The “Delocutive” Derivation

What is it about?

The notion ‘delocutive derivation’ was introduced by Emile Benveniste (1902–1976) in a paper published in 1958. It appears to have gone unnoticed at the time. However, when the article was reissued in Benveniste’s Problèmes de linguistique générale (1966), things seem to have changed dramatically, in particular in 1972, when Ducrot made a connection between ‘delocutivity’ and ‘performativity’ (e.g., promettre = dire je promets), leading in 1975 delocutivity back to the side of a semantic reinterpretation (e.g., je trouve que). Subsequently, Cornulier (1976) introduced the concept of ‘autodelocutivity’ and Anscombre, in a series of articles from the late 1970s and early 1980s, attempted a theorization of this notion. Since then, the subject fell into oblivion. The object of the present paper is twofold: (1) It tries to understand the cometic rise of a notion on the linguistic horizon; (2) to demonstrate that notion ‘delocutive derivation’ is a fundamental mechanism that linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic, would make a mistake in ignoring, to the effect that its ‘enunciative’ specificity does not mask a much more general mechanism, namely, that of natural metalanguage, and beyond, that of metonymy.

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