Linguistic form, awareness and categorization : Benveniste's contribution

The author highlights through the reading of three of Benveniste's papers (1954, 1958 and 1963 reprinted in 1966) the position, very close to that of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, of one of the most influential french linguists in the second half of the last century about the way categories of thought are built and namely to what extent their building is language dependent. « The world we think has first been modeled by language (...). The form of thought is set-up by the structure of language » writes Benveniste. The author of the paper compares this position to that of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, looks to its roots in the work of Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1768-1825), recalls its criticism of Aristotle's categories of thought as well as its opposition to some of the current philosophical and cognitivist positions. He concludes by refering to the debate opened by Derrida's criticism of Benveniste and suggests that the apparent contradiction between the role of thought - which cannot grow unless it is independant and universal - and that of language - whose nature is arbitrary -, in the building of categories we think by, could only be solved if we consider, as Zellig Harris did, that metalanguage is in the language and that therefore the building of categories, whatever their nature may be, becomes, thanks to the language, a fully conscious operation.

Keywords: linguistic form; awareness; categorization; Benveniste