse, but to “re’al”
objects, to “histotical”times andplace~. Hence correlations such as l: he-
here: there-now: then-today: the very day-:-yesterday: the day before-
tomorrow: the day after—next week: thefollowing week-(hree days ago:’ three
days before, etc. The language itself reveals the profound difference between
these two planes.
The reference to the “speaker” implicit in this whole group of expressions

has been treated too lightly and as being self-evident. We rob this reference
of its inhell’entmeaning if we do not see the feature by which it is distinguished
from other linguistic signs. Yet it is a fact both original and fundain~entalthat
th~e “pronominal” forms do not refer to “reality” or to “objective” positions
in space or time b~t ~othe utterance; unique each:time, that contains them,
and thus they reflect thefr proper use. The importance of their function will
be measured by the nature of the problem they;serve to solve, which is none
other than that of intersubjective communication. Language has solved this
problem by creating’ an ensemble of “empty” signs that are nonreferentia.
with respect to “reality.” These signs are always available and become “full”
a~ soon as a speaker introduces them· into each instance. of his discourse,

PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS220

Since they lack material refer~nce, they cannot be misused; since they do not
assert anything, they are not subject to the condition of truth and escape all
denial. Their role is to provide the instrument of a conversion that one could
call the conversion of language into discourse. It is by identifying himsèlf as
a unique person pronouncing I that each speaker sets himself up in turn as
the “subject.” The use thus has as a condition the situation of discourse and
no other. If each speaker, in order to express the feèling he has of his irre-
ducible subjectivity, made use of a distinct identifying signal (in the sense
in which each radio transmitting station has its own call letters), there would
,be as many languages as individuals and communication would become abso-
lutely impossible. Language wards off this danger by instituting a unique
but mobile sign, I, which can be assumed Dy each speaker on the condition
that he refers each time only to the instance of his own discourse. This sign ,¡
is thus linked to the exercise of language and announces the speaker as
speaker. It is this property that establishes the basis for individual discourse,
in which each speaker takes over all the resources of language for his own
behalf. Habit easily makes us unaware of this profound difference between
language as a system of signs and language assumed into use by the individual.”., ‘I
When the individµal appropriates it, language is turned into instances of ” ,I,
discourse, characterized by this system of internal references of which I is
the key, and defining the individual by the particular linguistic construction
he makes use of when he announces himself as the speaker. Thus the indica~;¡~ 1
tors I and you cannot exist as potentialities; they exist only insofar as they are ‘~3,
actualized in the instance of discourse, in which, by each of their çwn , ~ 1
instances, they mark the process of appropriation by the speaker.
The systematic nature of language causes the appropriation these indicators

signal to appear in the instance of discourse in all the elements capable of
“agreeing” formally, especially in the verb, by means of processes that vary ,I
according to the type of idiom. We must emphasize this point: the “verb
form” is an inextricable part of the individual instance ,of discourse: it is,
always and necessarily actualized by the act of discourse and in dependence
on that act. It cannot admit of any potential and “objective” form. If the verb
is usually represented by its infinitive as the lexical entry ina number of
languages, this is putely by convention j the infinitive in language is some-
thing completèl{different from the infinitive in the lexicographic metalan-
guage. All the variation~’ in the verbal paradigm-aspect, tense, gender,
person, etc.-result ,from t;at actualization and from that dependence with
respect to the instance of discourse, especially the “tense” of the verb, which
is always relative to the instance. in which the verb form figures. A finite ,,~
,personal utterance isthu,s cQnstituted on a double plane: it puts the denomina- ,~
tive function of language into operation for references to the object, WhiCh),;’,’,:,

Il
, ~:

The Nature of Prono.uns 221

language establishes as distinctive lexical signs, and arranges these references
to the object with the aid of self-referential indicators corresponding to each
of the formal classes that the idiom recognizes.
But is this always true? If language, as it is exercised, is by necessity pro-

duced in discrete instances, does not this necessity oblige it to consist only of
“personal” instances? We know empirically that this is not the case. There
are utt~rances in discourse that escape the condition of person in spite of
their individual nature; that is, they refer not to themselves but to an ”’object-
,ive” situàtion. This is the domain that we call the “third person;”
The “third person” in fact represents the unmarked member of the corre-

lation of person. That is why it is not a truism to affirm that the non-person
is the only mode of utterance possible for the instances of discourse not
meant to refer to themselves but to predicate the process of someone or some-
thing outside the instance itself, and this someone or something can’ always
be provided with an 0..!>i~~!iYeJ~ference.
Thus, in the formal class of pronouns, those said to be of the “third person”

are, by their function and by their nature, completèly different from I and
you. As has long been seen, forms ~ikehe, him, that, etc. only serve as abbre-
viated suostitutes (Pierre is sick; he has a “fever”); they replace or relay one
or another of the material elements of the utterance. But this function is not
atta£ned only to pronouns; it can be served by elements of other classes-in
French, on occasion by certain verbs (“cet enfant écrit maintenant mieux
qu’il nefaisait l’année dernière” [similarly in English: that child writes better
now than he did last year]). This is a function of syntactic “representation”
which extends to terms taken from different “parts of speech” and which
answers to a need for economy by replacillg one segment of the utterance,
or even an entire utterance, with a more manageable substitute. Hence the)
function of these substitutes has nothing in’common with that of the indicators
of person. ,
Certain languages show that the “third person” is indeed literally a “non-

person.”1 To take just one example among many, here is how the possessive
pronominal prefixes are presented in two series (something like inalienable
and alienable) in Yuma (California): first person, ?-, ?anll-; second person,
m-, man:JI-; third person, zero, nll•2 The personal reference is a zero reference
outside the I/you relationship. In other languages (Indo-European chiefly)
the regularity of the formal structure and a, symmetry of secondary origin
produce the impression of three coordinated persons. This is especially the
case with modern languages with an obligatory pronoun in which he seems to
be a member of a paraliigm ~ith three term’s, on a’par with I and you, or in
the inflection of the present in Indo-European with-mi, -si; -ti. In fact, t~
symmetry is only formal: What must be considered distinctive of the “third

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222 PROBLEMS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

person” is its property of (1) combining with any object reference, (2) ~r
bc;:ingreflective of the instance of discourse, (3) admitting of a sometimes
rather large number of pronominal or demonstrative variants, and (4) not
bei1).gcompatible with the paradigm of referential terms like here,now, etc.
Even a brief analysis of the forms that are iInprecisely classed as pro-

nominal leads thus to the recognition ainong them of classes of entirely dif-
ferent natures and, consequently, to the distinction between, on the one
hand; language as a repertory of signs and a system for combining them and,
on the other, language as an activity manifested in instances of discourse
which are characterized as such by particular signs.

From For Roman Jakobson, Morris Halle, Horace G. Lunt, Hugh McLean, and
Comelis H. van Schooneveld,eds. (The HagYe,1956), pp. 34-37

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TWENTY-ONE

” Subjectivity in Languag~
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t’1 IF LANGUAGEIS, as they say, the instrument of communication, to what does
it owe this property? The question may cause surprise, as does everything
that seems to challenge an obvious fact, but it is sometimes useful to require
proof of, the obvious. Two answers come to mind. The one would be that
language is in fact employed as the instrument of communication, probably
because men have not found a better or more effective way in which to com-
municate. Thís amounts to stating what one wishes, to understand. One
might also think of replying that language has such qualities as make it suited
to serve as an instrument; itlends itself to transmitting what I entrust to it-
an order, a question, an announcement-and it elicits from the interlocutor
it behavior which is adequate each time. Developing a more teçhnical, aspect
of this idea:, one might add that the’ behavior of language admits ofa be-
haviorist description, in terms of stimul~s and response, from which one
might draw conclusions as to the intermediary andinstrùmental nature of
language. But is it really language of which we are speaking here? Are we not
confusing it with discourse? If we posit that discourse is language put into
action, and necessarily between partners, we sho,,!, amidst the confusion,
that we are begging the question, since the, nature of this “instrument’! IS
. ‘explained by its situation as an “instrument.” As for the role of transmission
that language plays, one should not fail to observe, on the one hand, that tlí1s
roje can devolve upon nonlinguistic means-gestures and mimicry-and, on
the other himd, that; in speaking here of an “instrument,” we ~re letting
ourselves’ be deceived by certain processes of transmission which in human
societies withput exception come after language and imitate its functioning.
‘All systems of signals, rudimentary or complex, are in this situation.

In fact, the comparison of language to an instru~ent-and it should neces” ,
,sarily be a material instrument for the comparison to even be comprehensible
-must fill us with mistrust, as should every simplistic notion about language.
‘To speak of an instrument’is to put man and nature in’opposition. The pick,
the arrow, and the wheel are not in nature. They are fabrications. Language

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