Ce texte a déjà paru dans Arno Böhler, Christian Herzog, Alice Pechriggl (Hg.), Korporale Performanz, Zur bedeutungsgenerierenden Dimension des Leibes, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2013, S. 87-106. Nous remercions Sophie Klimis de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici.

To introduce my speech, I must make three preliminary methodological remarks. The first is that I will express myself in English, which is neither my mother tongue, nor yours. As I have never lived in an English-speaking country, I do not speak English fluently. This confronts us with the general problem of the use of “Globish”, which implies the reduction of a speech to its “content” or “message.” We may often forget, but there is a strong metaphysical concept regarding the relationship between language, things, and thought underlying “Globish communication.” This metaphysics of language postulates that words are signs for things (considered as absent referents), and that language is only a tool, the “dress” of thought, as the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley put it. Accordingly, there would be no “loss” of semantic content when expressing oneself in one language or another, as the very same things of the world or contents of thought would be indicated in both cases. [...]