Émile Benveniste on the relation between linguistic and social structures

Abstract

Abstract Émile Benveniste (1902–1976) is often identified as one of the chief representatives of European linguistic structuralism. Even so, his view of language as subjective activity would seem to run counter to the supposedly objective approach which most often characterizes structuralism. The article ‘Structure of language and structure of society’ (1970) examines a problem that has been debated since the beginning of the twentieth century and which is properly a structuralist question. The relationship between the structure of language and the structure of society has been examined from a variety of points of view: Antoine Meillet (1866–1936), for example, argued that changes in society induce changes in language; Marxist theory held that language is the mirror of society; Edward Sapir (1884–1939) made language and society independent from each other in order to counter racialist theories; Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) advanced the hypothesis that the structure of a language can be deduced from a kinship system. Benveniste’s proposition, ‘language is the interpreter of society’—a proposition which can also be found in the article ‘Semiology of language’ (1969)—aims to show that the linguistic activity of producing meaning (value) gives shape to all social representations, and to make the study of language as discourse central to any attempt to understand social practice.