Le problème de la parole. Cours au Collège de France, Notes, 1953-1954

Author(s): Maurice Merleau-Ponty Year: Course delivered 3 December 1953 – April 1954; manuscript published 2020 (MétisPresses, Genève) Type: lecture-course (Collège de France preparatory notes) Citation scheme: BNF foliotage [N] followed by MP's own pagination (n); e.g., PbP [f. 38(4)]. A v after the folio number marks the verso side of the leaf. Translation status: No published English translation as of 2026. All citations below in French.

The Collège de France lecture course of MP's first full year on the chair, given on Thursday afternoons between 3 December 1953 and the start of April 1954. It runs parallel to MP's Monday afternoon course of the same academic year, Recherches sur l'usage littéraire du langage (ILUL); the two are companion courses on the same problem from different sides — PbP from linguistics, aphasia, and child psychology; ILUL from Valéry, Stendhal, and Proust as literary practitioners. PbP follows on from Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression (1953, the first course) and immediately precedes L'institution. La passivité (1954-55). Per the postface by Franck Robert (Postface §1), it is "the centre névralgique" of the first phase of MP's ontological turn — the moment at which his middle-period reflection on expression starts to crystallize as the late ontology of écart, niveau, pli, and the sensible idea.

The course turns on the proposition that the problem of speech is not the cataloguing of language but the paradox of adherence: how a particular language can both be a contingent grammatical system and a means of reaching toward being. The course's positive solution comes from a critical-philosophical reading of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale, supplemented by the aphasia work of Kurt Goldstein, the child-language work of Roman Jakobson and Françoise Dolto-Marette (the empirical case of Helen Keller is exemplary), and the literary work of Marcel Proust as a "philosopher malgré lui."

Core Arguments

Claim: The problem of speech is the problem of adherence: a speech-act both belongs to a particular language (with its contingent grammatical structure) and reaches toward being. MP's solution: "il y a dépassement dans l'adhérence même" (PbP [12v(12)]) — transcendence is achieved through (not against) linguistic adherence. Because: Both German metaphysics and logicism fail by missing this. German metaphysics universalizes the Indo-European verb "être" as ontologically primary (citing Fourquet, "La notion de verbe"). Logicism (Vienna Circle, Carnap) claims to extract a "pure syntax" but tacitly elevates Indo-European structure to universal grammar. Both errors are forms of subjectivism — naïve adhesion or refined adhesion — and both are exposed by comparative linguistics, which reveals the Einseitigkeit (one-sidedness) of any particular language. Against: (a) Idealist conception of language as transparent garment of pre-formed thought; (b) German metaphysics (Heidegger included, though not named); (c) Logicism / Vienna Circle / Carnap; (d) Historicism / relativism. Location: PbP 6–[16(?)]; introduction; Lessons 1-2 (3 and 10 December 1953).
Claim: Saussure's diacritical theory of meaning — "dans la langue, il n'y a que des différences" (CLG p. 166, cited PbP [26v(36)]) — provides the conceptual tools to think transcendence-in-adherence. Meaning is positional, not substantial; signification is the écart between signs. Because: At PbP [26v(36)] MP writes in the margin: "le signe (et la signification) = écart." The valeur linguistique (Saussure CLG p. 159 ff.) is the différence with all other terms of the language; "la langue est une forme et non une substance" (CLG p. 169, cited PbP [28v(40)]). The signifier and signified are both "non réalités positives, «idée» et «chose», mais différences, plis dans pensée ou langue" (PbP 27). MP fuses Saussurean diacritical theory with Gestalt theory: "Le signe ≠ son auquel s'ajoute un sens, mais son faisant sens comme figure sur fond" (PbP 43). Against: Atomistic / nomenclature view of language; Humboldtian Sprachgeist read as pre-linguistic; behaviorism (Pavlov-Bloomfield); cybernetic theories of language as information-transmission. Location: PbP [22v(28)]–[30(41)] (introduction's positive movement); cardinal écart marginal at [26v(36)].
Claim: Saussure's framework, generalized, implies innere Sprachform (Humboldt via Goldstein): "Le langage à comprendre non comme somme de signes et somme de significations mais comme innere Sprachform" (PbP [28v(40)]). Each language is a global position of a world (PbP [28v(40)]). Because: With Goldstein's analysis of aphasia and Humboldt's innere Sprachform as global linguistic form, language can be re-read as a structural way of articulating world rather than as a sum of signs. MP de-essentializes Humboldt: there is no pre-linguistic Geist animating language from above; the innere Sprachform is the structural manner of articulation that is the active language. Against: Humboldt read substantively (Sprachgeist pre-existing langue); Cassirer's intellectualist reading of aphasia; localizationist neurology. Location: PbP [28v(40)] (introduction's bridge to Humboldt); developed at length in Première Partie II ("La désintégration de la parole") at PbP 80–[90].
Claim: Child acquisition of language is not the addition of significations to sounds but a global restructuration of the prelinguistic field. Sons become "sons signifiants" by deflation of the babbling repertoire and by an affective-existential reorganization of the dyadic field with the (m)other. Because: With Jakobson, MP records the phonemic deflation of babbling (PbP [58](10 suppl.)). But MP refuses Jakobson's intellectualism: sounds do not become signifying by acquiring a concept; they become signifying by the global reorganization of the prelinguistic field. The mother's voice institutes "distance à soi" (PbP 74), a "rupture de l'indivision" that is structurally a precondition of Mit-Sein. The sibling-birth analysis (Dolto-Marette) shows that "acquisition schème passé-présent-futur" (PbP 62) accompanies the affective-relational displacement. Helen Keller's case is exemplary: language is not added to perception but transforms the perceived world itself — "Tout l'être devient point d'appui de parole possible, i.e. libération des significations par le fait qu'elles sont désormais maniables" (PbP [77v(1)]). Against: Cognitivist / intellectualist theories (Jakobson at his most rationalist, Piaget for adultomorphism); the "decentered child = mature child" model that MP attributes to Piaget; Sartre's "collision de ma Sinngebung et de celle d'autrui" (rejected at PbP 66). Location: PbP [56]–[78v(2)] (Première Partie I, "L'acquisition de la parole"). Lessons 5-7 (28 January, 4 and 11 February 1954). Helen Keller at PbP 77–[78v(2)]; Dolto-Marette at 62–[67]; mother's voice at 74–[76(21)].
Claim: Aphasia is not the suppression of words but the suppression of the power of differentiation — "retour à l'amorphe" (PbP [82v(6)]). With Goldstein, MP argues that the various aphasias are global modes of being-in-the-world, not local memory losses. Because: Schneider (Goldstein's case; PbP 80 writes "S," for Schneider) loses attitude catégoriale — the capacity to "varier figure et fond, saisir l'essentiel d'un processus, orientation sur le possible, productivité, formation d'un creux" (PbP 80). Aphasia is, structurally, the negative confirmation of the parole as articulation-of-world thesis: when the articulation power is lost, the world returns to amorphe and the patient is reduced to "geistige Tierheit" (Hegel) — automatic verbal behavior without expression vraie. The cardinal formula: "parler ≠ avoir des signes pour des concepts, mais pouvoir articuler le monde, avant les concepts et les signes" (PbP [82v(6)]). Against: Both empiricist (associative-storage) and intellectualist (separable-concept) theories of aphasia; localizationist neurology; Cassirer on aphasia (PbP 80 note 5). Location: PbP 80–[90] (Première Partie II, "La désintégration de la parole"). Lessons 7-8 (11 and 18 February 1954). Continues the PoP 1945 treatment of Schneider in Ch VI ("Le corps comme expression et la parole").
Claim: Proust is a "philosopher-phenomenologist malgré lui" — his literary work realizes, in literary form, the same thesis the course is articulating philosophically: that there are no pre-given Platonic essences behind appearance; truth is in the sensible, accessed through the writer's style as "vision, not technique" (Proust TR II 43, cited PbP [120v(8)]). Because: The Bergotte deception (PbP 100) — the narrator finds in Bergotte's "ingénieur pressé" conversation no trace of the literary parole that animated his books — exposes the écart between parole empirique and parole littéraire. The Elstir painting at Balbec (PbP 104–106) — sea described in urban terms, town in maritime terms — shows that "la peinture refait un langage, ou fait que les apparences mêmes parlent les unes des autres, c'est un langage des choses" (PbP [105v(6)]). The Vinteuil sonata (PbP [107]–[110]) demonstrates essence alogique, universel sans concept, objectivité par l'individu: "La musique est «idées» en tant qu'elle est communication de prise sur l'univers, sur l'être" (PbP [110]). Against: Platonism; Sartre's "Qu'est-ce que la littérature?" (1947) and the committed-prose/poetry distinction; Sainte-Beuvian biographical reduction; intellectualist readings of art as "ideas in pretty form"; Sartre's "Présentation des Temps modernes" criticism of Proust as bourgeois (PbP [134v(9)] note 2). Location: PbP [93]–[127] (Deuxième Partie). Lessons 9-11 (25 February, 4, 11, 18, 25 March 1954). Bergotte at 100–101; Elstir at 104–[106v(7)]; Vinteuil at [107]–[110].
Claim (course's central synthetic thesis, stated explicitly in the conclusion): Signification is always écart between two or several significations — the appearance of a determinate void. "La signification (l'«idée» au sens de Proust) est toujours écart entre 2 ou plusieurs significations, apparition d'un vide déterminé, non possession intellectuelle d'un contenu" (PbP 135). The relation between signification and what is said is therefore "jamais direct, toujours oblique"; signification "transparaît plutôt qu'elle ne paraît." Because: This is MP's own synthesis from the conclusion of the course. The same écart-structure has been shown to govern: (a) the langue/parole relation (Saussure introduction); (b) the diacritical sign (PbP [26v(36)] marginal); (c) child acquisition (cold/hot as écarts de température, PbP 83); (d) aphasia (loss of differentiation power); (e) painting (Elstir's metaphors); (f) music (Vinteuil's "faible écart entre les cinq notes," cited Proust); (g) writing (style as écart of significations). MP achieves the generalization of écart across these registers, during the course itself, in 1953-54. Against: Substantialist conception of meaning; Cartesian representationalism; Sartrean Sinngebung-collision; logicism's "determinate signified." Location: PbP 135–[138v(11)] (two successive conclusions). Lesson 12 / Conclusion (April 1954).
Claim: Malraux's phrase "déformation cohérente" names the formal-stylistic mode of the écart-structure when applied to creative expression. PbP cites the phrase six times with foliotage marked by the editors at [25(33)], [45(1)], [135(10)], [142v], [145v], [147v]. Because: PbP 135 (the cardinal conclusion): "c'est seulement en se faisant docile à la «déformation cohérente» des significations acquises et des signes... que le lecteur et même l'auteur, l'allocutaire et même le locuteur, peuvent se flatter de «saisir» la signification." PbP [33] (introduction): "Structure = ensemble, système, mais dont le principe n'est pas dégagé et n'apparaît que comme style ou déformation cohérente, comme une certaine absence." Against: Saussurean orthodoxy (which would not generalize valeur across artistic media); structuralism if it eliminated creative deformation. Location: Throughout — see coherent-deformation for the cross-corpus development of this concept (PbP is one of MP's most sustained workings of the phrase outside Signs).
Claim: The course closes with an explicit unsolved problem: "le sémantique est-il du même ordre que le diacritique?" (PbP 138). That is — do the logical essences used by sciences and philosophy follow the same indirect/diacritical structure as the alogical essences of art and ordinary expression, or are they a different kind altogether? Because: The course has demonstrated that alogical essences (Vinteuil's musical idea, Elstir's painterly vision, Proust's sensible essences) operate by écart. Logical essences appear directly possessed, but PbP asks whether this directness is real or only a sedimentation-illusion. The problem is not solved in PbP; it is handed forward to subsequent courses. "Ici la description de la parole en action ne suffit pas - le problème de l'institution et le problème du sémantique, i. e. la Stiftung par l'opération expressive, et la fécondité de cette Stiftung, ne sont que soulignés davantage par étude de la parole" (PbP 136). Against: Logicism (which would simply assert direct possession); Platonism (which would treat logical essences as ontologically prior). Location: PbP 136, 138. This open question is the explicit transmission to MP's 1954-55 *L'institution. La passivité* course (the Stiftung side) and to MP's 1960 reading of Husserl's Origin of Geometry (the semantic side).

Argumentative Movement

The course is a propaedeutic dialectic (per Kee 2025's reconstruction): each stage refutes the previous while integrating its truth. Naïve linguistic consciousness (one's own language as world-revealing) is refuted by comparative linguistics; logicism (the claim to extract pure syntax) is refuted by the factual dependence of Indo-European logicists on Indo-European grammar; objectivist science (the Saussurean structuralism if read positivistically) is refuted by the "ultra-objectivisme" that "reconduit à la découverte d'un intérieur = la parole" (PbP [18v(24)]); historicist relativism is refuted by the "dépassement dans l'adhérence même" (PbP [12v(12)]). What emerges is a parole vivante / parole pure — a speaking subject whose parole is the operative middle term between the systematicity of langue and the contingency of expression.

The dialectic enters the substantive analysis via Saussure. Through Saussure's diacritical theory, the course generalizes the écart-structure across language, then exports it to perception (the child's pre-linguistic field), to aphasia (loss of differentiation power), and finally to literature (Proust as the most accomplished realization of parole conquérante).

The argumentative form is not premise-conclusion; it is descriptive-genealogical, building a synthetic picture through alternating critical refutation and empirical-phenomenological description.

Key Findings

The cardinal operative formula of the course is the écart-thesis at PbP 135: "signification = écart entre 2 ou plusieurs significations, apparition d'un vide déterminé." This is MP's own synthesis of the course.
The course performs the first generalization in MP's corpus of écart-niveau-pli beyond the linguistic-Saussurean register: it operates across language, perception, aphasia, painting, music, and writing — the structural cluster that V&I will later receive and ontologize.
The course's marginal note at PbP [26v(36)] — "le signe (et la signification) = écart" — is among the earliest direct technical attestations of écart in MP's corpus.
Goldstein's Language and Language Disturbances (1948) is the cardinal secondary source: it provides both the aphasia analysis and the Humboldt-via-Goldstein reading of innere Sprachform.
Proust is read as philosopher-phenomenologist malgré lui — the literary realization of the philosophical thesis. Bergotte exposes the écart between empirical and literary parole; Elstir exemplifies metaphor as world-articulation; Vinteuil instantiates the idée sensible.
The course closes by handing two problems to its successors: (a) institution / Stiftung (handed to the 1954-55 course); (b) the semantic-vs-diacritical distinction (handed to the 1960 Origin of Geometry commentary).
The course contains MP's first sustained critique of cybernetics (PbP 29), predating the 1958 Nature lectures by five years.
"Déformation cohérente" (Malraux's phrase) is cited six times with the conclusion's cardinal use at 135 — making PbP one of MP's most sustained workings of the concept outside Signs and Voices of Silence.

Methodology

MP works through dialectical refutation + empirical description. Each section of the course advances by (a) identifying a position (naïve linguistic consciousness; logicism; objectivism; intellectualism in psychology of aphasia; Platonism in literary aesthetics), (b) showing what is true in that position (the truth of objectivism, naturalism, etc. — per Kee's analysis), and (c) showing where it fails and what must be integrated.

The empirical engagement is broad: linguistics (Saussure, Bally, Vendryes, Fourquet); aphasiology (Goldstein, with Schneider as cardinal case); child psychology (Jakobson, Bühler, Piaget, Wallon, Lagache, Troubetskoï, Dolto-Marette); psychoanalysis (Freud, Dolto); exemplary cases (Helen Keller); painting (Proust's fictional Elstir); music (Proust's fictional Vinteuil); literature (Proust Recherche + Jean Santeuil + Contre Sainte-Beuve + Sentiments filiaux + Correspondance + Le Balzac de Monsieur de Guermantes); contrastive literary practice (Stendhal as foil to Proust). The breadth is constitutive of the argument, not illustrative: the philosophical thesis is established by the convergence of independent empirical fields.

Concepts Developed

écart — PbP is among the earliest direct technical attestations in MP's corpus; the marginal note at PbP [26v(36)] is cardinal; the conclusion at 135 is the synthetic statement. PbP is the pre-history of écart-niveau-pli in V&I.
parole parlante / parole parlée — PbP is the missing middle term between PoP 1945 and Signs 1960; the gestural distinction of PoP is rewired through Saussurean diacritical theory.
innere-sprachform — Humboldt-via-Goldstein concept de-essentialized for use in MP's framework; PbP is the primary corpus anchor (the only sustained workings outside La conscience et l'acquisition du langage 1949-50 Sorbonne course).
essences alogiques / idées sensibles — PbP's Vinteuil-sonata analysis is the primary pre-V&I anchor; "La musique est «idées» en tant qu'elle est communication de prise sur l'univers" (PbP [110]).
parole conquérante / parole créatrice originaire — PbP develops the concept in dialogue with Saussure and Goldstein; companion anchor to the ILUL Monday-course literary anchor.
déformation cohérente — PbP cites the Malraux phrase six times; the cardinal use is at PbP 135 as the operative name for the écart-structure in creative expression.
conscience linguistique naïve — PbP is the primary source (the existing wiki page is anchored via Kee 2025; PbP is the source Kee reads).
truth of objectivism / ultra-objectivisme — PbP [18v(24)]: "L'ultra objectivisme reconduit à la découverte d'un intérieur = la parole."
propaedeutic-dialectic — PbP's introduction stages the five-stage propaedeutic dialectic (naïve / naïve universalism / objectivism / relativism / unity-as-concrete-universal).
volonté expressive / expressive will — PbP grounds the universality of language in an affective-volitional drive of speaking subjects.
horizons-of-language — PbP [13(13)]: "ses limites [de la langue], sont comme celles du champ visuel: ni ici, ni là, mais enfin il y a un point où l'on n'y voit plus."
quasi-natural-signification — PbP 136 discusses "significations 'naturelles'... ne sont elles pas plus naturelles que les autres, seulement sédimentées?"
lateral-universal — PbP's "dépassement dans l'adhérence" is the operative form of the lateral universal in the linguistic register.

Concepts Referenced

stiftung — PbP 136 is the explicit Stiftung-handoff sentence to the 1954-55 Institution course: "le problème de l'institution et le problème du sémantique, i. e. la Stiftung par l'opération expressive, et la fécondité de cette Stiftung."
institution — PbP's conclusion is the immediate pre-history of the 1954-55 course.
silence — "L'intérieur des choses est parole" (PbP 95); the monde du silence / monde de l'expression axis frames the course's project.
chiasm — the PbP écart-niveau-pli cluster is structurally pre-chiasm; the cardinal cluster at 38-39.
adultomorphism — PbP's égocentrisme linguistique is the linguistic-philosophical homolog of MP's Sorbonne-lectures diagnostic of adultomorphism.
parole à l'état naissant — operative throughout the course; PbP [113v(13)]: "le sens à sa naissance."
expressivity — operative concept; PbP [138v(11)]: "L'expressivité est toujours en sursis."
Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale (1916, Bally/Sechehaye edition) — primary interlocutor of the introduction.
indirect-language — anticipates the 1960 Signs essay; the diacritical theory of meaning is the linguistic register of "l'allusion."
le linguistic gesture — continued from PoP Ch VI but rewired through Saussure.
wild-being — the late ontology toward which PbP points (per Kee 2025 §4).
figure / fond / Gestalt — operative throughout; PbP 43: "Le signe ≠ son auquel s'ajoute un sens, mais son faisant sens comme figure sur fond."

Terminology

This is a French-only source. Key terms with no settled English equivalents are kept in French throughout the wiki. The following terms have technical philosophical weight and the wiki carries each as alias on the relevant concept page:

French (original)	English approximation	Attestation locations in PbP	Translation notes
écart	divergence; gap; spacing	[26v(36)] (marginal); 38; 39; 42; 78; 82; 84; [88v(6)]; 135; 137	No settled English equivalent. Écart connotes simultaneously a gap, a deviation, a divergence. Wiki retains the French.
pli	fold	27; 39; 137	Late MP's pli de l'être; in PbP still in linguistic register.
niveau	level / ground	38; 83; 84	Operative in the perceptual register (cold/hot as écarts de température par rapport à niveau).
déformation cohérente	coherent deformation	[25(33)]; [33]; [45(1)]; [135(10)]; [142v]; [145v]; [147v]	Malraux's phrase; MP takes it as the formal-stylistic name for the écart-structure in creative expression.
parole parlante / parole parlée	speaking speech / spoken speech	throughout	Saussurean parole read through MP's gestural-then-diacritical lens.
parole conquérante / parole créatrice originaire	conquering speech / creative speech	[93(4)]; [135v(10)]; [138(11)]	The act of expression that sets up a new signification within sedimented language.
innere Sprachform	inner linguistic form	[28v(40)]; [85]	German technical term from Humboldt, mediated by Goldstein; MP de-essentializes.
essence alogique	alogical essence	[113]; [114(2)]; [136(11)]; [138(11)]	Sensible idea; "universel sans concept"; anticipated V&I's idée sensible.
accouplement (son et sens)	coupling (of sound and sense)	[25(34)]; 39 ff.	Saussurean term, also Husserlian (Paarung); the event at the interface of two amorphous masses.
transitivisme	transitivism	7 (suite); 78; marginal	Guillaume-Wallon term; pre-objectifying participation in another's experience.
Befangenheit	captive prejudice; bias	[6v(2)]	German loanword; the captive-inhabitation mode of one's own language.
dépassement dans l'adhérence	transcendence-through-adherence	[12v(12)]	MP's anti-relativist anti-universalist resolution.
savoir verbal extérieur	external verbal knowledge	[76(21)]; [78v(2)]; [92(3)]; [145]; [148]	Goldstein's term; the merely-automatic verbal layer in aphasia.
son signifiant	signifying sound	[58(10 suppl.)]	Jakobson term; the deflation-product of the babbling phase.
schème passé-présent-futur	past-present-future scheme	[62(13)]	Dolto-Marette's sibling-birth analysis; temporal restructuring with relational displacement.
rupture de l'indivision	rupture of indivision	[74(19)]	The dyadic break instituted by the mother's voice.

Key Passages

"il y a dépassement dans l'adhérence même: c'est la même chose de parler une langue particulière et de viser l'être à travers elle. Une langue ≠ seulement une somme d'instruments très particuliers, mais la prétention d'atteindre l'être par eux, prétention qui est du même coup fondée en eux et contestée par eux." (PbP [12v(12)]) — the cardinal anti-relativist anti-universalist resolution.

"le signe (et la signification) = écart" — MP's marginal note at PbP [26v(36)]. Among the earliest direct technical attestations of écart in MP's corpus.

"Le signe ≠ son auquel s'ajoute un sens, mais son faisant sens comme figure sur fond." (PbP 43) — Saussure-Gestalt synthesis.

"le tout est «niveau» ou «fond» et la parole écart" (PbP 38) — the écart-niveau cluster, in the linguistic register, four years before V&I would have it.

"c'est en tant que pli de langage ou pli de la pensée ou encore écart par rapport à état d'indifférence que son et sens s'accouplent." (PbP 39) — pli + écart together; Robert's editorial note: "Plis et écart sont ici des concepts décisifs... Dans les recherches ultimes de Merleau-Ponty, ils acquièrent un sens ontologique."

"Le langage à comprendre non comme somme de signes et somme de significations mais comme innere Sprachform (cf. la façon dont nous parlons à qqn qui, sans choix et sans représentation est un mode de position de ce quelqu'un. De même tout langage est cette position globale d'un monde et il faut l'étudier dans cette totalité)." (PbP [28v(40)]) — Humboldt-via-Goldstein, de-essentialized.

"le langage n'est pas seulement information – on parle pour parler" (PbP 29) — the cybernetics critique, January 1954, five years before the Nature lectures.

"Apprentissage de la langue maternelle par identification, introjection et projection, non par analyse... L'acquisition est bien celle d'un système, mais non d'un système intellectuel: il s'agit d'une nouvelle structure d'existence, liée à tout l'aspect du monde" (PbP [76(21)]) — the affective-existential reading of language acquisition.

"De là sa double nature: savoir verbal extérieur et expression vraie (Goldstein), moyen de mimer l'humanité (bestiaire intellectuel de Hegel) et moyen d'être homme" (PbP [76(21)]) — the double-nature of speech, fusing Goldstein and Hegel.

"Tout l'être devient point d'appui de parole possible, i. e. libération des significations par le fait qu'elles sont désormais maniables. [...] Changement du rapport avec autrui." (PbP [77v(1)]) — Helen Keller as exemplary case; language transforms the perceived world itself.

"Symboles ou signes diacritiques (autrui compris comme: celui = x en qui se font ces décalages, s'établit en relief de la chaîne verbale) non signes objectifs" (PbP 78) — diacritical theory extended to intersubjective understanding.

"en conséquence parler ≠ avoir des signes pour des concepts, mais pouvoir articuler le monde, avant les concepts et les signes" (PbP [82v(6)]) — the aphasia thesis: language is articulation of world, not labeling of concepts.

"[Elstir] La peinture refait un langage, ou fait que les apparences mêmes parlent les unes des autres, c'est un langage des choses" (PbP [105v(6)]) — painting as "indirect language" of things.

"Le style en ce sens 'est une question, non de technique, mais de vision' (TR II 43). Il est porteur du mode d'apparition des choses et des êtres, et la manière, non pas la manière de l'écrivain, mais la manière d'apparaître des choses, est ici la matière." (PbP [120v(8)]) — style as the world's mode of appearing.

"La musique est «idées» en tant qu'elle est communication de prise sur l'univers, sur l'être: cette prise en elle-même est de la vie, du singulier, cette prise traduite dans rapports des sons, des temps et des chants, se donnant ce corps imaginaire, est idée." (PbP [110]) — Vinteuil sonata as paradigm of sensible idea.

"Personne n'a été plus loin que Proust dans la fixation des rapports du visible et de l'invisible" — Robert's postface citing V&I p. 195-197 in connection with PbP 108-[109v(10)]; pre-V&I anticipation.

"Toutes les parties de la réalité sont converties en une même substance, aux vastes surfaces, d'un miroitement monotone... Tout ce qui était différent a été converti et absorbé." (Proust Contre Sainte-Beuve p. 269, cited PbP [123v(2)]) — style as conversion of the heterogeneous into a coherent surface.

"Cette pente transformée en choix quand on la voit sur fond d'une autre pente, p. ex. de celle de Sartre" (PbP 133) — the Stendhal/Proust contrast as critique of Sartrean existential psychoanalysis.

"La psychanalyse existentielle peut être elle-même psychanalysée." (PbP 134) — the meta-critique: Sartre's framework derives from a particular pente.

"La signification (l'«idée» au sens de Proust) est toujours écart entre 2 ou plusieurs significations, apparition d'un vide déterminé, non possession intellectuelle d'un contenu, que par suite son rapport à ce qui est dit n'est jamais direct, toujours oblique, qu'elle transparaît plutôt qu'elle ne paraît comme le principe secret qui entraîne une réorientation des significations acquises... c'est seulement en se faisant docile à la «déformation cohérente» des significations acquises et des signes... que le lecteur et même l'auteur, l'allocutaire et même le locuteur, peuvent se flatter de «saisir» la signification. Telle est la parole créatrice, originaire." (PbP 135–[135v(10)]) — CARDINAL: MP's own statement of the course's central thesis.

"Ici la description de la parole en action ne suffit pas - le problème de l'institution et le problème du sémantique, i. e. la Stiftung par l'opération expressive, et la fécondité de cette Stiftung, ne sont que soulignés davantage par étude de la parole" (PbP 136) — the explicit handoff to L'institution. La passivité (1954-55).

"le sémantique est-il du même ordre que le diacritique?" (PbP 138) — the unresolved open question handed forward to the 1960 Origin of Geometry commentary.

"L'expressivité est toujours en sursis. La langue comporte un projet ou schéma de son avenir." (PbP [138v(11)]) — the expressivity-in-deferral thesis, anticipating the late ontological "to be is to surge from a non-being."

What's Not Obvious

PbP contains MP's first sustained critique of cybernetics, January 1954. The critique appears at PbP [29(40bis)]: "le langage n'est pas seulement information – on parle pour parler"; information is "réponse à une question, et la question fait le sens de la réponse." This predates by five years the cybernetics critique in the 1958 Nature lectures and the 1961 Eye and Mind §1. The genealogy of MP's anti-cybernetics polemic goes back to this Saussure-section of PbP — a fact the wiki kybernetik-as-grundwissenschaft page does not currently capture.
The Schneider case continues here under the cipher "S." At PbP 80, MP writes "Pauvreté vitale du langage de S." The editors confirm via footnote (raw line 2478): "«S» désigne probablement le patient de Gelb et Goldstein nommé Schneider." This is the same Schneider who anchored PoP 1945 Ch VI; the aphasiology of PbP is therefore a continuation, with the attitude catégoriale now reframed as a power of differentiation-articulation rather than a separable abstract intellectual capacity. The wiki Healing Schneider (Chouraqui 2025) currently does not register PbP as a Schneider source; this is a wiki-genealogical gap.
The course closes by handing forward not one but two unsolved problems, to two different successor projects. The institution problem ("Stiftung par l'opération expressive") goes to the 1954-55 *L'institution. La passivité* course. The semantic-vs-diacritical problem ("le sémantique est-il du même ordre que le diacritique?") goes to MP's 1960 commentary on Husserl's Origin of Geometry — the merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy-era reading. This forking of the unresolved problems is the structural template for MP's late course-architecture: each course's aporia generates the project of the next.

Critique / Limitations

These are notes (not the lectures themselves), in MP's compressed telegraphic style. Many lines are abbreviated or marginal; readings frequently depend on editorial reconstruction by Andén, Robert, and Saint Aubert. Where the editors flag a transcription uncertainty (with {ill.} or {...}), the wiki preserves that uncertainty.

The argument is dense but not always systematic. The propaedeutic dialectic of the introduction is clean and reconstructable (per Kee 2025); the Proust section is more diffuse, working through example more than argument. MP does not defend in PbP the most fundamental philosophical commitment of the course — that aesthetic disclosure can yield ontological theses (style = vision = articulation of being); the commitment is performed through Elstir, Vinteuil, and Combray rather than argued for.

Several engagements are minimal: the Heidegger reference is allusive; the Husserl reference is structural but unargued (the implicit rapprochement with Saussure on the speaking subject); the Sartre critique at [130]-[134] is sharp but pursued only briefly. The 1954-55 L'institution. La passivité course will substantially elaborate what PbP only gestures at — most centrally, the Husserlian Stiftung concept.

Editorial apparatus as scholarly contribution

Per addendum 2026-05-16, the volume's two editorial-apparatus texts — Lovisa Andén's foreword (pp. 7-30, "Pour une phénoménologie du langage: le primat ontologique de la parole") and Franck Robert's postface (pp. 237-263, "Vers l'ontologie") — are treated as scholarly texts in their own right, not merely orientation devices.

Andén's substantive theses (see lovisa-anden): MP-as-doubly-positioned between phenomenology and nascent structuralism (with Foucault 1983 as third-party witness); convergence-not-critique reading of MP-Saussure positioned against Ricœur's later (1969) closure-of-signs frame; isolation of MP's dépassement dans l'adhérence même formula at PbP [12v(12)] as the universalism-vs-historicism resolution; three-phase periodization (phenomenology of perception → philosophy of expression → ontology) with PbP as the knot tying the phases; Saussure-as-Gestalt (philological-genealogical claim that MP's Saussure runs through Gestalt psychology, distinguishing his reception from Lévi-Strauss/Greimas structuralism).

Robert's substantive theses (see franck-robert): PbP as centre névralgique of MP's early-50s ontological turn (postface §1); circularité-de-la-recherche framing applied to MP's own œuvre after Proust's Recherche; linguistique-has-ontological-pertinence-against-Heidegger thesis seeded as candidate claim claims#linguistique-ontological-pertinence-contra-heidegger; plis-niveaux-écart ontological vocabulary anchored explicitly in PbP [38(4)] and [39(6)]; chair linguistique as PbP-prepared by the mother-child affective acquisition material; reduction-by-suspension methodology of art-theory (silence/painting/music as phenomenological reductions of language); semantic-grounded-in-diacritical / 1960 genealogical resolution of PbP's open question seeded as candidate claim claims#semantic-grounded-in-diacritical-pbp-1960.

Intended-but-unrealized engagements (Projets et plans)

The course's Projets et plans de cours (folios [140]–[158v]) show that MP intended substantially wider engagement than landed in delivery. The following authors are cited in plan-folios but not analyzed in the cours: Lévi-Strauss (anthropology-linguistics relation); Lacan (multiple references in plans but no commentary); Mauss (gift / don and indo-European sociology); Couturat (Leibniz's Caractéristique universelle); Brunschvicg (Aristotelian logic critique); Löwith (Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen 1928, Mit-Sein anthropology); Wölfflin (symbolisme verbal vs pictural); Bühler (Sprachtheorie 1934, phonostylistique). The pattern is itself a datum: MP planned a much wider engagement with the human sciences than he delivered. The delivered cours focused tightly on Saussure / Goldstein / Jakobson / Dolto / Proust. The cours is more focused than MP's intent suggests.

The plans also surface two hidden sources: Sechehaye's "Les trois linguistiques saussuriennes" (Vox Romanica V, 1940) at folio [141] as the source of MP's distinctive Saussure-of-three-styles reading; Schilder's Körperschema (1923) at folios [142], [148] as the model for "présence de la langue au locuteur" (parallel to présence du corps in Schilder).

Working notes (Notes de travail)

The Notes de travail (folios [162]–[169]) are MP's own working notes ad PbP, primary unpublished material. Key items:

Helen Keller "essence menteuse" (folio [162], January 1954): a sharper adversarial reading than the delivered cours — Keller's language has a "lying essence" because she lacks precritical sensible grounding. Captured on helen-keller page.
Sartre essence-existence cut (folio [164]): MP names the structural Sartrean error — signification-as-essence vs hylé-as-constructum, both severed from the lived.
Comique-mystère-poésie unitary operation (folio [165]): MP reads Proustian comedy as the same metaphor-operation as the Proustian sublime, running in opposite directions. Comedy = sens retombe à la vie; Sublime = vie se fait sens. Significant unworked Proust-philosophical thesis not in the delivered cours.
Clochers de Martinville as lived-space-pendant (folio [103v] supplement): MP positions the Clochers de Martinville passage as Proust's spatial-pendant to the temporal analysis in Le Temps retrouvé.
Λόγος du monde sensible (folio [68v]): MP's throwaway formula pointing to the underlying logos-of-the-sensible thesis that the lived sensible already has a logos that language acquisition takes up.

Connections

follows merleau-ponty-2020-sensible-world-expression — the 1953 first course; the Sensible World / World of Expression problematic that PbP continues from a linguistic angle.
follows and runs parallel with merleau-ponty-2026-literary-use-language — the 1953 Monday Collège de France course (Recherches sur l'usage littéraire du langage); ILUL is the literary sibling of PbP (Thursday's linguistic-philosophical course).
precedes merleau-ponty-2010-institution-and-passivity — the 1954-55 course, to which PbP explicitly hands forward the institution / Stiftung problem at 136.
extends merleau-ponty-2010-child-psychology-pedagogy — the 1949-52 Sorbonne lectures on child psychology and language; PbP reuses the Goldstein/Jakobson/Bühler/Helen Keller cluster developed there, but rewires it via Saussure.
extends merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — continues Ch VI ("Le corps comme expression et la parole") and the Schneider analysis, but generalizes through Saussure.
extends merleau-ponty-1973-prose-of-the-world — drafted 1950-52; PbP is the lecture-course working-out of the same problematic.
anticipates merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — the écart-niveau-pli cluster will become V&I's ontological vocabulary; "le visible et l'invisible" is anticipated in PbP's "transparaît plutôt qu'elle ne paraît" (PbP 135) and in Robert's postface §3-5.
anticipates merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — PbP's open question "le sémantique est-il du même ordre que le diacritique?" (PbP 138) is handed forward to the 1960 Origin of Geometry commentary.
critiques merleau-ponty-1948-sense-and-non-sense-era Sartre — the existential-psychoanalysis critique at PbP [130]-[134] targets Sartre's L'être et le néant and "Présentation des Temps modernes."
engages Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale — the most sustained MP-primary treatment outside Signs and Prose of the World.
engages Proust — the most extended Proust analysis in MP's corpus, citing Recherche, Jean Santeuil, Contre Sainte-Beuve, Sentiments filiaux d'un parricide, Correspondance avec sa mère, Le Balzac de Monsieur de Guermantes.
engages Kee 2025 — the principal secondary commentary on PbP currently in the wiki; the page should be re-read with PbP as primary source.

Sources

merleau-ponty-2020-probleme-de-la-parole — this page is the primary anchor for the 1953-54 Thursday Collège de France course. Editions cited:
- MétisPresses 2020 edition, ed. Andén / Robert / Saint Aubert (the editio princeps of the course).
- BNF foliotage [N](n) is the citation system used throughout the wiki for this source.