Between focus and apprehension: issues about body and discourse in the work of Jacques Fontanille

Abstract

The theoretical work of Jacques Fontanille is marked by themes of interest to the field of semiotics,
which have not yet been fully resolved, such as sensitivity, perception and the body in the discourse. Focusing
on the issue of discourse in semiotics, Fontanille seeks to establish a dialogue between the intelligible and the
sensible, trying to understand how the instance of discourse projects a body through the enunciation and how
this projection can be felt, so that the language sets various forms of anchoring of the “talking flesh”. The
sensitive body of the instance of discourse provides the perception of balances and imbalances, continuities
and discontinuities, euphoria and dysphoria to its intelligible body, which are tensions that arise from thymic
categories in the attempt to amalgamate and project itself in its environment, seeking a solution between the
appearance and the appearing of the phenomena. The sensations, always fleeting, are continuously armed by
language in different meanings. The instance of discourse, representing the real through language, creates
effects that are resolved by sensitivities and intelligibilities, sensitive and intelligible chains caused by focuses
and apprehensions of a corporeal talking instance. In this article, we intend to make a short summary of the
relationship between body, enunciation and meaning, taking into account some of the theories proposed by
Jacques Fontanille, such as proprioception, position taking, point of view, positional field, actants, enunciation
praxis and life form.