Addendum to “The distributed invention of enunciation theory”

John E. Joseph
University of Edinburgh

A significant appearance of the term enunciation in work by Vilém Mathesius (1882–1946), a founding member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, is not mentioned in Joseph (2025), which aims to widen the received history of enunciation theory. ‘Enunciation’ is the counterpart to ‘theme’ in Mathesius’s (1929) functional sentence perspective. His equating of enunciation (replaced in the 1930s by ‘rheme’) with ‘psychological predicate’ links his use of the term to the aim in later enunciation theory of bringing speakers and speech events directly into linguistic analysis.

Publication history

Date received: 11 November 2025

Date accepted: 23 June 2026

Table of contents

In Joseph (2025) I survey a range of figures who contributed to the concept of énonciation ‘enunciation’ over the course of the 20th century. Enunciation is an approach to the analysis of language that is centred on speakers and the act of speaking, rather than, or in addition to, the language system (langue) and the texts produced using it (parole). I have proposed that enunciation should not be treated, as is sometimes done, as the creation of one scholar, Émile Benveniste, but rather as a ‘distributed’ invention by Benveniste and the others discussed, who include J. L. Austin, Charles Bally, Leonard Bloomfield, Jacques Damourette, Jean Dubois, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Bronisɬaw Malinowski, Édouard Pichon, Hendrik Pos and Tvetzan Todorov.

Funding

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Edinburgh.

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Address for correspondence

John E. Joseph

School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh EH8 9AD

United Kingdom

[email protected]
 
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