Page 49 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 49
ture III
December 11
Let me begin by reminding you of where we have got to so far in this
series of lectures. As I told you the first time, my general objective is
to construct a conception of linguistic meaning which relies neither on the
notion of truth or falsehood nor on the notion of information, or at least
which relies on those notions as little as possible. For me, the meaning of
an utterance – at least deep down – is not the information which that ut-
terance provides about the outer world; it is not the description which that
utterance gives of reality. Last time, to eliminate that usual conception of
meaning, according to which meaning and information, or truth-condi-
tions, are one and the same thing, I introduced the theory of polyphony.
This theory leads one to think that each one of our utterances represents
a multiplicity of points of view, some of which can differ from the locu-
tor’s. For example, in a negative utterance such as »Peter will not come«,
we have one point of view according to which Peter will come and another
point of view, which disagrees with the first. You remember that I called the
origin of those points of view enunciators. That led me on to say that in the
utterance “Peter will not come”, there are two enunciators, that I labelled
E1 and E2: E1 has a point of view according to which Peter will come and
E2 disagrees with E1. If one accepts that, one sees the notion of informa-
tion or of description disappear. Indeed, if an utterance is a sort of mini-di-
alogue between two enunciators, it becomes extremely difficult to assess it
in terms of truth and of falsehood: a dialogue in itself is neither true nor
false, and one fails to see how one could apply the notion of truth to the ut-
terance if, as I have suggested it be, it is described polyphonically, as a dia-
logue, a confrontation of different enunciators. That was where we had got
December 11
Let me begin by reminding you of where we have got to so far in this
series of lectures. As I told you the first time, my general objective is
to construct a conception of linguistic meaning which relies neither on the
notion of truth or falsehood nor on the notion of information, or at least
which relies on those notions as little as possible. For me, the meaning of
an utterance – at least deep down – is not the information which that ut-
terance provides about the outer world; it is not the description which that
utterance gives of reality. Last time, to eliminate that usual conception of
meaning, according to which meaning and information, or truth-condi-
tions, are one and the same thing, I introduced the theory of polyphony.
This theory leads one to think that each one of our utterances represents
a multiplicity of points of view, some of which can differ from the locu-
tor’s. For example, in a negative utterance such as »Peter will not come«,
we have one point of view according to which Peter will come and another
point of view, which disagrees with the first. You remember that I called the
origin of those points of view enunciators. That led me on to say that in the
utterance “Peter will not come”, there are two enunciators, that I labelled
E1 and E2: E1 has a point of view according to which Peter will come and
E2 disagrees with E1. If one accepts that, one sees the notion of informa-
tion or of description disappear. Indeed, if an utterance is a sort of mini-di-
alogue between two enunciators, it becomes extremely difficult to assess it
in terms of truth and of falsehood: a dialogue in itself is neither true nor
false, and one fails to see how one could apply the notion of truth to the ut-
terance if, as I have suggested it be, it is described polyphonically, as a dia-
logue, a confrontation of different enunciators. That was where we had got
