Re: [Foucault-L] Translation of énoncé to English

Dear all
To add to the muddle, but perhaps to clarify one or two points, the use of enonciation, enonce', were made current in French structuralism via the work of Emile Benveniste, especially Problems in General Linguistics. One of his key concepts was that of linguistic 'embrayeurs', or shifters, such as the I/you polarity. A short cut (I admit not authoritative, but quick) to Wikipedia, provides the following excerpt regarding the terms in question:

"A pivotal concept in Benveniste's work is the distinction between the énoncé and the énonciation, which grew out of his study on pronouns. The énoncé is the statement independent of context, whereas the énonciation is the act of stating as tied to context. In essence, this distinction moved Benveniste to see language itself as a "discursive instance" - fundamentally as discourse. This discourse is, in turn, the actual utilisation, the very enactment, of language.

Working in the Saussurian frame of reference, Benveniste was authoritative for writers such as Jakobson, Levi-Strauss (Benvenise was on his dissertation committee, then on the editorial board of the journal L'Homme), all the so-called structuralists (Barthes, Todorov, Genette), and certainly for Lacan and Foucault. However, in the structuralist domain, Greimas tended to edge out Benveniste since Greimas promoted the model developed by Hjelmslev rather than working in the Saussurian frame of reference. Still, Lacan's journal, La Psychanalyse, included in its first issue (1956) an essay by Benveniste on language in Freud's understanding of the unconscious.

Hope this helps.
CJ Stivale

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:17:13 +0100
>From: "Widder NE" <N.E.Widder@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] Translation of énoncé to English
>To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>I agree that it's not a very helpful translation, largely because -- if I understand the French correctly -- enonce has a more 'active' character than statement. I'm not sure, however, that it's Foucault's invention. Lacan was using the same term at that time (see, for Example, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) and it was similarly translated into English as 'statement'. I'm not sure which book was translated first, but whichever one it was could have set the precedent for the other.
>
>Nathan
>
>Dr. Nathan Widder
>Senior Lecturer in Political Theory
>Royal Holloway, University of London
>Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX
>http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Politics-and-IR/About-Us/Widder/Index.html
>http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s02/widder.html
>
>
>
>________________________________
>
>From: foucault-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of lister@xxxxxxxxx
>Sent: Fri 14/09/2007 13:36
>To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [Foucault-L] Translation of énoncé to English
>
>
>
>I have for a long time felt uneasy with the translation of French "énoncé" to English "statement" in the translation of for instance "The Archeology of Knowledge". It seems to me that "statement" is much closer the term like "frase" and "sentence" than "énoncé", which is definitely not what Foucault writes about in the archeology. Therefore, "statement" incites to misunderstandings of Foucault's concept.
>
>Would "enouncement" not be better? Though "enouncement" has a too formal and declaring sense, it emphasises that some meaning is expressed, and draws attention away for the linguistic aspects.
>
>(Off course, the basic problem is that Foucault coined a new concept.)
>
>Flemming
>
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