Benveniste

Benveniste says that you can NEVER use language objectively. Even if you delete the
markers of personality (subjectivity) you cannot delete the pronoun “I” so, there is subjectivity. Other
words which replace the word subjectivity are “ego” or “self” (psychological words). He says that
when someone says the pronoun “I” is “he or she” who uses the language to say “I”, so it is empty,
it doesn’t have a meaning. He called these words deitic, that is to say, they only have meaning in
context. So, when the speaker appropriates the language and says “I think abortion should be made
legal”, that speaker, at that precise moment, becomes a subject. So, subjectivity is self or ego if you
think the psychological terms; which is fine, because Sassure says that Linguistics is included within
a more general science, but it’s also insufficient because there is not such thing as an ego devoid
of language. In order to you for recognize yourself as who you are, you need to take possession of
language, and that’s why he says Subjectivity in language. So, what’s subjectivity? It is when the
subject appropriates the language to speak.
The Formal Apparatus of Enunciation:
The paper is concerned with the linguistic markers of subjectivity, because the only proof we
have that we exist is language. He defines enunciation as a process of appropriation of the system
of language by the very act of producing an utterance.
He distinguishes:
- Deitic makers:
❖ Personal pronouns
✓ Subjective
✓ Objective
✓ Impersonal (one)
❖ Quantifiers
❖ Possessives
✓ Adjectives
✓ Pronouns
❖ Demonstratives
❖ Modality
✓ Assertions
✓ Interrogatory
✓ Exclamatory
✓ Imperative
✓ Pronouns
➢ Attitudinal adverbs (qualify the locution)
▪ Metatextual markers (fossilized expressions)
For example:
The locution:
Objective pronoun. Subjective pronoun.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the DRS going to cost 1 billion!? Markers of modality
(exclamatory and interrogatory)
Metatextual marker The rest of the locution (What the
speaker is talking about, the message)
 There is a metatextual marker starting the locution, then the message. The speaker has made
his presence known by means of the subjective pronoun. Then there are markers of modality, they
are exclamatory and interrogatory. This locution expresses subjectivity (the subject’s point of view)
because the speaker is reinforcing or making a point by asserting an opinion with a strong emotional
content (or appeal) to the statement; that’s why it is not information. This would be the point of the
locution, according to Benveniste.

Benveniste then singles out the linguistic sign “I” which generates unlike any other sign
because it is essentially link to the exercise of language (the act of enunciation). He argues that until
the subject appropriates the system, there is no language. So, the only important thing is the act of
producing language. That reservoir that Saussure mentions that is in the collectivity is there, but if
we didn’t appropriate it, it wouldn’t have an existence. The sign “I” links Saussure’s hitherto two
separate dimensions of language (langue and parole). He says that these two dimensions of
language converge in the pronoun “I”, so langue and parole intersect in the pronoun “I” the moment
the speaker appropriates the language. And by saying that, he is also saying that the collective and
the individual converge. The moment I speak, the collectivity is in me. We are spoken. The whole
collectivity speaks through us. We are a patchwork of discourses. There is no subject until you
appropriate the language, so the ego appropriates the language and, at the moment I open my
mouth to speak, langue (the multitude) and parole (me speaking and using the language for a
purpose) intersect. That’s why we are spoken, because that collective dimension of langue at the
moment you appropriate the formal apparatus of enunciation, becomes you: the multitude, the
collectivity becomes the one. It is this property that establishes the basis for individual discourse, in
which each speaker takes all the resources of language for his or her own behalf.

The implications are: even if we eliminate / omit the pronoun “I” from our enunciation, there
is always a speaking “I”, and so objectivity is impossible, there is no such thing as an objective
discourse. Even if we speak about science articles where markers are omitted (the pronoun I, for
example), there is no objectivity in reporting, the reporter always brings his or her ideologies,
attitudes, etc. Gee calls them contextual models, that is to say, explanations about the world. The
way you explain the world, and the way you are explained the world, is who you are.