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Slovenian Lectures
tion between the locutor from the enunciator. The locutor is undeniably B
but the point of view which is represented is foreign to B.
Now, I am going to take more technical examples to try to show you
that this dissociation of the locutor and the enunciator is an extremely fre-
quent one. For me, it is a very general phenomenon that in discourse and
even in a single utterance, one represents a certain number of points of view
and very often points of view that one does not hold oneself accountable
for and even which one rejects. To show this, I am first going to consid-
er the phenomenon of negation, which I am going to analyse in some de-
tail. I begin by giving the general idea, the development of which will be
presented after a very small pause. My analysis of negation is strongly in-
spired by a famous paper which Freud wrote on negation, an article all the
aspects of which, especially the psychological implications, I am not con-
cerned with, but which, according to me, contains an idea which is linguis-
tically very true. Freud’s idea is the following. A negative utterance – I sym-
bolise a negative utterance by non-X – a negative utterance is a compro-
mise proposed by the Ego, in its attempt to symbolically reconcile on the
one hand, the Super-Ego and on the other, the Id, the deep urges of the li-
bido (the Es in German). A negative utterance is thus a compromise which
the conscious personality establishes between two unconscious authorities,
the libido and moral censorship. For Freud, when someone says non-X, he
is saying two things at the same time: on the one hand, he is saying X and
on the other, he rejects X: it is the libido which says X, the Super-Ego which
rejects it. In other words, to say non-X is at the same time to make a hid-
den representation of the libido appear and at the same time, to symboli-
cally satisfy morality by the rejection of that idea X, which is being denied.
Negation is thus a kind of strategy, invented by the Ego, to fulfil two con-
tradictory requirements at the same time. An example which Freud gives is
the one of patients who, as they describe the dreams they have had the pre-
vious night, say “Well, in that dream, I did not kill my father”. According
to Freud, when a patient says that, one can be sure that in that dream, the
patient has in fact killed his father. That is what the patient really wants to
say to his analyst. But he says it in a negative form, imparting that murder
of the father with a negative form which prevents censorship from repress-
ing it. Before we stop for a pause, I would like to point out that one finds
something similar in certain pictures or sculptures of the Middle Ages de-
picting the cardinal sins. Those representations are sometimes astonishing:
the precision, the crudity and sometimes the voluptuousness with which
the sins are depicted is quite extraordinary, and are such as to be unrecon-
tion between the locutor from the enunciator. The locutor is undeniably B
but the point of view which is represented is foreign to B.
Now, I am going to take more technical examples to try to show you
that this dissociation of the locutor and the enunciator is an extremely fre-
quent one. For me, it is a very general phenomenon that in discourse and
even in a single utterance, one represents a certain number of points of view
and very often points of view that one does not hold oneself accountable
for and even which one rejects. To show this, I am first going to consid-
er the phenomenon of negation, which I am going to analyse in some de-
tail. I begin by giving the general idea, the development of which will be
presented after a very small pause. My analysis of negation is strongly in-
spired by a famous paper which Freud wrote on negation, an article all the
aspects of which, especially the psychological implications, I am not con-
cerned with, but which, according to me, contains an idea which is linguis-
tically very true. Freud’s idea is the following. A negative utterance – I sym-
bolise a negative utterance by non-X – a negative utterance is a compro-
mise proposed by the Ego, in its attempt to symbolically reconcile on the
one hand, the Super-Ego and on the other, the Id, the deep urges of the li-
bido (the Es in German). A negative utterance is thus a compromise which
the conscious personality establishes between two unconscious authorities,
the libido and moral censorship. For Freud, when someone says non-X, he
is saying two things at the same time: on the one hand, he is saying X and
on the other, he rejects X: it is the libido which says X, the Super-Ego which
rejects it. In other words, to say non-X is at the same time to make a hid-
den representation of the libido appear and at the same time, to symboli-
cally satisfy morality by the rejection of that idea X, which is being denied.
Negation is thus a kind of strategy, invented by the Ego, to fulfil two con-
tradictory requirements at the same time. An example which Freud gives is
the one of patients who, as they describe the dreams they have had the pre-
vious night, say “Well, in that dream, I did not kill my father”. According
to Freud, when a patient says that, one can be sure that in that dream, the
patient has in fact killed his father. That is what the patient really wants to
say to his analyst. But he says it in a negative form, imparting that murder
of the father with a negative form which prevents censorship from repress-
ing it. Before we stop for a pause, I would like to point out that one finds
something similar in certain pictures or sculptures of the Middle Ages de-
picting the cardinal sins. Those representations are sometimes astonishing:
the precision, the crudity and sometimes the voluptuousness with which
the sins are depicted is quite extraordinary, and are such as to be unrecon-
