Addendum to “The distributed invention of enunciation theory”

In Joseph (2025)Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. 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.

Benveniste’s 1970Benveniste, Émile 1970 “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation”. Langages 17.12–18. Repr. in Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale 2. 79–88. Paris: Gallimard 1974 Benveniste, Émile 1970 “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation”. Langages 171.12–18. Repr. in Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale 21. 79–88. Paris: Gallimard 1974  article “L’appareil formel de l’énonciation” (The formal apparatus of enunciation) is often cited as the locus classicus of the concept and approach. It surprisingly does not mention Dubois’s “Énoncé et énonciation” (Utterance and enunciation), which appeared a year earlier in the same journal, Langages. Neither does Dubois cite any earlier work by Benveniste; but he does note that

L’opposition entre l’énoncé, le texte réalisé et l’énonciation, acte de production du texte, apparaît avec les analyses de la linguistique européenne, à la convergence des études des formalistes sur les structures narratives et de celles de la stylistique pragoise et genevoise. […] L’énonciation est présentée soit comme le surgissement du sujet dans l’énoncé, soit comme la relation que le locuteur entretient par le texte avec l’interlocuteur, ou comme l’attitude du sujet parlant à l’égard de son énoncé.(Dubois 1969Dubois, Jean 1969 “Énoncé et énonciation”. Langages 13. 100–110. Dubois, Jean 1969 “Énoncé et énonciation”. Langages 131. 100–110. : 100)

The opposition between the utterance, the realised text, and the enunciation, act of producing the text, appears with the analyses of European linguistics, when the studies of the formalists on narrative structures converge with those of Prague and Geneva stylistics. […] The enunciation is presented either as the emergence of the subject in the utterance, or as the relationship which the speaker entertains with the interlocutor through the text, or as the attitude of the speaker with regard to the utterance.(My translation)

Geneva stylistics obviously refers to Bally (1932)Bally, Charles 1932 Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Paris: Ernest Leroux.Bally, Charles 1932 Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Paris: Ernest Leroux., the first section of which is entitled ‘Théorie générale de l’énonciation’ (General theory of enunciation). However Joseph (2025)Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. Joseph, John E. 2025 “The Distributed Invention of Enunciation Theory”. Historiographia Linguistica 52:1. 1–40. does not specify anything about the Prague stylistics to which Dubois refers, and the present addendum addresses that lacuna.

The role of Vilém Mathesius (1882–1946) as a founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle is particularly remembered as we mark its centenary in 2026.11.For a full account of Mathesius’s life and work see Trnka (1946)Trnka, Bohumil 1946 “Vilém Mathesius”. Časopis pro moderní filologii 39. 3–13. English trans. by Vladimir Honsa in Portraits of Linguists: A biographical source book for the history of Western linguistics, 1746–1963, vol. 2, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 474–489. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1967.Trnka, Bohumil 1946 “Vilém Mathesius”. Časopis pro moderní filologii 391. 3–13. English trans. by Vladimir Honsa in Portraits of Linguists: A biographical source book for the history of Western linguistics, 1746–1963, vol. 21, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 474–489. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1967.. He pursued a functionalist approach to language, in which the functionalism meant bringing speakers into the analysis. Mathesius’s linguistická charakteristika ‘linguistic characterology’ starts from the view that different language-cultures use language for different functional purposes, which need to be taken into account: structural analysis is not enough on its own. He lays out his vision of characterology in Mathesius (1927)Mathesius, Vilém 1927 “Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpytu” [‘Linguistic characterology and its place within modern linguistics’]. Časopis pro moderní filologii 13. 35–40.Mathesius, Vilém 1927 “Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpytu” [‘Linguistic characterology and its place within modern linguistics’]. Časopis pro moderní filologii 131. 35–40., then develops it further in a paper which he wrote and delivered in English at the First International Congress of Linguists (Mathesius 1929Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964.Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964.).22.Vachek (1964: 7) calls Mathesius (1929)Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964.Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964. the “modified English version” of Mathesius (1927)Mathesius, Vilém 1927 “Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpytu” [‘Linguistic characterology and its place within modern linguistics’]. Časopis pro moderní filologii 13. 35–40.Mathesius, Vilém 1927 “Lingvistická charakteristika a její místo v moderním jazykozpytu” [‘Linguistic characterology and its place within modern linguistics’]. Časopis pro moderní filologii 131. 35–40., and although the main thrust is maintained, the modifications are considerable. Here we find eleven occurrences of enunciation in an eight-page paper.33.Krásová (2023Krásová, Eva 2023 “The General Meaning as a Potential”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 55:1. 37–54. Krásová, Eva 2023 “The General Meaning as a Potential”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 55:1. 37–54. : 49, n.10) mentions Mathesius’s use of enunciation, and although the article is concerned with how Mathesius’s approach relates to that of Benveniste and Jakobson, the focus is on how, in their work and that of Louis Hjelmslev and others, diversity within linguistic categories is potentially constrained by a Gesamtbedeutung ‘general meaning’. Mathesius defines it in terms of how it contrasts with theme: “By the terms ‘theme’ and ‘enunciation’ I mean what is usually called the psychological subject and psychological predicate, respectively” (Mathesius 1929Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964.Mathesius, Vilém 1929 “On Linguistic Characterology with Illustrations from Modern English”. Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes, du 10–15 avril 1928 à la Haye, 56–63. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Repr. in A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, ed. by Josef Vachek, 59–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1964.: 58, n.1).

This pairing will become the enduring rhyming duo theme and rheme (or Thema and Rhema). It represents a ‘functional’ alternative to the traditional subject and predicate, which are ‘grammatical’ concepts, the subject being prototypically a noun marked as nominative in inflecting languages (or a gerund, clause etc.), and the predicate containing a verb along with any adjuncts.44.For a full account of functional analysis and how it helped Czech linguists to integrate the relatively free word order of the Slavic languages with the perspective of linguists specialising in Germanic and Romance, see Hajičová, Partee & Sgall (1998)Hajičová, Eva, Barbara Hall Partee & Petr Sgall 1998 Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content. Dordrecht: Springer. Hajičová, Eva, Barbara Hall Partee & Petr Sgall 1998 Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content. Dordrecht: Springer. . Theme and enunciation/rheme are ‘psychological’ in the sense of being what the speaker is thinking of, “what the speaker is talking about” (theme), and “what the speaker says about the theme” (enunciation/rheme) (Daneš 1994Daneš, František 1994 “Prague School Functionalism as a Precursor of Text Linguistics”. Cahiers de l’ILSL, no 5, L’École de Prague: L’apport épistémologique, ed. by Patrick Sériot & Mortéza Mahmoudian, 117–126. Lausanne: L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.Daneš, František 1994 “Prague School Functionalism as a Precursor of Text Linguistics”. Cahiers de l’ILSL, no 5, L’École de Prague: L’apport épistémologique, ed. by Patrick Sériot & Mortéza Mahmoudian, 117–126. Lausanne: L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.: 123). For example:

In both sentences, John will be marked as subject in a language that has nominative case, but the functional analysis shows how, on the ‘psychological’ level, John and a sandwich have in common that they are what is being ‘talked about’ in the two sentences — who or what we are being told something about. This is some distance from what enunciation theory will come to be concerned with, so it is not surprising that Mathesius has not had his role much acknowledged. Daneš notes too that ‘enunciation’ is ambiguous in Mathesius, referring to “an utterance (as an elementary communicative unit, enunciation)” within which “two portions can be distinguished”, the theme and “the enunciation proper (later on called the rheme — what the speaker says about the theme)” (ibid., italics in original). In the broader sense of a communicative unit, what distinguishes ‘enunciations’ from ‘sentences’ is that the former “appear in a context and situation, are associated with a certain speaker’s intention and with a communicative effect” (ibid.). This is where we find the link with the later uses of enunciation that Dubois implies in his allusion to Prague stylistics.55.Eva Krásová (e-mail to the author, 7 Nov. 2025) points out that enunciation, in the broader sense of the whole sentence as realised in speech (rather than its abstract structure), corresponds to what will Czech linguists will call by two concurrent terms, výpověď (e.g. in Mathesius 1930Mathesius, Vilém 1930 “O tak zvaném aktuálním členění větném” [‘On the so-called Functional Sentence Perspective’]. Slovo a Slovesnost 5. 171–174.Mathesius, Vilém 1930 “O tak zvaném aktuálním členění větném” [‘On the so-called Functional Sentence Perspective’]. Slovo a Slovesnost 51. 171–174.) and promluva (e.g. in Skalička 1937Skalička, Vladimír 1937 “Promluva jako lingvistický pojem (L’enunciation [sic] comme notion de la linguistique)”. Slovo a Slovestnost 3. 163–166.Skalička, Vladimír 1937 “Promluva jako lingvistický pojem (L’enunciation [sic] comme notion de la linguistique)”. Slovo a Slovestnost 31. 163–166.).

Nerlich & Clarke (1996Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke 1996 Language, Action and Context: The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America, 1780–1930. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke 1996 Language, Action and Context: The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America, 1780–1930. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. : 91) state that

There seems to be a direct link from Weil [1844]Weil, Henri 1844 De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes: Question de grammaire générale. Paris: Joubert.Weil, Henri 1844 De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes: Question de grammaire générale. Paris: Joubert. through Ammann, who replaced ‘psychological subject and predicate’ by Thema and Rhema (1928; II. Teil: Der Satz, p. 3), to Mathesius, to functional sentence perspective.
(cf. Firbas 1992Firbas, Jan 1992 “The Why’s and the How’s in my Research into Functional Sentence Perspective”. Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in honour of René Dirven on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Martin Pütz, 335–358. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Firbas, Jan 1992 “The Why’s and the How’s in my Research into Functional Sentence Perspective”. Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in honour of René Dirven on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, ed. by Martin Pütz, 335–358. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. : 357)66.The German linguist Hermann Ammann (1885–1956) was, from 1928, Professor of Indo-European and General Linguistics at Innsbruck. Nerlich & Clarke (1996)Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke 1996 Language, Action and Context: The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America, 1780–1930. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke 1996 Language, Action and Context: The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America, 1780–1930. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. is too often ready to claim a ‘direct link’ where there is little or no evidence of one, but here the claim is cogent. Graffi (2001Graffi, Giorgio 2001 200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Graffi, Giorgio 2001 200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. : 125) contributes some added confusion when he uses ‘enunciation’ to translate Adolf Noreen’s (1854–1925) Aussprache, “an utterance whose meaning consists of a single thought, namely of a single judgement’ (Noreen 1923Noreen, Adolf 1923 Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Sprache. Halle: Max Niemeyer.Noreen, Adolf 1923 Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Betrachtung der Sprache. Halle: Max Niemeyer.: 239), equating it with mening in Noreen’s native Swedish. Nevertheless Graffi’s detailed account of how ‘enunciation’ developed in Mathesius’s work is thorough and insightful.

The confusing overlap between ‘enunciation’ as a communicative unit and ‘enunciation proper’ makes it easy to see why Rhema/rheme won out, becoming the term with which Prague School stylistics and pragmatics is associated.77.On what ‘stylistics’ covered in the Prague context, see Daneš (1994Daneš, František 1994 “Prague School Functionalism as a Precursor of Text Linguistics”. Cahiers de l’ILSL, no 5, L’École de Prague: L’apport épistémologique, ed. by Patrick Sériot & Mortéza Mahmoudian, 117–126. Lausanne: L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.Daneš, František 1994 “Prague School Functionalism as a Precursor of Text Linguistics”. Cahiers de l’ILSL, no 5, L’École de Prague: L’apport épistémologique, ed. by Patrick Sériot & Mortéza Mahmoudian, 117–126. Lausanne: L’Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage de l’Université de Lausanne.: 119–122). Nevertheless, Mathesius’s use of the term ‘enunciation’ has a historical priority that merits further investigation.