Presented by Jordan K. Skinner (Princeton University)

Émile Benveniste approached general linguistics by examining language in all of its paradoxical complexities and in so doing addressed a number of “problems in general linguistics”. By examining each of these problems, Benveniste shows us something both obvious and profoundly astonishing about what language is in general. “Language is actually the most paradoxical thing in the world, and unfortunate are those who do not see this,” he suggested. There are paradoxes in the functioning of language where everything bears the imprint and seal of an opposing duality: language and society, language and thought, language and reality, language and subjectivity: each are mutually necessary, coextensive, and interdependent. Let us now open our eyes to the paradoxical function of language in order to understand some of the problems that Benveniste found to be at the heart of general linguistics.