On the subject's experience of meaning in language. The views of a number of phenomenologists - Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur - are presented and compared with the linguistic theories of structuralism and of Chomsky. The central thesis is that while language as structure is dependent on historical acts of usage, these same speech acts logically presuppose the formal laws according to which they can take place. This thesis culminates in an analysis of metaphor.