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Since the symbolic order is necessarily so central to any language-oriented discussion{{Top}}langue]]'', we need also to be aware of its conceptual genealogy, the sources upon which Lacan drew for his basic formulations of the symbolic’s structure and functions. The first of these influences is the structural anthropology of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose conceptions of society and social functions as symbolic structures and functions form the ground on which Lacan erected his conception of a symbolic order (Evans 201). More than simply borrowing the concept of a symbolic function from Lévi-Strauss and Mauss, however, Lacan adapted wholesale the informing principles of their approach, "prais''[[ing] Marcel Mauss for having shown that ‘the structures of society are symbolic’" (Evans 201) in the body of his most famous collection of work, Écrits. This open acknowledgment of Mauss and Lévi-Strauss as influences both broadens our understanding of how Lacan conceived of the symbolic order and opens the way for considering other important points of reference in situating it.langage{{Bottom}}

Indeed, it =====Translation=====It is precisely in Lacan’s adaptation of Lévi-Strauss important to note that we find Ferdinand de Saussure, the next major influence on the conception of the symbolicEnglish word "[[language]]" corresponds to two [[French]] [[words]]:''[[langue]]'' and ''[[langage]]''.

These two words have quite different [[meanings]] in [[Lacan takes from Lévi-Strauss the idea that the social world is structured by certain laws which regulate kinship relations and the exchange of gifts (see also Mauss]]'s [[work]]: ''[[langue]]'' usually refers to a specific [[language]], 1923). The concept of the giftsuch as French or [[English]], and that of a circuit of exchange, are thus fundamental whereas ''[[langage]]'' refers to Lacan’s concept the [[system]] of the symbolic (S4[[language]] in general, 153-4, 182)abstracting from all [[particular]] languages.

Since =====Jacques Lacan=====It is fundamentally the most basic form general structure of exchange is communication itself [[language]] (the exchange of words, the gift of speech; S4, 189''[[langage]]''), and since rather than the concepts of law and of structure are unthinkable without language, the symbolic is essentially a linguistic dimension. differences between particular languages (Evans 201'''[[langue]]s'')that interests [[Lacan]].

Lacan’s conception of the symbolic as "essentially a linguistic dimension" draws heavily on Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified such that the symbolic is the realm of the signifier while the imaginary is the realm of the signified. The key aspect of Saussure’s conception of this relationship is that the link between any given signifier and signified is arbitrary. Signifiers only gain value (i.e. content or a claim to a particular signified) When [[reading]] [[Lacan]] in the process of opposition and relation to other signifiers. Since the connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, the only way any kind of stability can be obtained is if the signifier habitually associated with a particular signified retains its claim through a process of differentiation not from other signifieds, but from other signifiers – English it asserts its claim to meaning not by declaring a positive connection to the signified, but by declaring a negative relationship to all other signifiers.16 And since direct access to the signified (the imaginary) of any given signifier is either impossible or incommunicable, we are restricted therefore essential to the endless play be aware of signifiers as we try to use language to manage our world, an approach which term is suprisingly effective given the arbitrariness of the signifier/signified connection in any given instance.17 Lacan’s conception of the symbolic, though it is informed by this concept used in its totality, focuses on the realm original French; most of the signifier, locating [[time]] the signified in the imaginary and that which is excluded from this binary in the realFrench term will be ''[[langage]]''.

== def ===Psychoanalytic Experience=====fBetween 1936 and 1949 references to [[language]] are sparse, but they are significant; already in 1936, for example, [[Lacan]] emphasizes that [[language]] is constitutive of the [[psychoanalytic]] [[experience]],<ref>{{Ec}} p.82</ref> and in 1946 he argues that it is [[impossible]] to [[understand]] [[madness]] without addressing the problem of [[language]]. 3<ref>{{Ec}} p. Lacan's Philosophy of Language166</ref>

Perhaps the component of Lacanian theory for which it is most famous, and which has most baffled its critics, is the emphasis [[Lacan laid ]]'s comments on [[language in his attempt ]] at this time do not contain any references to formalise psychoanalysis. From the 1950'sa specific [[linguistics|linguistic theory]], in complete opposition to any Jungian or romantic conceptions, Lacan and instead described the unconscious as a kind of discourse: the discourse of the Other. There are at least three interrelated concerns that inform the construction of what I am terming Lacan's 'dominated by [[philosophy of language':- The first is the central argument that the child's castration is the decisive point in its becoming a speaking subject - The second is his taking very seriously what might be termed the 'interpretive paradigm' in Freud’s texts|philosophical allusions]], according to which Freud repeatedly described symptoms, slips and dreams as symbolic phenomena capable of interpretation. - The third is Lacan's desire to try to understand the efficacy of psychoanalytic interpretation as a curative procedure that relies solely on what Freud called mainly in The Question of Lay Analysis the 'magical' power of the word[[terms]] derived from [[Hegel]].

Back Thus [[language]] is seen primarily as a mediating element which permits the [[subject]] to Table of Contentsattain [[recognition]] from the other.<ref>{{E}} p. 9</ref>

aAbove and beyond its use for conveying information, [[language]] is first and foremost an appeal to an interlocutor; in [[Jakobson]]'s terms, [[Lacan]] stresses the connative function above the referential. Language and Law

In Part 1, in recounting Lacan's view on the resolution of the Oedipal complex, one reason why Lacan allocated language such importance was touched upon. For Lacan, it is only when the child accedes to castration and the Law of the father, that s/Thus he becomes fully competent as a language-speaker within his/her given social collective. By contrast, individuals suffering from psychosis, Lacan stresses (in line with a vast wealth of psychological research), are prone to characteristic linguistic dysfunctions and inabilities. Already from this, then, we can outline a first crucial feature of Lacan's 'philosophy of language'. Like the later Wittgenstein, Lacan’s position is insists that to learn a language [[langage]] is to learn not a set of rules or laws for the use and combination of wordsnomenclature. Accordingly, for him too, 'learning is based on believing' [Wittgenstein]<ref>{{Ec}} p. Particularly, Lacan asserts a lasting link between the capacity of a subject to perceive the world as a set of discrete identifiable objects, and his166</her acceptance of the unconditional authority of a body of convention. I will return to this below.ref>

Back =====Anthropology and Phenomenology=====From 1950 to Table of Contents1954 [[language]] begins to occupy the central [[position]] that it will hold in [[Lacan]]'s work thereafter.

bIn this period, [[Lacan]]'s [[discussion]] of [[language]] is dominated by references to [[Heideggerian]] [[phenomenology]] and, more importantly, to the [[anthropology]] of [[language]] ([[Anthropology|Maus, Malinowski, and Lévi-Strauss]]. Psychoanalysis as Interpretation: the Unconscious Structured Like a Language

Lacan's contention concerning human-being as a parle-etre, put most broadly, [[Language]] is that when the subject learns its mother tongue, everything from its sense of how the world is, to the way it experiences its biological body, are over-determined by its accession to this order of language. This is the clearest register of the debt that Lacan owes to phenomenology. From Heidegger, he accepts the notion that to be a subject is to experience the world as a meaningful totality, and that language is crucial to this capability. Aligning Freud with the theories of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, Lacan developed a psychoanalytic conception of how the body is caught in the play of meaning-formation between subjects, and expressive of the subjectivity that 'lives' through it, thus seen as well as being an objectificable tool for the performance of instrumental activities. For Lacan, that is, 'the unconscious' does not name only some other part of the mental apparatus than consciousness. It names all that about a subject, including bodily manifestations and identifications with others and 'external' objects that insist beyond his/her conscious control.Freud had already commented in the Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis that the unconscious can be compared to a language without a grammar. Lacan, using structuralist linguistics, attempted to systematise this contention, arguing that the unconscious is structured like a language, and that 'it speaks'/ ca parle. A symptom, Lacan (for example) claimed, is to be read as a kind of embodied corporeal metaphor. As Freud had argued, he takes it that what is at stake within a symptom is a repressed desire abhorrent to the consciously accepted self-conception and values of the subject. This desire, if it is to gain satisfaction at all, accordingly needs to be expressed indirectly. For example, a residual infantile desire to masturbate may find satisfaction indirectly in a compulsive ritual the subject feels compelled to repeat. Just as one might metaphorically describe one's love as a rose, Lacan argues, here we have a repressed desire being metaphorically expressed in some apparently dissimilar bodily activity. Equally, drawing on certain moments within Freud's papers "On the Psychology of Love", Lacan argues that desire is structured as a metonymy. In metonymy, one designates a whole object (eg: a car) by naming one part of it (eg: 'a set of wheels'). Lacan’s argument is that, equally, since castration denies subjects full access to their first love object (the mother), their choice of subsequent love objects is the choice of a series of objects that each resemble in part the lost object (perhaps they have the same hair, or look at him/her the same way the mother did …). According to Lacan, the unconscious uses the multivalent resources of the natural language into which the subject has been inducted (what he calls 'the battery of the signifier') to give indirect vent to the desires that the subject cannot consciously avow. Lacan's Freudian argument is that a directly comparable process occurs in formations of the unconscious as in jokes. As Freud detailed in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the 'punch line’ of jokes pack their punch by condensing in one statement, or even one word, two chains of meaning. The first of these is what [[structure|structuring]] the previous words and cues of the joke, and our shared norms for interpretation, lead us to expect. The second is a wholly different chain [[law|social laws of associationsexchange]], whose clash with what we had expected produces our sense of amusement. In the same way, Lacan observed that, for example, when an analysand makes a 'slip of the tongue', what has taken place is that the unconscious has employed such means as homonymy, the merging of two words, the forgetting or mispronunciation of certain words, or a slippage of pronoun or tensesymbolic pact, etc., to intimate a whole chain of associations which the subject did not intend, but through which his unconscious desire is given indirect expression. Lacan argues that what the consideration of jokes, symptoms and slips thus shows are a number of features of how it is that human beings form sense in language. The first thing is that the sentence is the absolutely basal unit of meaning. Before a sentence ends, Lacan notes, the sense of each individual word or signifier is uncertain. It is only when the sentence is completed that their sense is fixed, or- as Lacan variously put it- 'quilted'. Before this time, they are what he calls floating signifiers, like to the leading premises of a joke. The sense of this position can be easily demonstrated. One need only begin a sentence by proferring a subject, but then cease speaking before a verb and/or predicate is assigned to this in accordance with linguistic convention. For example, if I say: 'when I was young I…' or ‘it’s not like …’, my interlocutor will be understandably want to know what it is that I mean. At the end of the sentence, by contrast, the sense of the beginning words becomes clear, as when I finish the first of the above utterances by saying 'when I was young I ran a lot', or whatever. This understanding of sentences as the basic unit of sense, and of how it is that signifiers 'float' until any given sentence is finished, is what informs Lacan's emphasis on the future anterior tense. Sense, he argues, is always something that 'will have been'. It is anticipated but not confirmed, when we hear uttered the beginning of a sentence (see transference below). Or else, at sentence's end, it is something that we now see with the benefit of ’twenty twenty hindsight’ to have been intended all along. This is why, in Seminar I, Lacan even quips that the meaning of symptoms do not come from the past, but from the future. Before the work of interpretation, a symptom is a floating signifier, whose meaning is unclear to the analysand, and also to the analyst. As the analytic work proceeds, however, an interpretation is achieved at some later time that casts the whole behaviour into relief in a wholly different light, and makes its sense clear.

Back There are also occasional references to Table of Contents[[rhetoric]], but these are not elaborated.<ref>{{E}} p. 169</ref>

cThere are a few allusions to [[Saussure]],<ref>{{S1}} p. 248</ref> but in his famous "[[Rome Discourse]]" [[Lacan]] establishes an opposition between ''[[parole]]'' and ''[[language|langage]]'' (and not, as [[Saussure]] does, between ''[[parole]]'' and ''[[language|langue]]''.<ref>{{L}}. "''[[Fonction]] et [[champ]] de la parole et du langage en [[psychanalyse]].''" 1953a. In {{E}} p. 237-322. ("[[The Curative Efficacy function and field of the 'Talking Cure'speech and language in psychoanalysis]].") In {{E}}. p. 30-113</ref>

Lacan's emphasis on language ====="The Unconscious is also over-determined by an elementary recollection that, if Freud’s intervention promised anything, it is that speaking with another person in strictly controlled circumstances can be Structured like a curative experience for people suffering from forms of mental illness. The analysand comes to the analyst with Language"=====Between 1955 and 1970 [[language]] takes center [[stage]] and [[Lacan]] develops his troubling symptoms, and the analyst, at certain decisive points, offers interpretations of these behaviours classic [[thesis]] that retrospectively make their meaning clear. And this is not simply an intellectual exercise. As Freud stressed, there is knowledge of "the unconscious, and then there is knowledge that has effects upon it[[structured]] like a language."<ref>{{S11}} p. A successful psychoanalytic interpretation 20</ref> It is one in this period that has effects even upon the biological reality of names [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] and [[Roman Jakobson]] come to the body, changing the subjectfore in [[Lacan]]'s bearing towards the world, and dissolving his/her symptoms[[Works of Jacques Lacan|work]].The need to explain =====Structural Linguistics=====[[Lacan]] takes up [[Saussure]]'s [[theory]] that [[language]] is a [[structure]] composed of differential elements, but whereas [[Saussure]] had stated this power of words and ''[[language is a clear and lasting motive behind |langue]]'', [[Lacan]] states it of ''s understanding of [[language|langage]]''. His central and basal hypothesis concerning it can be stated in the following way. In a symptom ''[[language|Langage]]'' becomes, as we saw abovefor [[Lacan]], an unconscious desire seeks to make itself manifestthe single paradigm of all [[structures]]. The symptom is recounted  [[Lacan]] then proceeds to criticize the analyst[[Saussure]]an [[concept]] of [[language]], or else repeated in arguing that the way basic unit of [[language]] is not the subject responds to [[sign]] but the analyst in [[signifier]]. [[Lacan]] then argues that the sessions. Then an interpretation [[unconscious]] is offered by the analyst, like [[language]], a [[structure]] of [[signifiers]], which recognises or symbolises also allows [[Lacan]] to formulate the force [[category]] of the desire at work in the symptom, and the symptom disappears[[symbolic]] with greater precision. So here the recognition  In 1969 [[Lacan]] develops a concept of [[discourse]] as a desire at the same time satisfies the desirekind of [[discourse|social bond]]. What this can accordingly only mean is that  =====Psychotic Language=====From 1971 on, the unconscious desire given voice in shift from [[linguistics]] to [[mathematics]] as the symptom paradigm of [[science|scientificity]] is itself, from the start, at least in part accompanied by a desire for recognition. This is an absolutely central Lacanian insight, wherein he again shows tendency to emphasize the influence [[poetry]] and ambiguity of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit upon his most central concepts. It synchronises exactly with the philosophical anthropology recounted above[[language]], and as is evident in [[Lacan]]'s stricture concerning how human desire is always caught up increasing interest in the dialectics "[[psychotic]] [[language]]" of individuals’ exchanges with others[[James Joyce]].<ref>{{L}}. "[[Joyce]] le symptôme." 1975a. In Jacques Aubert (ed. But), for ''Joyce avec Lacan''. [[Paris]]: Navarin, 1987.</ref> [[Lacan]]'s own style reflects this [[change]] as it also shows something vital about becomes ever more densely populated with puns and neologisms. =====''Lalangue''=====[[Lacan]] coins the term ''[[language in or as which |lalangue]]'' (from the definite article ''la'' and the subjectsnoun '' repressed desires are trying to find a vent. This is that [[language is above all a social pact. As Lacan wrote in the Ecrits: "As a rule everyone knows that others will remain, like himself, inaccessible |langue]]'') to the constraints of reason, outside an acceptance in principle of a rule of debate that does not come into force without an explicit or implicit agreement as to what is called its basis, which is almost always tantamount to an anticipated agreement refer to what is at stake... I shall expect nothing therefore of these rules except the good faith non-communicative aspects of the Other[[language]] which, by playing on ambiguity andhomophony, as give rise to a last resort, will make use kind of them, if I think fit or if I am forced to, only to amuse bad faith.''[[jouissance]]''.<ref>{{S20}} p.126</ref> The term " [Lacan, 2001: 154-155[language]]" now becomes opposed to ''[[language|lalangue]] Lacan's idea is that to speak is to presuppose a body a conventions that ensue that, even if my immediate auditor doesn’t 'get it. ''[[language|Lalangue]]'', is like the true meaning primary chaotic substrate of polysemy out of what I wish to convey always will emergewhich [[language]] is constructed, and be registered in almost as if [[language]] is some ‘Other’ place. (Note that here ordered superstructure sitting on top of this substrate: <blockquote>"Language is another meaning without [[doubt]] made of the big Other touched upon in Part 1''[[lalangue]]''. The big Other It is the place, tribunal, collective or single person which we presuppose will register the truth an elucubration of what we say, whenever we speak[[knowledge]] (''[[knowledge|savoir]]'')[[about]] ''lalangue''.<ref>{{S20}} p. This 127</ref></blockquote> =====Lacanian Psychoanalysis==========Language in Analytic Treatment=====It is why the emphasis placed by [[Lacan's philosophy of language is to be read in strong opposition to any philosophical account (whether Lockean, descriptivist or phenomenological) which argues ]]ian [[psychoanalysis]] that meaning is formed prior to the communicative actusually regarded as its most distinctive feature.  [[Lacan defines speech ]] criticizes the way that other forms of [[psychoanalysis]], such as a process in which [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]] and [[object-relations theory]], tend to play down the subjects get their meanings back from the Other in an inverted form. Think once more importance of what is involved in psychoanalytic interpretation. Here [[language]] and emphasize the meaning "non-[[verbal]] communication" of a symptom is rendered by the analyst[[analysand]] (his "[[body]] language," etc. What this means, for Lacan, is that ) at the symptom not only bears upon expense of the subject[[analysand]]'s past relations to others[[speech]]). If it can be dissolved by an Other’s interpretation This is a fundamental error, this is because it is formed with an eye according to this interpretation from the start[[Lacan]], for [[three]] main reasons. To quote Slavoj Zizek on this Lacanian notion of how the symptom is from the start addressed to an Other supposed to know its truth : "The symptom arises where the world failed1. Firstly, where the circuit of symbolic all [[human]] [[communication was broken: it ]] is inscribed in a kind of 'prolongation of communication by other means': [[linguistic]] [[structure]]; even "body language," is, as the failedterm implies, repressed word articulates itself in fundamentally a coded, ciphered [[form. The implication ]] of this is that the symptom can not only be interpreted but is, so to speak''[[language]]'', formed with an eye to its interpretation … in the psychoanalytic cure the symptom is always addressed to the analyst, it is an appeal to him to deliver its hidden message … This … is the basic pointsame [[structure|structural features]]. : in its very constitution2. Secondly, the symptom implies the field [[whole]] aim of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very formation [[psychoanalytic treatment]] is an appeal to articulate the Other which contains its meaning …" [Zizek, 1989: 73[truth]] of one's [[desire]] in [[speech]] Even rather than in any other medium; the key meaning [[fundamental rule]] of transference, for Lacan, [[psychoanalysis]] is this supposition based on the [[principle]] that there [[speech]] is an Other supposed the only way to know the this [[truth of my communicative acts, even down to the most apparently meaningless 'slips' and symptomatic behaviours]]. :3. In terms of the previous sectionAnd thirdly, transference [[speech]] is the condition of possibility for only tool which the quilting of [[analyst]] has; therefore, any [[analyst]] who does not understand the meaning of floating signifiers that occurs even in the most basic sentences, as we sawway [[speech]] and [[language]] work does not understand [[psychoanalysis]] itself. What occurs in a psychoanalytic interpretation is simply one more consequential version of this process<ref>{{E}} p. The subject, by speaking, addresses himself to some Other supposed to know her40</his truth, and at the end ref> One consequence of this process, the signifiers he offers to the Other are quilted, and return to him 'in an inverted form'. What has occurred at this point, on [[Lacan]]'s reckoning, emphasis on [[language]] is his recommendation that the previously unquilted signifiers finding voice in [[analyst]] must attend to the manifestations [[formal]] features of his unconscious are integrated into the subject[[analysand]]'s symbolic universe: [[speech]] (the way s/he understands the world[[signifiers]]), in the terms of his/her community's natural language. They have been subjectivised; which means that now s/he can recognise them as and not wholly alien intrusions be sidetracked into his/her identity, but an integral part empathic attitude baseed on an [[imaginary]] [[understanding]] of this identitythe [[content]] (the [[signified]]).  =====Symbolic and Imaginary Dimensions=====One common misconception of [[Lacan's stress ]] is that [[language]] is synonymous with the [[symbolic]] [[order]]. This is thus always, when he talks of psychoanalytic interpretationhowever, not correct; [[Lacan]] argues that this interpretation does not add new content to [[language]] has both a [[symbolic]] and an [[imaginary]] [[dimension]]. <blockquote>"There is something in [[the subject's self-understanding, so much as affect the form symbolic]] function of this understanding. An interpretationhuman discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is, realigns the way [[role]] played in it by [[the simaginary]]."<ref>{{S2}} p.306</ref></he sees her past, reordering blockquote> The [[symbolic|symbolic dimension]] of [[language]] is that of the signifiers in which his/her self-understanding has come to be ordered[[signifier]] and [[speech|true speech]]. A crucial Lacanian category in theorising this process  The [[imaginary]] dimension of [[language]] is that of the 'master signifier'[[signified]], [[signification]], and [[speech|empty speech]]. Master signifiers are those signifiers to  [[Schema L]] represents these two dimensions of [[language]] by means of two axes which a subjectintersect. The axis 's identity are most intimately bound. Standard examples are words like 'Australian’, 'democratA-S', ‘decency’, ‘genuineness’. They are words which will typically be proffered by subjects as naming something like what Kant would have called ends in themselves. They designate values and ideals that the subject will be unwilling and unable to question without pulling the semantic carpet from beneath their own feet. Lacan's understanding of how these 'master signifiers’ function is a multi-layered one, as I shall expand [[language]] in Part 3.. It is certainly true to say, thoughits [[symbolic|symbolic dimension]]], that the importance of these signifiers comes from how a subject's identification with them commits them to certain orderings [[discourse]] of all the rest of [[Other]], the signifiers[[unconscious]]. For example, if someone identifies himself as a  The [[imaginary]] axis 'communist', the meanings of a whole array of other signifiers are ordered in quite different ways than for someone who thinks of himself as a 'liberal'. ‘Freedom’ for him comes to mean ‘freedom from the exploitative practices enshrined in capitalism and hidden beneath liberal ideological rhetoric'. -'Democracy’ comes to mean ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat'. a'Equality’ comes to mean something like ‘what ensues once the sham of the capitalist "equal right to trade" is unmasked'. What Lacan argues is involved [[language]] in its [[imaginary|imaginary dimension]], the psychoanalytic processwall of [[language]] which interrupts, then, is distorts and [[inversion|invert]]s the elevation [[discourse]] of new the [[Other]]. In [[Lacan]]'master signifiers’ which enable s words, "language is as much there to be found in the subject Other as to reorder their sense of themselves drastically prevent us from understanding him.<ref>{{S2}} p. 244</ref> =====Languages and Codes=====[[Lacan]] distinguishes between [[language]]s and of their relations to others. Previously[[code]]s; unlike [[code]]s, for example, a person may have identified with a conception of 'decency' that has led him in [[language]] there is no [[stable]] one-to repress aspects of his own libidinal makeup-one correspondence between [[sign]] and [[sign|referent]], which then return in neurotic symptomsnor between [[signified]] and [[signifier]]. What analysis will properly lead him to do  It is identify himself with a different set this property of 'master signifiers', [[language]] which re-signify the signifiers he had unconsciously been addressing gives rise to the Other in his symptomsinherent ambiguity of all [[discourse]], reducing their traumatic charge which can only be [[interpreted]] by integrating them into his symbolic playing on the homophony and other forms of equivocation (self-''l'équivoque'')understanding. ==See Also=={{See}}* [[Analysand]]* [[Analyst]]||* [[Code]]* [[Discourse]]||* [[Linguistics]]* [[Other]]||* [[Sign]]* [[Signified]]||* [[Signifier]]* [[Speech]]||* [[Structure]]* [[Symbolic]]{{Also}}