Discourse
Discourse of the Other
The term "discourse" is used by Lacan to emphasize the transindividual nature of language, the fact that speech always implies another subject, an interlocutor.
The unconscious is the "discourse of the Other", the effect on the subject of speech that is addressed to that subject from elsewhere, by another subject (who has been forgotten), by an other scene or psychic locality.
Social Bond
In 1969, Lacan begins to use the term "discourse" to denote a "social bond, founded in language."
He identifies four types of social bonds, four articulations of the symbolic network which regulates intersubjective relations.
Four Discourses
These "four discourses" are
Four Algorithms
Each of the four discourses is represented by an algorithm which contains four algebraic symbols.
The names of these four symbols are shown to the right.
The four symbols correspond to four different positions in each algorithm of the four discourses.
Each algorithm of the four discourses has four different positions with which the four symbols correspond.
The position of the four symbols in each algorithm is what distinguishes the four discourses from one another.
The four discourses are distinguished from one another by the positions of these four symbols in each algorithm.
Each of the four discourses is defined by the position of the four symbols in its algorithm.
The names of the four positions are shown to the right.[1]
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre XX. Encore, 1972-73. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1975. p. 21