Face and Mask: “Person” and “subjectivity” in Language and Through Signs

Abstract

In this paper, I will deal with the way linguistics and semiotics focus on person and subjectivity in language. I start from two different meanings of the “person” word and from Benveniste and Latour’s theories of enunciation. Later, I deal with the problem of subjectivity in language and I connect it to two different views: Benveniste’s idea that subjectivity is grounded on the “I” and Guillaume’s idea of a primacy of the “he”. Starting from the Iliad and from the semiotic idea of subject, I take side for Guillaume and Latour’s theory: it is the delocutive structure of the “he” which, in language, expresses subjectivity, namely the capacity of the subject to make himself the object of his reflections and of his words.

Subjectivity of Discourse from the Philosophic Perspective

“…Scholars have conducted relevant studies on subjectivity from different perspectives, including linguistic (Shen 2001), semiotics (Paolucci 2021) and philosophical (Peng 2021) perspectives. From the linguistic perspective, subjectivity is the component of the speaker's self-expression or self-imprint.…”

“…Subjectivity was explored from the perspective of the viewpoint, affect and epistemic modality of speakers (Shen 2001: 268). In terms of semiotics, the relationship between man and subjectivity in language was discussed (Paolucci 2021(Paolucci : 1257. The means and mechanism of the realisation of subjectivity were addressed from the philosophical cognitive perspective (Peng 2021: 223).…”