"In order to justify the distinction between spoken and written language, I want to introduce a preliminary concept, that of discourse. It is as discourse that language is either spoken or written.

Now what is discourse? We shall not seek the answer from the logicians, not even from the exponents of linguistic analysis, but from the linguists themselves. Discourse is the counterpart of what linguists call language systems or linguistic codes. Discourse is language-event or linguistic usage.

If the sign (phonological or lexical) is the basic unit of language, the sentence is the basic unit of discourse. Therefore it is the linguistics of the sentence which supports the theory of speech as an event. I shall retain four traits from this linguistics of the sentence which will help me to elaborate the hermeneutics of the event and of discourse.

First trait: Discourse is always realized temporally in the present, whereas the language system is virtual and outside of time. Emile Benveniste calls this the ?instance of discourse.?

Second trait: Whereas language lacks a subject—in the sense that the question, Who is speaking? does not apply at its level—discourse refers back to its speaker by means of a complex set of indicators such as the personal pronouns. We shall say that the ?instance of discourse? is self-referential.

Third trait: Whereas the signs in language refer only to other signs within the same system, and whereas language therefore lacks a world just as it lacks temporality and subjectivity, discourse is always about something. It refers to a world that it claims to describe, to express, or to represent. It is in discourse that the symbolic function of language is actualized.

Fourth trait: Whereas language is only the condition for communication for which it provides the codes, it is in discourse that all messages are exchanged. In this sense discourse alone has not only a world but an other, another person, an interlocutor to whom it is addressed.

These four traits taken together constitute speech as an event" (Ricoeur 1991:145-146).

Ricoeur, Paul
1991[1986] From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, trans. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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