Émile Benveniste
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Émile Benveniste (; 27 May 1902 – 3 October 1976) was a French
structural A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such a ...
linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and
semiotician Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves Sign (semiotics), signs, where a sign is defined as anything that commun ...
. He is best known for his work on
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
and his critical reformulation of the linguistic
paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes f ...
established by
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
.


Biography

Benveniste was born in
Aleppo )), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black". , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_caption = , image_map1 = ...
, Aleppo Vilayet,
Ottoman Syria Ottoman Syria ( ar, سوريا العثمانية) refers to divisions of the Ottoman Empire within the region of Syria, usually defined as being east of the Mediterranean Sea, west of the Euphrates River, north of the Arabian Desert and south ...
to a Sephardi family. His father sent him to
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
to undertake rabbinical studies, but he left the Rabbinical School after receiving his baccalauréat, and enrolled in the
École pratique des hautes études The École pratique des hautes études (), abbreviated EPHE, is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is highly selective, and counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions. It is a constituent college o ...
. There he studied under Antoine Meillet, a former student of Saussure, and Joseph Vendryes, completing his degree in 1920. He would return to the
École pratique des hautes études The École pratique des hautes études (), abbreviated EPHE, is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is highly selective, and counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions. It is a constituent college o ...
in 1927 as a director of studies, and would receive his doctorate there in 1935, with his major thesis on the formation of noun roots, and his secondary thesis on the Avestan infinitive. Following Meillet's death in 1936, he was elected to the Chair of Comparative Grammar in the
Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...
in 1937. He held his seat at the Collège de France until his death, but ceased lecturing in December 1969, after suffering a
stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...
that left him
aphasic Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...
. Earlier that year he had been elected as the first President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, and stayed nominally in that position until 1972. Benveniste died in a nursing home in
Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...
, aged 74.


Career

At the start of his career, his highly specialised and technical work limited his influence to a small circle of scholars. In the late thirties, he aroused some controversy for challenging the influential Saussurian notion of the
sign A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or me ...
, that posited a binary distinction between the phonic shape of any given word (''signifier'') and the idea associated with it (''signified''). Saussure argued that the relationship between the two was psychological, and purely arbitrary. Benveniste challenged this model in his ''Nature du signe linguistique''. The publication of his monumental text, ''Problèmes de linguistique générale'' or ''Problems in General Linguistics'', would elevate his position to much wider recognition. The two volumes of this work appeared in 1966 and 1974 respectively. The book exhibits not only scientific rigour but also a lucid style accessible to the layman, consisting of various writings culled from a period of more than twenty-five years. In Chapter 5, ''Animal Communication and Human Language'', Benveniste repudiated behaviourist linguistic interpretations by demonstrating that human speech, unlike the so-called languages of bees and other animals, cannot be merely reduced to a stimulus-response system. The I–you polarity is another important development explored in the text. The third person acts under the conditions of possibility of this polarity between the first and second persons. Narration and description illustrate this. :"''I'' signifies "the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing ''I''." This instance is unique by definition and has validity only in its uniqueness ... ''I'' can only be identified by the instance of discourse that contains it and by that alone." ''You'', on the other hand, is defined in this way: :"by introducing the situation of "address," we obtain a symmetrical definition for ''you'' as "the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance of ''you''." These definitions refer to ''I'' and ''you'' as a category of language and are related to their position in language." — from ''Problems in General Linguistics'' A pivotal concept in Benveniste's work is the distinction between the ''énoncé'' and the ''énonciation'', which grew out of his study on pronouns. The ''énoncé'' is the statement independent of context, whereas the ''énonciation'' is the act of stating as tied to context. In essence, this distinction moved Benveniste to see language itself as a "discursive instance", i.e., fundamentally as discourse. This discourse is, in turn, the actual utilisation, the very enactment, of language. One of the founders of
structuralism In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader ...
,
Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...
, attended Benveniste's seminars at École Pratique.
Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...
was instrumental in publishing Benveniste's other major work, ''Vocabulaire des Institutions Indo-Européennes'' in his series ''Le Sens commun'' at radical publisher
Les Éditions de Minuit Les Éditions de Minuit (, ''Midnight Press'') is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today. History Les Éditions de Minuit was founded by writer and i ...
(1969). The title is misleading: it is not a “vocabulary”, but rather a comprehensive and comparative analysis of key social behaviors and institutions across Germanic,
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
-speaking, Greco-Roman, and Indo-Iranian cultures, using the words (''vocables'') that denote them as points of entry. It makes use of philology, anthropology, phenomenology and sociology. A number of contemporary French philosophers (e.g.,
Barbara Cassin Barbara Cassin (; born 24 October 1947) is a French philologist and philosopher. She was elected to the Académie française on 4 May 2018. Cassin is the recipient of the Grand Prize of Philosophy of the Académie française. She is an Emeritus ...
,
Nicole Loraux Nicole Loraux (26 April 1943 – 6 April 2003) was a French historian of classical Athens. Biography She was born in Paris and died in Argenteuil. She graduated in Classics at the École normale supérieure des filles (1962). In 1965, she obtain ...
,
Philippe-Joseph Salazar Philippe-Joseph Salazar (), a French rhetorician and philosopher, was born on 10 February 1955 in Casablanca, then part of French Morocco. Salazar attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand a prestigious secondary-school in Paris (founded 1563) before s ...
,
François Jullien François Jullien (born 2 June 1951 in Embrun, France) is a French philosopher, Hellenist, and sinologist. Biography An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, École Normale Supérieure (Paris) and holder (since 1974) of the ''agrégation ...
, Marc Crépon) have often referred to Benveniste's ''Vocabulaire'' and are inspired by his methodology and the distinction he draws between meaning (''signification'') and what is referred to (''désignation'').
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
's famous work on "
hospitality Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Louis de Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de J ...
, the Other, the enemy" is an explicit "gloss" on Benveniste's ground-breaking study of host/hostility/hospitality in the ''Vocabulary''.E. Benveniste, ''Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes,'' Les Editions de Minuit vol. 1, 1969 pp. 87-101.


Publications translated to English

*1971: ''Yakira Liasse'' (''Problèmes de linguistique générale'', vol. 1, 1966), translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek.
Coral Gables, Florida Coral Gables, officially City of Coral Gables, is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The city is located southwest of Downtown Miami. As of the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 49,248. Coral Gables is known globally as home to the ...
:
University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...
. . *1973: ''Indo-European language and society'' (''Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes'', 1969), translated by Elizabeth Palmer. London: Faber and Faber. . Republished as ''Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society'', translated by Elizabeth Palmer. Chicago: HAU Books 2016. . *2018: ''Last lectures: Collège de France, 1968 and 1969'' (''Dernières leçons : Collège de France 1968 et 1969'', ed. by Jean-Claude Coquet and Irène Fenoglio, 2012), translated by John E. Joseph. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .


Selected works

* ''Hittite et indo-européen : études comparatives'' * ''Indo-European language and society'' * ''Les infinitifs avestiques'' * ''Langue, discours, société'' * ''Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen'' * ''The Persian religion, according to the chief Greek texts'' * ''Problèmes de linguistique générale'' * ''Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes'' * ''Inscriptions de bactriane extraits'' * ''Last lectures: Collège de France, 1968 and 1969''


References

* Gérard Dessons, ''Émile Benveniste : L'invention du discours'', In Press, 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Benveniste, Emile Collège de France faculty University of Paris alumni Linguists from France Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres École pratique des hautes études faculty French people of Syrian-Jewish descent French Iranologists French Indologists Indo-Europeanists Structuralists People from Aleppo 1902 births 1976 deaths 20th-century French Sephardi Jews Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to France Continental philosophers 20th-century linguists Jewish linguists Presidents of the International Association for Semiotic Studies