Chapter Eight LANGUAGE AND THE SPEAKING SUBJECT

Chapter Eight LANGUAGE AND THE SPEAKING SUBJECT

  In 1896, shortly before Bréal published his Essai, Victor Henry had written a pamplet entitled Antinomies linguistiques, where he tried to unravel the mysteries of language- change. This treatise, like Bréal’s Essai (cf. Bréal’s reference to Henry, ES: 5, n. 1), was directed against organismic interpretations of language-change, such as those proposed by Schleicher. But it was also written against Bréal’s conception of language-change, its assumptions, rather than its conclusions. Henry realized that Bréal had swung too much to the opposite extreme when he proclaimed that language-change has to be explained by reference to conscious, voluntary action. But although Henry wants to introduce the unconscious into linguistics, he is totally on Bréal’s side in so far as his concern with the speaking subject is concerned. Ten years before the publication of the Antinomies, Henry had reviewed the second edition of Hermann Paul’s Principien (1886), in which he expressed his enthusiasm for this book, a book that finally put an end to organismic speculations and, like Bréal in France, gave pride of place to the speaking subject. Paul destroys

  the belief in the real existence of the language, the word, the syllable, the phoneme, and finally the oversight of the fundamental principle which dominates the whole science: there is only one objective reality in language, the speaking subject at the moment he speaks, and a discontinuous series of variable phenomena, the sounds that escape his mouth, at the precise moment when they escape it.

  (Henry 1887a:8)

  In this respect Henry, Bréal, and Paul are in agreement: the speaking subject is the motor of language change. But what role does she play precisely? Here, in the answer to this question, the most obstinate antinomies in linguistic science emerge. Henry claims that all facts of language-change—phonetic, morphological, as well as semantic and syntactic—are brought about unconsciously, but by an unconscious that has depth, so to speak (see especially Henry’s essay on ‘martian language’ or a case of glossolalia (1901)). He proclaims that ‘language is the spontaneous work of a subject that is absolutely unconscious as to the procedures which he uses for that effect’ (Henry 1901:5). Bréal, on the contrary, holds that consciousness plays a role in language, especially semantic change. Whitney and Paul, finally, think that both—or better, neither—play a role. Whitney thinks that the driving force of change is the need to communicate and that this force ‘works both consciously and unconsciously: consciously, as regards the immediate end to be attained; unconsciously, as regards the

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  further consequences of the act’ (OLS: 355). Paul expresses similar thoughts (cf. [1880] 1909 4th edition: 32; cf. Keller 1983:38). Both use the Darwinian theory of gradual evolution through variation and selection as an analogy to describe the process whereby individual variations spread through a community of speakers and a language, but they do not fall into the traps Schleicher had fallen into. Language-change is the long-term (and as such ‘unconscious’) result of short-term linguistic actions, actions that are conscious in so far as they are directed towards the goal of making ourselves understood, but unconscious in so far as the procedures are concerned, by which we adapt the inherited tool to our private ends. These procedures (metaphor, metonymy, etc.) can be made conscious and used consciously in literary discourse, advertising, and so on. The long- term consequences of our individual and isolated actions are necessarily unknown, they are structured by the ‘invisible hand mechanism’ (cf. Keller 1985).

  In the context of language-change, the status of the speaking subject is a controversial one. Not so in language use. And it is on this level that Bréal observes and describes some processes that have escaped the attention of Henry, Whitney, and Paul, but which will form the focal point of Wegener’s investigations into the life of language.

  Bréal’s concern with the speaker had begun even before he started his linguistic career. In his studies of Greek and Latin myths he had shown a particular interest in the myth-making and changing powers of the language-user (notably in Hercule et Cacus ([1863b] 1877:1–162). When he devoted himself entirely to linguistic matters, he did not abandon his belief in the human being as language-maker. His lecture on the form and function of words (1866) was conceived as a rejection of naturalistic and mechanistic conceptions of language and as a promotion of an entirely humanistic description of language-use, where the speakers give forms functions and breathe spirit into matter. His functionalist view of language is closely comparable to Wegener’s, and beyond Wegener to that of the neo-Firthian tradition of linguistics in England. One has only to read Monaghan to see the link: ‘The language token is not a thing with a form and a function. It is a form which functions in context. It has no meaning, but is used to mean’ (1979:186). In his article on latent ideas, Bréal developed these insights even further.

  The analysis of Bréal’s article on latent ideas has shown that for him the relationship between thought and language is not one of simple representation. Language neither represents the world nor the speaker’s thoughts as such. In the act of speech the world is transformed so as to become ‘speakable’ and the speaker’s thoughts are transformed so as to become expressible. Language is not a mirror, but a—sometimes—very clumsy tool. This obvious disadvantage is heavily outweighed by the advantages of language. Its imperfect capacity of faithful representation is superseded by its perfect adaptability to any communicative need and to any situation of communication. Instead of being a precision instrument, good for one purpose only, that breaks down if you want to apply it to anything else, language is an all-purpose tool. The speaker can use it freely for any purpose, be it the most personal or subjective one—she can express himherself through language. But she can also use it to act upon the world and upon the consciousness of hisher fellow human beings. These two ways of using language will now be treated under the headings ‘the subjective element in language’ and ‘speech acts’.

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