Page 96 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 96
Slovenian Lectures
na, I am not working: “You’re not going to get us to believe that you’re going
to Ljubljana to work. Lecturing isn’t work. Those who work are here in Par-
is.” One could spend hours discussing what work means: there is no clear no-
tion of work.
According to me, the definition of the word work must bring in top-
ical forms. Two topical forms at least constitute the meaning of this word.
Work, firstly, is activity represented as tiring: work is tiring. That is what I
express under the following topical form: “more work, more tiredness”. To
show that someone has not worked, it is indeed usual to show that he is not
tired. If someone is in top form, he will have great difficulty in proving that
he has been working. (When I go back to Paris, if I want to prove that I have
been working in Ljubljana, I will have to look as if I have not been resting too
much.) The word work contains another idea: “Work produces results”. Work
is an activity which changes something in the world. If I have been content
with swaying my body from side to side, even if that has made me very tired,
you will not agree that I have been working. Incidentally, that is, I think, one
of the reasons why in the Catholic world, up until the twentieth century, so
called ‘intellectual’ work was allowed on Sundays whereas manual work was
not: I remember that when my parents, walking in the country on Sundays,
saw farmers ploughing the fields, they had the impression that those farmers
were infringing upon a religious rule; but they would never have reproached
me for doing my homework on a Sunday, and reading, thinking or perhaps
even writing was a perfectly accepted thing to be doing on Sundays. Why? It
is, I think, because intellectual work was not considered as productive but as
being a mere contemplation of truth. He who devotes himself to intellectu-
al work contents himself with bringing reality into his mind: he brings about
no change in the world. It is also one of the reasons why priests were allowed
to carry out intellectual work whereas they were absolutely forbidden manual
work. A Catholic priest could be a researcher, because scientific research had
nothing to do with a modification of the world: it merely consisted in admir-
ing the world, and, as such, was not really work. In the notion of work, I will
therefore bring in not only the topical form “more work, more tiredness” but
also “more work, more production”. (There are also other topical forms, and I
do not claim the description to be complete.)
Let us go back to negation. In the description of E1’s point of view, I am
now going to be able to replace the informational indication that “Peter has
worked” with an indication of an argumentative type. I shall say that, con-
cerning Peter’s activity, E1 summons one of the topical forms associated with
the word work: for instance, but not necessarily, “more work, more tiredness”
na, I am not working: “You’re not going to get us to believe that you’re going
to Ljubljana to work. Lecturing isn’t work. Those who work are here in Par-
is.” One could spend hours discussing what work means: there is no clear no-
tion of work.
According to me, the definition of the word work must bring in top-
ical forms. Two topical forms at least constitute the meaning of this word.
Work, firstly, is activity represented as tiring: work is tiring. That is what I
express under the following topical form: “more work, more tiredness”. To
show that someone has not worked, it is indeed usual to show that he is not
tired. If someone is in top form, he will have great difficulty in proving that
he has been working. (When I go back to Paris, if I want to prove that I have
been working in Ljubljana, I will have to look as if I have not been resting too
much.) The word work contains another idea: “Work produces results”. Work
is an activity which changes something in the world. If I have been content
with swaying my body from side to side, even if that has made me very tired,
you will not agree that I have been working. Incidentally, that is, I think, one
of the reasons why in the Catholic world, up until the twentieth century, so
called ‘intellectual’ work was allowed on Sundays whereas manual work was
not: I remember that when my parents, walking in the country on Sundays,
saw farmers ploughing the fields, they had the impression that those farmers
were infringing upon a religious rule; but they would never have reproached
me for doing my homework on a Sunday, and reading, thinking or perhaps
even writing was a perfectly accepted thing to be doing on Sundays. Why? It
is, I think, because intellectual work was not considered as productive but as
being a mere contemplation of truth. He who devotes himself to intellectu-
al work contents himself with bringing reality into his mind: he brings about
no change in the world. It is also one of the reasons why priests were allowed
to carry out intellectual work whereas they were absolutely forbidden manual
work. A Catholic priest could be a researcher, because scientific research had
nothing to do with a modification of the world: it merely consisted in admir-
ing the world, and, as such, was not really work. In the notion of work, I will
therefore bring in not only the topical form “more work, more tiredness” but
also “more work, more production”. (There are also other topical forms, and I
do not claim the description to be complete.)
Let us go back to negation. In the description of E1’s point of view, I am
now going to be able to replace the informational indication that “Peter has
worked” with an indication of an argumentative type. I shall say that, con-
cerning Peter’s activity, E1 summons one of the topical forms associated with
the word work: for instance, but not necessarily, “more work, more tiredness”
