La personne et ses masques : remarques sur le développement de la notion de personne et sur son étymologie dans l'histoire de la langue grecque

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

“…Benveniste remained fascinated, in common with a great many later linguists and philosophers of language, by the "heretical transcendence" of these "ultra-special categories" which change meaning according to who it is saying them, later made famous by the name embrayeurs. 1 Hence a first asymmetry which Benveniste paid much attention to: "I" and "you" are not on the same plane as "he", as the third person does not change meaning and reference in accordance with who is saying it. For this reason, according to Benveniste, 'I' (to an even greater extent that 'you') takes linguistic primacy in expressing subjectivity.…”

“…In order to show the way linguistics and semiotics handle the “personhood” idea, I want to start from the two different Greek and Latin etymologies of the word ‘person’, which both arrive to the “grammatical person” sense, but by means of a totally opposite semantic genealogy. As Létoublon [ 1 ] has shown, Greek prosôpon primarily means “what is before the eyes”, “face”, “outward appearance” (sense 1). The second meaning of the word is, on the other hand, “physical person” (sense 2), while only much later, via Etruscan influences, prosôpon began to mean “mask” (sense 3), “character” (sense 4) and “grammatical person” (sense 5).…”

Building from John R. Commons to Rethink the Economic Analysis of HRM Practices: Foundations and Implications for Economics

“…Rappelons que, du point de vue étymologique, le terme « individu » provient du mot « atome » indivis (qui n'est pas divisible). Les linguistes montrent que celui de « personne », ayant pour filiation latine persona, c'est-à-dire « masque de théâtre », se rattache à l'expérience collective et donc au rapport aux autres (Létoublon, 1994).…”