Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy of Language
Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy of Language
Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy of Language
Originary Language
Howdowearticulate,speakof,write,orbringintopresenceforourselvesorfor
anothersomethingthathasneverbeenarticulatedbefore?Howdoweexpresstheasyet
tobeexpressed?AccordingtoMerleauPonty,itisthroughtheoriginarylanguage.
Language, as Merleau-Ponty thinks of it, is unquestionably an originating
realm, a dimension of the meaning-forming process in which new configurations of
meaning can be brought into being.8 In discussing language, he distinguished between the
authentic use of language, where original meaning-formation takes place, and a use of
language involving ready-made formations. Originary language is the authentic
speech, the first-hand speech.9 Merleau-Ponty differentiates this type of language
fromsecondorderexpressionwhichisforhiminauthenticspeechaboutspeech. 10
3
Anteriortoconventionalmeansofexpression,whichrevealmythoughtstoothersonlybecause
already,forbothmyselfandthem,meaningsareprovidedforeachsign,andwhichinthissense
doesnotgiverisetocommunicationatall,wemustrecognizeaprimaryprocessofsignification,
inwhichthethingexpresseddoesnotexistapartfromtheexpression,andinwhichthesigns
themselvesinducetheirsignificanceexternally.11
Speech as Gesture
The subtitle suggests the apparent antipathy of Merleau-Ponty to the conception
of the speaking subject as a disembodied consciousness. For him, the human speaker is a
body. Speaking is a bodily activity which is analogous to other uses of body in certain
fundamental ways. The body in general is the best analogue for the speaking body.16
In Merleau-Pontys The Childs Relations with Others, he again presented
speech in the context of action, as it is used, and as it is acquired. The acquisition of
language takes place not by an intellectual operation, but by a sort of habituation, a use
of language as tool or instrument. 17 A language learned is in relation to our power to
speak, as limbs are to the power to move. Speech therefore is a spontaneous act of the
body and not the dominant idea of the thought/language parallelism.
In order to see how the act of speaking is able to capture and convey a sense of
meaning we must first look to the power of speech as a power of gesture. Gesture is
understood here in its broadest sense which includes physical movements, signals and
even pantomimes which are essentially communicative. Gestures meanings are not
cognitively understood or intellectually deciphered. Rather, the gestures I witness
outlines an intentional object, brings certain perceptible bits of the world to my notice
inviting my concurrence.18 The meaning of the gesture is not alongside or behind it, but
4
intermingled with the structure of the world outlined by the gesture. 19 The meaning of
the gesture could be grasped in the reciprocity of embodied beings. In seizing the
meaning of a gesture it is as if the other persons intention inhabited my body and mine
his.20 There is a sort of synchronization of ones existence with the other which in effect
draws one into the others world and the others into him. So behind the possibility of our
deliberate collaborations is our unconstructed intuitive capacity for reading and
following others mute behavior.21
In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty emphatically declares that
the spoken word is a genuine gesture and it contains its meaning in the same way as the
gesture contains its.22 Like the gesture, the word bears within itself its meaning; a
meaning which is not of a disembodied subject. Like gesture, speech is the subjects
taking up of a position in the world and brings about, for both the speakers and hearers a
structural co-ordination of experience.23
Furthermore, language discloses not only to the listeners, but to the speaker as
well. The harnessing of a signification in language endows both the listener and the
speaker with a new sense organ,24 and opens for both new fields of experience. Thus,
my spoken words surprise me myself and teach me my thought.25
Language expresses ones ways of being-in-the-world. Going beyond the
conceptual connotation of the meaning of a word, one will discover the gestural meaning
of the words which possesses immanent significance. Different languages, having its own
nuances, have their own respective ways of expressing their ways of being-in-the-world.
Silence
The theme of silence is perhaps the most arresting feature of Merleau-Pontys
philosophy of speech. In The Body as Expression, and Speech, Merleau-Ponty wants to
address the problems of (1) how can language start? And (2) how can language grow?
His single answer is the theory of speech as gesture. But this answer of his remained
incomplete before the notion of silence is further articulated.
Silence for Merleau-Ponty is not just the prehistory of speech but is the empty
which awaits saturation. This silence is alive so to say. It is an absence whose presence
weighs almost tangibly upon us who speak, which at once generates, propels and
magnetizes discourse.29 Signification arouses speech as the world arouses our body, by a
mute presence which awakens our intentions without deploying itself before them. 30 It is
signification or meaning itself.
Merleau-Ponty refers to silence in many ways: as speech before it is spoken, a
mute presence, lack asking to be made good, a determinate gap. Though silence is
a gap, something felt to be missing, it is a determinate emptiness, its boundaries
described by all that is already expressed or said. Silence, then, is the lurking
signification that has not found its voice; it is an idea. This idea is not arrived at but
some sort of static or contemplative mental state or a finished performance; it is a power
to organize discourse in a coherent way.31 Silence, therefore, is always incomplete. So in
authentic speech, there is an inauguration of a continuing dialogue rather than an
accomplishment. Without the background of silence which surrounds speech, it would
say nothing.
There is always silence not only antecedent to language but behind the already
formed calculus of language, beneath the usual chatter, between the words of the lexicon
and all the structures of language; there is always the yet-unmeant, yet-unthought and the
yet-unsaid. The insistent problem of the origin of language is no matter of discovering
some obscure historical fact, but it is the immense and ponderous task of understanding
this one particular case of our always present and open-ended possibility of creating new
meanings and conveying them, which Merleau-Ponty calls an irrational power.32
Although language wants to lay claim of the things themselves, the effort still
remains idealistic. Speech surges out toward what it signifies, toward reality. But in
understanding reality what we grasp are meanings, and meanings are never entirely
extricable from the intercourse of signs. And for this, Merleau-Ponty states that language
is uncommunicative of anything other than itself.33
Conclusion
Marleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Language was used as an apology for
Husserls Crisis of European Thought. It was basically a response against the rampant
way of thinking during their time which was characterized as a reductive way of making
6
humans as mere external forces. Humans were merely seen as response-based agents who
do not have any personhood.
Merleau-Pontys study of language acquisition of the children for example
presented counter paradigmatic claims against the kind of thought Europe has then. For
him, though external forces were received by children, they converted it in ways that
were sensible to them, even very surprising for adults.
The point Merleau-Ponty wanted to drive at was that there was something original
in each and every one of us. Language was a proof of our personhood though at times
contested.
ENDNOTES
1
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans by Colin Smith (New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1962) p. 174. henceforth, PP.
2
The orientation toward speech as an individual act or performance in a concrete text, and toward the speaker-audience relation. See Margareta
Urban Coyne, Merleau-Ponty on Language: an interrupted journey toward a phenomenology of speaking, International Philosophical Quarterly 20/3
(1980), p. 308. Henceforth, Coyne.
3
PP, p. 174.
4
Cf. PP, pp. 174-176.
5
Ibid., p. 177.
6
The usual theoretical accounts holds the dichotomy between the mind and the expressed words. There is only the sequential processes
meaning/expression, thinking/saying, stimulus/response, etc. See Coyne, p. 311.
7
Merleau-Ponty, Introduction to that Collection included in the Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1964), p. 19.
8
Ibid.
9
Cf. Ibid., p. 178-179.
10
Ibid. p. 178. See also Samuel Mallin, Merleau-Pontys Philosophy (London: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 183. henceforth, Mallin.
11
PP, p. 166.
12
Cf. Ibid.
13
Mallin., p. 183.
14
PP., p. 183.
15
Cf. Ibid., pp. 184-193.
16
Coyne, p. 313.
17
Merleau-Ponty, The Childs Relations with Others included in the Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1964), p. 99.
18
PP, p. 186.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., p. 185.
21
Coyne, p. 315.
22
PP, p. 183.
23
Ibid., p. 193.
24
Ibid., p. 182.
25
Merleau-Ponty, On the Phenomenology of Language, included in Signs, trans Richard C. McClearly (Evanston, III, Norwestern University
Press, 1964), p. 87. Henceforth, PL.
26
Coyne, p. 318.
27
PP, p. 184.
28
Coyne, p. 319.
29
Ibid., p. 320.
30
PL, p. 89.
31
Coyne, p. 320.
32
PP, p. 189.
33
PP, p. 188.