Podcast episode 66: John Joseph on Benveniste and the eternal return of the speaker

In this interview, we talk to John Joseph about the elision of the speaking subject in linguistics and Emile Benveniste’s efforts to bring them back.

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Hiphilangsci theme music by Luca Dinu.

References for Episode 66

Benveniste, Émile (1956) “La nature des pronoms,” in For Roman Jakobson, The Hague: Mouton, 34–7 (repr. in Benveniste 1966a, 251–7).

—— (1966a) Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1966b) “La forme et le sens du langage,” in Le langage: Actes du XIIIe congrès des sociétés de philosophie de langue française, Genève, 2–6 août 1966, par la Société romande de philosophie, vol. 2, 29–40 (followed by discussion, 41–7), Neuchâtel: La Baconnière (repr. in Benveniste 1974: 215–29, 230–8).

—— (1969) “Sémiologie de la langue,” Semiotica 1/1–12, 127–35 (repr. in Benveniste 1974: 43–66).

—— (1970) “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation,” Langages 17:12–18 (repr. in Benveniste 1974: 79–88).

—— (1974) Problèmes de linguistique générale 2, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2012) Dernières leçons: Collège de France, 1968 et 1969, ed. by Jean-Claude Coquet and Irène Fenoglio, Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Gallimard, Seuil. English version, Last Lectures: Collège de France, 1968 and 1969, tr. by John E. Joseph, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Culioli, Antoine (1990–2018) Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, 4 vols, vol. 1 (subtitled Opérations et représentations, 1990), vol. 2 (Formalisation et opérations de repérage, 1999), vol. 3 (Domaine notionnel, 1999), Paris: Ophrys; vol. 4, Tours et détours, ed. by Rémi Camus, Limoges: Lambert-Lucas, 2018.

Derrida, Jacques (1967) De la grammatologie, Paris: Minuit (English version, Of Grammatology, tr. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

Ducrot, Oswald (1984) Le dire et le dit, Paris: Minuit.

Eco, Umberto (1975) Trattato di semiotica generale, Milan: Bompiani (English version, A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1976).

Firth, John Rupert (1930) Speech, London: Benn.

Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1966) Sémantique structurale: Recherche de méthode, Paris: Larousse (English version, Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, tr. by Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer and Alan R. Velie, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Hénault, Anne (1992) Histoire de la sémiotique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Jakobson, Roman (1957) “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb,” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Dept. of Slavic Language & Literatures (repr. in Jakobson, Selected Writings, vol. 2: Word and Language, 386–92, The Hague: Mouton, 1971).

Joseph, John E. (2025) “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory,” Historiographia Linguistica 52/1.1–40.

—— (2026) “Addendum to ‘The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory’,” Historiographia Linguistica 53/1.171–6.

Kristeva, Julia (2012) “Préface: Émile Benveniste, un linguiste qui ne dit ni ne cache, mais signifie”, in Benveniste (2012: 13–40, English version, “Preface: Émile Benveniste, a Linguist Who Neither Says Nor Hides, but Signifies, in Benveniste 2019 [2012]: 1–30).

Lacan, Jacques (1958) “Le désir et son interpretation,” seminar of 12 Nov. 1958, https://ecole lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1958.11.12.pdf (for published version see Lacan 2013).

—— 2013. Le séminaire, livre VI: Le désir et son interprétation (1958–1959), ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris: La Martinière (English version, Desire and Its Interpretation: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VI, tr. by Bruce Fink, Cambridge & Medford, Mass.: Polity, 2019).

Latour, Bruno (1991) Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, Paris: La Découverte. (English version, We Have Never Been Modern, tr. by Catherine Porter, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.)

Leskien, August (1876) Die Declination im slavisch-litauischen und germanischen, Leipzig: S. Hirzel.

Lotman, Yuri M. (1990) Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, tr. from the Russian by Ann Shukman, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1923) “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,” supplement to C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., pp. 451–510.

Osthoff, Hermann and Karl Brugman (1878) Preface to Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen 1, iii–xx (English tr. by Winfred P. Lehmann in A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics, 197–209, Bloomington & London, Indiana University Press, 1967).

Pāṇini (1898) The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, tr. into English by Srisa Chandra Vasu, Benares: Sindhu Charan Bose.

Parry, Milman (1971) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, ed. by Adam Parry, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931–58) Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols 1–6 (1931–35) ed. by C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss; vols 7–8 (1958) ed. by A. W. Burks, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Ricœur, Paul: cited in Benveniste (1974 [1966a]: 236).

Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916) Cours de linguistique générale, ed. by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger, Paris & Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed. 1922; subsequent eds essentially unchanged. English version, Course in General Linguistics, tr. by Wade Baskin, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959.)

—— (2002) Écrits de linguistique générale, ed. by Simon Bouquet and Rudolf Engler, assisted by Antoinette Weil. Paris: Gallimard (English version, Writings in General Linguistics, tr. by Carole Sanders and Matthew Pires, with the assistance of Peter Figueroa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Sebeok, Thomas A. (2001) Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Whitney, William Dwight (1875) The Life and Growth of Language: An Outline of Linguistic Science, New York: D. C. Appleton & Co., London: Henry S. King (German version, Leben und Wachsthum der Sprache, tr. by August Leskien, Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1876.)