Language (langue), speech (parole) and discourse : Guillaumian duplication of Saussurean distinction

This paper provides an analysis of the Guillaumian elaboration of Saussurean distinction between langue and parole, which results in two distinctions : between language and speech and between language and discourse. We show that the singularity of this elaboration consists in the addition of a speculative construction to the structuralist analysis of idiomological data and speech. The empiricism of the Guillaumian problematics thus appears in full light. The distinction between language and discourse constitutes the framework for building the linguistic system, which must make it possible to account for the multiplicity of discourse effects. The distinction between language and speech constitutes language as a principle of analysis. However, the Guillaumian construction also aims to reflect the mechanism of speech. As such, it is nevertheless necessarily speculative, insofar as it falls within the structuralist problematics and the sound/sense relationships problematics : the definition of langue is based on the prior acceptance of langage as given. To the Saussurian definition of langue as a functioning, thus distinguished from langage, responds a dynamization of the distinction between langue and parole, of which langage provides the framework : the objectal character of language is not called into question, but constructed as the product of a language process.