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Pecheux..Michel
,,Pecheux,
. Michel
MOHAMED
ELHAMMOUMI
Collegeof Social Sciences,AI-Imam Muhammad Ibn
SaudUnivet:sity,Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Basic Biographicallnformationl
Major Accomplishments
Michael Pecheuxwas a French Marxist social psychologist, psycholinguist, and philosopher. He developed
a formal, potentially automatic instrument, which he
calledAutomatic DiscourseAnalysis.He studied at Ecole
Normale Superieure, where Louis Atthusser and
Georges Canguilhem were among his teacher~.He
was an active member of the left Communist
movements. At his tragic death in 1983, at the age
of 45 years, he was professor and researcherin the
Laboratory of Experimental Social Psychology at
Sorbonne University Paris 7 as well as researchdirector at the National Center for Scientific Research.
He published many papers and books in the field
of social psychology, psycholinguistics, language,
philosophy, and the history of human and social
sciences.
Pecheuxconceivedthe constitution of psychology
as a result of theoretical rather than empirical breakthroughs, a view he sharedwith Gaston Bachelard.In
a seriesof articles, he developedthe conceptual foundations for a dialectical materialist social psychology. References
Much of the conceptsusedin his theoretical framework Pec
' h
M ( 1982) La
d . 0 ogy.New ""or:k St.
eux,.
. nguage,semantIcsan IdeI
'
d Vi I
brought
0 ovsmov among 0
to
the
fore
power
ideology
concepts
in
the discourse field. The makeup of language is conditioned by social forces such as social classes, gender,
race, ethnicity, etc. Language for Pecheux is an expression of the ideology of the hegemonic class
d . t.
omma Ion.
Pecheux summarized his project stating that:
"All my work finds its definition here, in this linking of
Martin'sPress.
Pecheux,M. (1983).Ideology:Fortressor paradoxicalspace.In
s. Hanninen& L. Paldan(Eds.),Rethinkingideology:
A marxist
,debate (pp.31-35):NewYork:InternationalGeneral.
Pecheux, M. (1988). Discourse: Structure or event? In C. Nelson &
L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of
culture (pp. 633-650). Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press.
Pecheux,
M. (1995a).Threestages
of discourse
analysis.
In T. Hak&
N. Helsloot(Eds.),MichelPecheux,
automaticdiscourse
analysis
(pp.235-241).Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Pecheux,M. (1995b).Automaticdiscourse
analysis.Amsterdam:
Rodo i.
Pecheux,
~., BrunoP.,PIon,M. (1973).Lapsychologie
sociale:Une
utopieencrise.La NouvelleCritique,62,72-78;64,21-28.
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