Changes

Long before Lacan uses these terms, he is already making a similar distinction. In 1936, for example, he stresses that the act of speaking contains a meaning in itself, even if the words spoken are 'meaningless' (Ec, 83). Prior to any function it may have in 'conveying a message', speech is an appeal to the other. This attention to the act of speaking in itself, irrespective of the content of the utterance, anticipates Lacan's attention to the dimension of the enunciation.

When Lacan does come to use the term 'enunciation' in 1946, it is first of all to describe strange characteristics of psychotic language, with its 'duplicity of the enunciation' (Ec, 167). Later, in the 1950s, the term is used to locate the subject of the unconscious. In the graph of desire, the lower chain is the statement, which is speech in its conscious dimension, while the upper chain is 'the unconscious enunciation' (E, 316). In designating the enunciation as unconscious, Lacan affirms that the source of speech is not the ego, nor consciousness, but the unconscious; language comes from the Other, and the idea that 'I' am master of my discourse is only an illusion. The very word 'I' (Je) is ambiguous; aS SHIFTER, it is both a signifier acting as subject of the statement, and an index which designates, but does not signify, the subject of the enunciation (E, 298). The subject is thus split between these two levels, divided in the very act of articulating the I that presents the illusion of unity(see Sll, 139).