Page 47 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 47
Lecture II
people. Besides, the attitude of the wise, which gives a value to elegance, but
a wholly, how shall I say, indirect value, in so much as it is a manifestation of
force – well, of course, that is not an idea of the people either. E1 is the only
enunciator who can represent the opinion of the people. My analysis of Pas-
cal’s sentence therefore shows how useful polyphonic analysis for the un-
derstanding of texts can be. It also enables one to introduce a notion which
is to play an important role in what I will be saying next: the notion of lex-
ical enunciator, since I put a point of view, a judgment within the word ele-
gant itself. I do not think one can understand even the meaning of the word
elegant without representing elegance as a quality to oneself. There is no
other way of understanding elegance than to introduce the notion of qual-
ity in it, or more precisely of goodness. Thus the function of lexical enunci-
ator E1 corresponds to the idea that as their intrinsic meaning, words of the
language-system contain a certain number of discourse fragments, which, us-
ing a term taken from Aristotle, I will later call topoi. To develop that point
will be the purpose of the next lecture.
***
I will conclude now by talking about the bearing this theory of po-
lyphony has on what I said last time. Last time, you remember I said that I
would try to chase the notions of true and false from linguistic semantics.
To a certain degree, I have progressed in that direction with my theory of
polyphony. But to a certain degree too, I am very far from having reached
the point I had assigned myself.
Why have I progressed in that direction? If one accepts the theory of
polyphony, one must say that every utterance is a sort of small play, a sort
of mini-dialogue. Now, there is not much sense in judging an utterance in
terms of true and false. A dialogue is neither true nor false: a play is neither
true nor false; it represents a certain number of opinions or positions, and
one cannot ascribe the qualities true or false to the whole of a play. So, by
bringing in polyphony, I have contributed to show that the notion of truth
or falsehood cannot be applied to utterances taken as a whole. That is a
progress towards the objective I have assigned to myself.
But at the same time, I am still very far from that objective – for the fol-
lowing reason. If it is true that, according to polyphonic analysis, utterances
themselves consist in dialogues that cannot be judged in terms of true and
false, the fact remains that the different enunciators that I have introduced
within the semantic structure of utterances do represent points of view that
one could perhaps describe in terms of truth and falsehood. If you want, my
people. Besides, the attitude of the wise, which gives a value to elegance, but
a wholly, how shall I say, indirect value, in so much as it is a manifestation of
force – well, of course, that is not an idea of the people either. E1 is the only
enunciator who can represent the opinion of the people. My analysis of Pas-
cal’s sentence therefore shows how useful polyphonic analysis for the un-
derstanding of texts can be. It also enables one to introduce a notion which
is to play an important role in what I will be saying next: the notion of lex-
ical enunciator, since I put a point of view, a judgment within the word ele-
gant itself. I do not think one can understand even the meaning of the word
elegant without representing elegance as a quality to oneself. There is no
other way of understanding elegance than to introduce the notion of qual-
ity in it, or more precisely of goodness. Thus the function of lexical enunci-
ator E1 corresponds to the idea that as their intrinsic meaning, words of the
language-system contain a certain number of discourse fragments, which, us-
ing a term taken from Aristotle, I will later call topoi. To develop that point
will be the purpose of the next lecture.
***
I will conclude now by talking about the bearing this theory of po-
lyphony has on what I said last time. Last time, you remember I said that I
would try to chase the notions of true and false from linguistic semantics.
To a certain degree, I have progressed in that direction with my theory of
polyphony. But to a certain degree too, I am very far from having reached
the point I had assigned myself.
Why have I progressed in that direction? If one accepts the theory of
polyphony, one must say that every utterance is a sort of small play, a sort
of mini-dialogue. Now, there is not much sense in judging an utterance in
terms of true and false. A dialogue is neither true nor false: a play is neither
true nor false; it represents a certain number of opinions or positions, and
one cannot ascribe the qualities true or false to the whole of a play. So, by
bringing in polyphony, I have contributed to show that the notion of truth
or falsehood cannot be applied to utterances taken as a whole. That is a
progress towards the objective I have assigned to myself.
But at the same time, I am still very far from that objective – for the fol-
lowing reason. If it is true that, according to polyphonic analysis, utterances
themselves consist in dialogues that cannot be judged in terms of true and
false, the fact remains that the different enunciators that I have introduced
within the semantic structure of utterances do represent points of view that
one could perhaps describe in terms of truth and falsehood. If you want, my
