Page 84 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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Slovenian Lectures
two topical forms, which I call converse. One of those topical forms says,
that when you go up or down in P, you also go up or down in Q. So, my to-
pos T, relating P and Q, has two topical forms, TF’ and TF’’: TF’ = +P, +Q;
TF’’= -P, -Q. That was where we had got to in the last lecture. Now what
there is left for me to show is how those topoi, which command argumenta-
tive strings, are written into the language-system itself. The argumentative
strings themselves belong to speech, or discourse: they are relationships be-
tween two discourse-segments, one of which is represented as justifying the
other. To show that those topoi are written into the language-system, I am
going to study a certain number of examples. To begin with, I am going to
study words which belong to the lexicon, to the vocabulary, and then I shall
study words which belong more to grammar.
***
Let us consider the following four adjectives: courageous, timorous, pru-
dent, rash. We all feel that those four adjectives belong to a single category,
and that they describe the same kind of conduct, but viewed in thoroughly
different ways. In the four cases, the question is a man’s possible attitudes to
danger (I shall indeed be taking the word courageous only in the sense of active
physical courage, the kind of courage consisting in confronting danger; I shall
not be speaking about courage in the moral sense, the courage there is in up-
holding a paradoxical idea, nor of passive physical courage, the courage there
is in not screaming when a dentist pulls a tooth out). Many people who have
thought about language have noticed that there was something those four ad-
jectives had in common. Those who work within Greimas’ semiotic perspec-
tive say that those four adjectives are the four angles of a square – the Greimas
square being a sort of adaptation of Aristotle’s logical square. I am not going
to go into a criticism of those conceptions: I prefer to give you my own way of
describing those four adjectives straightaway.
I am going to accept the idea that, in the language-system itself, we have
two topoi, T1 and T2, which I shall call contrary [contraires]. I am not say-
ing converse, because I used the word converse to characterize the two top-
ical forms of one and the same topos. So, we have two topoi, which are con-
trary to one another: topos T1 ascribes value to the fact of confronting dan-
ger, to the fact of taking risks, which I express by saying that it relates the
notion of risk and the notion of goodness; topos T2, on the contrary, relates
the notion of risk and the notion of evil; in one case, the fact of taking risks
is viewed as something good, in the other, as something evil. Each one of
us, I think, is aware of those topoi: at times, depending on our discursive in-
two topical forms, which I call converse. One of those topical forms says,
that when you go up or down in P, you also go up or down in Q. So, my to-
pos T, relating P and Q, has two topical forms, TF’ and TF’’: TF’ = +P, +Q;
TF’’= -P, -Q. That was where we had got to in the last lecture. Now what
there is left for me to show is how those topoi, which command argumenta-
tive strings, are written into the language-system itself. The argumentative
strings themselves belong to speech, or discourse: they are relationships be-
tween two discourse-segments, one of which is represented as justifying the
other. To show that those topoi are written into the language-system, I am
going to study a certain number of examples. To begin with, I am going to
study words which belong to the lexicon, to the vocabulary, and then I shall
study words which belong more to grammar.
***
Let us consider the following four adjectives: courageous, timorous, pru-
dent, rash. We all feel that those four adjectives belong to a single category,
and that they describe the same kind of conduct, but viewed in thoroughly
different ways. In the four cases, the question is a man’s possible attitudes to
danger (I shall indeed be taking the word courageous only in the sense of active
physical courage, the kind of courage consisting in confronting danger; I shall
not be speaking about courage in the moral sense, the courage there is in up-
holding a paradoxical idea, nor of passive physical courage, the courage there
is in not screaming when a dentist pulls a tooth out). Many people who have
thought about language have noticed that there was something those four ad-
jectives had in common. Those who work within Greimas’ semiotic perspec-
tive say that those four adjectives are the four angles of a square – the Greimas
square being a sort of adaptation of Aristotle’s logical square. I am not going
to go into a criticism of those conceptions: I prefer to give you my own way of
describing those four adjectives straightaway.
I am going to accept the idea that, in the language-system itself, we have
two topoi, T1 and T2, which I shall call contrary [contraires]. I am not say-
ing converse, because I used the word converse to characterize the two top-
ical forms of one and the same topos. So, we have two topoi, which are con-
trary to one another: topos T1 ascribes value to the fact of confronting dan-
ger, to the fact of taking risks, which I express by saying that it relates the
notion of risk and the notion of goodness; topos T2, on the contrary, relates
the notion of risk and the notion of evil; in one case, the fact of taking risks
is viewed as something good, in the other, as something evil. Each one of
us, I think, is aware of those topoi: at times, depending on our discursive in-
