Saussurean Diacriticality

The thesis Merleau-Ponty draws from Saussure — that signs are "negative, diacritical, conventional" and that "in operating on each other they constitute a structure that is homologous to that of the signified" — used at the 1953 Collège course *The Literary Use of Language* as the Saussure-correction of Valéry's "mystical union" of sound and sense. The bond between expression and what is expressed is not concept-to-sound but differences-in-significations to differences-in-signs. The thesis is operative across MP's mature language philosophy, from the *Prose of the World* manuscript through the Signs essays.

Key Points

  • The Saussure-correction (ILUL L6 [64]–[66]): Valéry's "mystical union" between sound and sense is "founded in reason, not miraculous" once Saussurean diacriticality is read correctly. Anchor quote: "Cf. Saussure saying that signs are 'negative,' 'diacritical,' and conventional" (L6 [65]).
  • Homology, not identity: the structure of sign-differences is homologous to the structure of signified-differences. This dissolves the associationist linguistics MP rejects (sound-image → concept-image) without collapsing into pure conventionalism.
  • Operative across MP's corpus: the diacritical thesis is the apparatus underlying expressivity, indirect-language, and the late "flesh of language" register. The thesis is applied on concept pages such as expressivity and indirect-language without always being named.
  • Against the Saussure-derivation of language from sociology: MP's appropriation of Saussure is selective. He uses the diacritical theory but rejects the reduction of language to a social fact (ILUL L2 [29]–[30]).

What the Concept Does

The concept performs a philological-philosophical function: it gives MP an explicit linguistic-theoretical mechanism for the indirect character of expression. Without the diacritical thesis, MP's claim that expression "shows facts without saying their effect" (indirect-objective-lyricism) looks like a literary preference; with it, the indirectness becomes a structural feature of signification as such. The concept is also a defensive tool: it lets MP appropriate post-Saussurean structural linguistics for phenomenology without collapsing phenomenology into structuralism.

Connections

  • is the structural-linguistic apparatus of expressivity — the operation by which a "fold of language" indicates a "depth of thought" (L6 [67] marginal) presupposes diacritical structure.
  • is the structural-linguistic apparatus of indirect-language — the Signs essay "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" (June–July 1952) is contemporaneous with ILUL.
  • contrasts with associationist linguistics — sound-image-to-concept-image bond is what diacriticality replaces.
  • is selectively appropriated by MP against Saussure's own sociological derivation of language (ILUL L2 [29]–[30]).

Open Questions

  • Exact philological relation between MP's reading of Saussure and the Cours editions available to him (1916 first edition vs. later editions).
  • Whether MP's appropriation depends on the "langue/parole" distinction explicitly, or only on the diacritical-sign thesis.

Sources