Rhétoriques de Merleau-Ponty

The perspective here is voluntarily ambivalent. On the one hand, the article pays attention to
the the theoretical and methodological contribution Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology made to
discourse analysis; on the other hand, it traces the rhetorical fecundity of the philosopher’s
discourse that actualizes and materializes in its very form its own philosophical conceptions.
Three rhetoric-conceptual elements are discussed, through an analysis of “Le language
indirect et les voix du silence” [Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence], a text from
Signs [Signs] which has to be contextualized within the phenomenologist’s whole work: i. the
metaphor of the fabric as an expression of the interrelationship between a discourse and its
external determinations; ii. the distinction between parole parlée and parole parlante, which
can be conceived of in connection with the distinction in discourse analysis between
interdiscourse and deviation as its deterritorialization; iii. the importance of taking into
account emotions as an integral part of any discourse that goes beyond the rational
institution between fiction and verisdiction.