Speaking Speech and Spoken Speech

Merleau-Ponty's distinction in Part One Ch VI of Phenomenology of Perception between parole parlante (speaking speech, the act of creative expression) and parole parlée (spoken speech, the sedimented cultural world of available significations). The distinction is the 1945 version of what Signs and the 1954–55 courses will generalize into the broader theory of expression.

Key Points

  • Two modes of speech, not two languages: Speaking speech and spoken speech are not two different kinds of language but two modes of the same linguistic being-in-the-world. Speaking speech is the act; spoken speech is the sediment.
  • Speaking speech is where meaning is in a "nascent state": "In the former [speaking speech], the meaningful intention is in a nascent state. Here existence is polarized into a certain 'sense' that cannot be defined by any natural object; existence seeks to meet up with itself beyond being, and this is why it creates speech as the empirical support of its own non-being. Speech is the excess of our existence beyond natural being" (PhP, p. 237).
  • Spoken speech is the "acquired fortune" of available significations: "The act of expression constitutes a linguistic and cultural world, it makes that which stretched beyond fall back into being. This results in spoken speech, which enjoys the use of available significations like that of an acquired fortune. From these acquisitions, other authentic acts of expression — those of the writer, the artist, and the philosopher — become possible" (p. 237).
  • The distinction is grammatically active/passive: Parlante is the present participle — "speaking." Parlée is the past participle — "spoken." The grammar is the doctrine: one is active and creative, the other passive and inherited.
  • Language is continuous with gesture: The chapter's prior sections establish that "the linguistic gesture" is a species of bodily gesture; words are "ways of singing the world"; there are neither natural signs nor purely conventional signs. Speaking speech extends gestural expression; spoken speech sediments it.
  • Every act of speech draws on both: An authentic speaker uses the "acquired fortune" of spoken speech to articulate a new speaking speech. The writer, the artist, the philosopher all do this — they "create speech" while using the available significations that make the creation intelligible.

Details

The Argument Through Chapter VI

Part One Ch VI builds up to the distinction through a critique of both empiricist and intellectualist theories of aphasia. Neither can explain why words can lose their "living sense" without losing their "material support" — the patient repeats the word but cannot make it mean anything; conversely, patients can sometimes mean a color without having its name, and then the name "becomes their vehicle of access" to the meaning.

The negative result is that meaning is not in the word as a property of its physical substrate (empiricism) and is not associated to the word by pure thought (intellectualism). The positive proposal is that meaning inhabits the word as a linguistic gesture: the word, sounded out in a speaking body, is a modulation of existence that carries its sense with it. The body "sings the world" through the word.

The Distinction at the Chapter's Climax

Near the end of Ch VI, MP makes the distinction explicit:

By taking up a famous distinction, it might be said that languages [langages], that is, constituted systems of vocabulary and syntax, or the various empirically existing "means of expression," are the depository and the sedimentation of acts of speech [parole], in which the unformulated sense not only finds the means of expressing itself on the outside, but moreover acquires existence for itself, and is truly created as sense. Or again, the distinction could be made between a speaking speech and a spoken speech. (PhP, p. 237)

The "famous distinction" MP refers to is Saussure's langue (language as a constituted system) and parole (an individual act of speech). But MP transforms the distinction. For Saussure, langue and parole are different objects of linguistic analysis — langue is a social system, parole is an individual performance. For MP, parole parlante and parole parlée are not two objects; they are two modes of the single phenomenon of speech. Speaking speech is creative; spoken speech is sedimented. Every actual speech draws on both.

This is the 1945 anticipation of the late "indirect language" doctrine. In Signs (especially "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" and the 1960 Introduction) MP will generalize the distinction into the broader thesis that all language is indirect — that the speaking subject "operates at the edge of signs" through a diacritical grasp of what meanings are held in reserve as well as what meanings are said aloud.

Why the Distinction Matters

Three consequences follow from making the distinction.

First: language is not a closed system of pre-given significations. Speaking speech generates new significations by articulating them for the first time. The writer, the philosopher, the child learning to speak are all performing acts of speaking speech — taking up the sedimented language they have inherited and using it to say what was never said before.

Second: spoken speech is the condition of possibility of speaking speech. You cannot create meaning from nothing; every new articulation has to take up, transform, and extend the available significations. Speaking speech is parasitic on spoken speech in the way that innovation is parasitic on tradition.

Third: the two modes are continuously reversible. Today's speaking speech becomes tomorrow's spoken speech as it enters the language; today's spoken speech is taken up in a new speaking speech that reactivates its sedimented meanings. The two modes are not two ontological strata but two phases of a continuous process of linguistic self-transformation.

The Linguistic Gesture Doctrine

The speaking/spoken distinction rests on the prior doctrine of the linguistic gesture (Part One Ch VI.g–h). MP argues that there are "neither any natural signs nor any purely conventional signs." Natural signs would be things whose meaning is given by their physical structure alone; conventional signs would be things whose meaning is arbitrary stipulation. Neither exists in pure form. The Japanese smiles when angry where the Westerner turns red — so anger's "sign" is not natural. But the relation between the word "angry" and anger is not arbitrary either — "words, vowels, and phonemes are so many ways of singing the world" (p. 228), each language a distinctive way the human body takes up the emotional essence of things.

Speaking speech is the active version of this doctrine: the speaker's body sings the world into a new configuration. Spoken speech is the passive version: the body takes up a configuration that previous singers have already sedimented into the language.

The 1945–1960 Trajectory

The distinction between speaking and spoken speech undergoes substantial development across MP's corpus. In 1945 it is a late section of Part One Ch VI, doing a specific job in the speech chapter. The Prose of the World (drafted 1950–1952) is the earliest extended treatment of the parlante/parlée distinction, predating both the 1953 Collège de France course and Signs. PW ch.2 develops the distinction programmatically: the reader's encounter with a book becomes the exemplary case, captured in the reading-as-fire metaphor — "I start to read a book idly... suddenly, a few words move me, the fire catches, my thoughts are ablaze" (PW ch.2, pp.10-14). This passage dramatizes the moment sedimented language (parlée) tips into creative speech (parlante). By Signs (1960), the distinction is absorbed into the broader doctrine of indirect language, the coherent-deformation, the "voices of silence." The 1945 version is the seed.

MP's working note from the late 1950s (quoted in V&I) summarizes: "Speech is both a parole parlée and a parole parlante; what I say is both taken up in what has already been said and at the same time opens a dimension that had not yet been there."

Fire as the Parlé → Parlant Transition

The Prose of the World uses fire as MP's figure for the moment sedimented language (parlée) tips into creative speech (parlante). The anchors are tight and recurrent:

  • Ch. 2 p. 11: "I start to read a book idly... suddenly, a few words move me, the fire catches, my thoughts are ablaze" — reading is ignition, not decoding.
  • Ch. 2 p. 11: "a match near paper — my gesture receives inspired help from the things around" — expression as the spark by which an inert inheritance becomes active signification.
  • Chs. 2, 3, 5 (recurring): truth as a "spark" in dialogue — conversation as the occasion on which the diacritical system catches fire.

The PW extraction note's motif-weight scan logs this at STRUCTURAL weight: "fire is MP's figure for the moment when sedimented language tips into creative speech; the transition from parlé to parlant" (3 locations across 3 chapters). What the speaking/spoken distinction describes (an active phase-transition within the single phenomenon of speech), the fire figure dramatizes — ignition as the sudden non-gradual shift from inherited to creative usage.

The motif connects to a broader cross-source cluster: in MP's corpus, fire operates also elementally (the Heraclitean cosmos as "ever-living fire," via Kaushik 2019) and perceptually (the spark "between sensing and sensible" in *Eye and Mind* §2 — "the essay's hidden schema"). See flesh-as-element §"Motif Cluster: fire / ignition / spark" for the elemental and perceptual registers; the parlé → parlant ignition is the linguistic counterpart to what fire does in the flesh.

Positions

  • MP in 1945 introduces the distinction as a late section of the speech chapter; the argumentative work is done by the linguistic-gesture doctrine that precedes it, and the speaking/spoken distinction is its formalization.
  • MP in 1960 generalizes the distinction into the broader doctrine of indirect language, where all language is allusive, all meaning is "at the edge of signs," and the distinction between active creation and passive sedimentation governs every act of expression.
  • Saussure distinguishes langue and parole as a system and its performance. MP transforms the distinction: speaking and spoken speech are not different objects but different modes of a single phenomenon.
  • MP's late reading of Saussure (in the 1954–55 courses and in Signs) emphasizes the diacritical structure of language — meaning as differential, meaning "at the edge of signs" — and integrates this with the speaking/spoken distinction.
  • Humboldt's distinction between ergon (work) and energeia (activity) is the deep historical antecedent; MP does not cite it but the structural parallel is clear.

Connections

  • is the 1945 ancestor of indirect-language — Signs's late doctrine
  • is the 1945 ancestor of coherent-deformation — the stylistic-creative extension
  • is the linguistic version of motor-intentionality's distinction between actual and merely possible movement — speaking speech is to spoken speech as abstract movement is to concrete movement
  • is developed through the linguistic gesture doctrine (Part One Ch VI.g–h)
  • informs the later concepts of sedimentation and the "acquired"
  • is parallel to tacit cogito vs. spoken cogito — the same structure applied to self-presence
  • transforms Saussure's langue / parole distinction — from two objects to two modes of a single phenomenon
  • critiques both empiricist and intellectualist theories of language
  • is generalized in the 1954–55 courses and in Signs's theory of expression
  • applies to every expressive act: writer, philosopher, painter, child learning to speak
  • has fire as its transition-figure across flesh-as-element — PW uses fire for the parlée → parlante shift ("reading catches like a fire," ch. 2 p. 11); the same motif operates elementally (Kaushik on Heraclitus B217) and perceptually (E&M's "spark lit between sensing and sensible"); the three registers are one figure

Open Questions

  • Is the distinction stable, or does the phase-transition between speaking and spoken speech undo the distinction? Every new speaking speech immediately starts to sediment; every spoken speech can be reactivated into speaking. The distinction is phase-like rather than categorial.
  • How does speaking speech differ from what V&I will call "the voices of silence"? The late phrase is more tragic — silence is where genuine speech fails — while 1945 is more optimistic — every expressive act can succeed as speaking speech. Is this a change of mood or a change of doctrine?
  • Is the distinction presupposed by the doctrine of the tacit cogito? The same active/passive / creative/sedimented structure governs both. When MP retracts the tacit cogito in 1959, does the speaking/spoken distinction survive? (It seems to, though reconfigured.)
  • MP never explicitly connects the speaking/spoken distinction to the Sartrean existence/essence distinction. The parallel is striking: speaking is to spoken as existence is to essence. Was this parallel deliberate?

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — Part One Ch VI, especially subsections g–k (p. 226–240). The distinction is explicit on p. 237 ("a speaking speech and a spoken speech"). The surrounding argument — linguistic gesture, no natural or purely conventional signs, language as ways of singing the world — constitutes the doctrinal base.
  • merleau-ponty-1973-prose-of-the-world — earliest extended treatment of the parlante/parlée distinction; the reading-as-fire metaphor; ch.2 pp.10-14
  • merleau-ponty-1964-signs — the generalization into the doctrine of indirect language, in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" and the 1960 Introduction. The working note on parole parlante/parlée quoted by MP in his later years captures the mature formulation.
  • kee-2025-foreign-languages-phenomenology — connects the parlante / parlée distinction to PbP's terminology of parole / langue / langage and reads PbP as performatively enacting the distinction: "the meanings of terms are not fixed in advance but are always underway towards a further but never final determination" (Kee p. 76). PbP's interplay between sedimented meaning (spoken speech) and novel, creative meaning (speaking speech) is what allows MP to fashion his own technical vocabulary in the lectures themselves. This is a small but pointed observation: the doctrine as a doctrine is enacted by the very act of stating it. See kee-2025-foreign-languages-phenomenology §1.1, fn 3.