2.

From 1950 to 1954 language begins to occupy the central position that it will
hold
in Lacan’s work thereafter. In this period, Lacan’s discussion of language is
dominated
by references to Heideggerian phenomenology and, more importantly, to the
anthropology of language (Mauss, Malinowski and Lévi-Strauss). Language is thus
seen
as structuring the social laws of exchange, as a symbolic pact, etc. There are also
occasional references to rhetoric, but these are not elaborated (e.g. E, 169).
There are a
few allusions to Saussure (e.g. S1, 248), but in his famous ‘Rome discourse’ Lacan
establishes an opposition between parole and langage (and not, as Saussure does,
between parole and langue; see Lacan, 1953a) (see SPEECH).