1.4 | Notions
Discourse and subjectivity
According to Émile Benveniste, language is not the result of a manufacturing process, it is not an external form for the expression of a pre-existing interiority, but it is constitutive of human beings.
1.4.1 | Notions
Enunciation, Deixis, Modalization
As an individual act, enunciation is a process of appropriation: the enunciator appropriates the formal apparatus of language in order to establish his position as speaker and address a co-speaker. Through language, the speaker positions himself in relation to the world, to previous statements, and to the co-speaker. The speaker's subjectivity leaves traces in his utterances. Among these traces, Benveniste distinguishes deixis and modalization.
1.4.2 | Notions
Registers and tonalities
The notion of register takes into account the way in which the language is adapted to the situation in which it is used, considering the subject matter, the social setting in which the statement is made, the mode and channel chosen, the relationship between the speaker and the co-speaker and the objectives of the statement.
1.4.3 | Notions
Discourse and History. Commented World and Narrated World
Benveniste distinguishes between discourse, on the one hand, which refers to utterances or sets of utterances that retain the marks of their enunciation, and history, on the other hand, which erases all traces of its enunciation and presents itself as objective. There are verb tenses characteristic of what Benveniste calls discourse and verb tenses characteristic of what Benveniste calls history.