In "The Nature of Pronouns," Benveniste begins by drawing a distinction between nouns and pronouns, pointing out that any noun refers to a "fixed and ‘objective’ notion, capable of remaining potential or of being actualised in a particular object and always identical with the mental image it awakens" (217). In other words, a noun is a signifier which is always attached to a fixed signified that the users of a particular langue basically agree upon. This signified basically does not change from parole to parole. By contrast, Benveniste writes, the "instances of the use of I do not constitute a class of reference since there is no ‘object’ definable as I to which these instances can refer in identical fashion. Each I has its own reference and corresponds each time to a unique being" (218), the person using it. The same thing applies to the pronoun ‘you.’

The crucial question which this poses is, thus, deciding upon the "reality to which I or you refers" (218). The reality to which ‘I’ refers is what Benveniste describes, significantly, as "solely a ‘reality of discourse’" (218). In other words, the sign ‘I’ is defined only in the process of being enunciated in the course of a specific utterance. This is because

I cannot be defined except in terms of ‘locution,’ not in terms of objects as a nominal sign is. I signifies ‘the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing I.’ This instance is unique by definition. . . . (218).

In short, ‘I’ "can only be defined by the instance of discourse that contains it" (218) because "it has no value . . . except in the act of speaking in which it is uttered" (218). All this implies that our understanding of who we are, our sense of our identity, is not something that can be taken for granted or assumed. Whether our identity is pre-given or socially constructed, our sense of that self is problematical, something that must be constantly articulated in words if we are to grasp it. In other words, it is only in discourse (or parole), that is, in actual utterances that subjectivity is enunciated: it is by "identifying himself as a unique person pronouncing I that each person sets himself up in turn as the ‘subject’" (220).

In short, pronouns are "‘empty’ signs" (219), Benveniste writes, that "are always available" (219) and which only "become ‘full’ as soon as a speaker introduces them into each instance of discourse" (219). However, Benveniste does not mean by this statement that he accepts traditional expressivist models of language-use. For him, pronouns are not a verbal instrument which one uses to simply ‘express’ or give vent to one’s self (one’s consciousness, emotions, or what have you). The pronoun ‘I’ is not an empty vehicle until a speaker/writer ‘pours’ his/her inmost self into it. Moreover, Benveniste does not accept conventional mimetic models of language, that is, it is not a question of the pronoun ‘I’ merely and unproblematically ‘referring’ or ‘corresponding’ to the self of the person speaking/writing. Informed by Saussure’s model of signification, rather, Benveniste has in mind the fact that any given utterance (parole) is possible only on the basis of those structural principles subsumed under the rubric ‘langue,’ that is, by virtue of the principle of difference upon which all uses of langue are predicated. Hence, Benveniste’s contention that in using the sign ‘I’ (Benveniste terms this speech-act ‘l’énonciation’) in an utterance (‘l’énoncé’), each individual "appropriates" (220) "all the resources of language" (220) (that is, "language as a system of signs" [220] predicated upon difference) and turns it into "instances of discourse" (220): parole is "language assumed into use by the individual" (220). From this point of view, the sign ‘I’ signifies not by unproblematically ‘referring’ to the speaker or writer nor by simply ‘expressing’ the speaker/writer’s ‘self’ but by virtue of its position in a sign system in which it is differentiated, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, from the other signs, principally ‘you.’

In other words, a sense of self can be obtained only when articulated, that is, when we represent it in an utterance (announce it). Given that langue operates on the basis of difference, ‘I’ is not a sign which simply and unproblematically refers to or labels the person speaking (the referent). Rather, ‘I’ is a signifier which is perforce coupled with a signified (‘me’), that is, to a concept of myself rather than the real ‘me’ who is speaking or writing. Such a coupling comes about only on the basis of the fact that within the larger sign-system the sign ‘I’ is differentiated from other signs, the most important of which is, in this instance, ‘you.’ Hence,

I           y-o-u

----  vs  ------ etc.

Me        you

As a result, the signified ‘me’ derives only from the differentiation of ‘me’ from ‘you,’ not from any ‘positive presence.’

As a result of the foregoing, it should be clear that it is less a question of one defining oneself merely with the aid of language than of language in effect defining the identity of the speaker/writer. Langue loans the speaker/writer the binary opposites I/you (one of many such pairs) by virtue of which a sense of the subjectivity of both the speaker/writer and his/her addressee is produced. It is langue, then, which may be said to assign the speaker or writer a subject-position. From this point of view, the subjectivity of the speaker/writer emerges less as the origin or source of an utterance than the destination or product thereof.

Benveniste is at pains to stress another important consequence of the foregoing. He draws a distinction between the utterer, the real person behind the utterance and to which the ‘I’ in an instance of discourse ostensibly refers (this is the person speaking/writing who is, as such, the "referent" [218]), and the pronoun ‘I’ occurring in the utterance which is purely a linguistic category (the "instance of discourse containing I as the referee" [218]). There is, in other words, a distinction between the ‘sujet de l’énonciation’ (the speaking/writing subject, the ‘referent’) and the ‘sujet de l’énoncé’ (the subject spoken/written about, the ‘referee’). Benveniste puts it this way: "I is the ‘individual who utters the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance I.’" (218). One is a real person, while the other is merely a linguistic construction. Benveniste underscores in this way the radical disjunction which exists between the subject speaking or writing and the subject spoken or written about and raises important questions as to whether the two ever coincide. This is, indeed, a variation on the classic epistemological question posed by philosophers concerning whether the ideas in our minds as well as the words by which we denote them ever correspond to that which they aspire to name. The question, accordingly, which Benveniste poses is whether, notwithstanding the fact that we almost certainly empirically exist and have an identity, we can ever in fact ‘know’ or grasp who we really are. In short, the question is to what degree the sign ‘I’ in an utterance corresponds to the real person making that utterance. From this point of view, personal statements merely function to construct a conception of the self of the utterer and do not simply refer to or express the self per se which we really are.

All of this has enormous implications for the relationship which exists between a literary text and its author. While some theorists (such as Plato or the Marxists) have chosen to define the literary text largely in terms of its relationship to ‘reality’ (‘art is a mirror held up to reality’--the so-called mimetic orientation), others have tended to stress the literary text’s link to its writer (what M.H. Abrams would call the ‘expressive’ view of literature). Most critics assume that a literary text does a little of both of these. Writing with particular reference to lyric poetry but also with reference to any texts centred around a first person singular, theorists from Longinus to the Romantics at least have emphasised the view that authors express themselves through their work which is accordingly infused with their personality, emotions and feelings (for a good overview of such a view, see chapter one of Abrams’s classic study of the Romantics The Mirror and the Lamp). The literary work is merely a vehicle by which the author expresses a ‘self’ which predates the literary work in question.

After Saussure, however, expressivist models of poetry and literature have seemed very dated and more than a little injudicious, the reasons for which are implicit in Benveniste’s view of the link between language and subjectivity. Given that it is the structural principles inherent in langue which assigns a particular speaker/writer a subject-position, after Saussure the author’s self emerges less as the source of the text in question than an effect thereof. The author writes not to find his/her self. It is in the process of writing a particular literary text, rather, that a writer enunciates and, thus, crafts a sense of identity for him/herself. This is accomplished by means of the various conceptual oppositions necessarily deployed in the text (in personal or confessional literary texts the most important of these is necessarily ‘I’ versus ‘you’). A very good overview of this process at work in the oeuvre of a writer may be glimpsed in Stephen Greenblatt’s essay on the Elizabethan poet Sir Thomas Wyatt (in his book entitled Renaissance Self-Fashioning). Greenblatt argues that Wyatt articulates a sense of self in his poetry that is entirely derived from a series of explicit and implicit distinctions which he draws between himself and women (e.g. they are fickle, he is loyal).

What complicates the work of Elizabethan poets like Wyatt, Ralegh and Sidney (and, by extension, any poets) is the fact that their poetry did not emerge in a social and literary vacuum. The most influential poetry of the day consisted in the love sonnets inspired by Petrarch, replete with themes of unrequited love and populated by chaste but cruel Mistresses put on pedestals by adoring but long-suffering would-be male-lovers who must repress their sexual desire in a process which is ultimately to the advantage of their soul’s salvation. This was the kind of poetry to which all potential poets of the day aspired. Given that langue and parole constitute a flexible pair of terms that can be applied in an infinite number of ways, it is possible to view the discourse of Petrarchanism as functioning as the inherited langue, from which is derived an entire system of binaries opposites (e.g. Mistress/lover; Chastity/desire; etc.), which poets like Ralegh appropriated, adapted to suit their own socio-historical environment, and regurgitated in their poetic discourses. They used the discourse of Petrarch, many critics of Renaissance literature contend, to articulate their own economic and political frustrations in the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Erotic frustration became a metaphor for economic and political frustration in their poetry. In other words, almost certainly it was not simply a question of their using poetry to express their own feelings attendant upon actual erotic misfortunes, the perfect analogue of which they found amazingly reflected in the poetry of Petrarch.

In examining the link between language and subjectivity, Benveniste’s focus is largely on the paradigmatic axis of any utterance. Where the paradigmatic axis is predominant in lyric poetry, the syntagmatic axis assumes at least as great importance in both narrative poetry and prose narrative. As a result, in such genres where the first person singular also predominates (e.g. autobiography), questions of narrative structure, the linear development of the narrative, also become important for understanding the link between language and subjectivity. The narrator and/or writer make(s) sense of his or her life by turning inherently random events into a coherent and credible ‘plot-line’ of some sort. Examples of such plot-lines include the ever popular tale of spiritual conversion (the young rake/delinquent who turns his life around) of which St. Augustine’s Confessions is paradigmatic or the ‘dark night of the soul’ tale where the protagonist must endure a gloomy period of suffering before the ‘dawn’ of hope and renewal breaks.