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Pecheux..Michel

,,Pecheux,

. Michel

the questionof the constitutionof meaningto that of the


constitution of the subject,a linking which is not mar-

MOHAMED
ELHAMMOUMI
Collegeof Social Sciences,AI-Imam Muhammad Ibn
SaudUnivet:sity,Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

ginal (for example the special caseof the ideological


'rituals' .of reading and writing), but located inside the
'central thesis' itself, in the figure of interpellation"
(1982, p. 105). Pecheuxhad elaboratedsystematically
a theory of the materiality of languageor a materialist
theory of language.
Pecheux's research framework is of continuing
relevanceto experimentalsocialpsychology,psycholin,guistics, possessing as it does much potential
for analyzingconcreteinstancesof human higher mental functions, rue-governed behavior, language,
disidentification, ideology, and discursive speech
analysis.
Pecheuxdevelopedtwo thesesto illustrate the connectionsbetweenlanguageand ideological formations.
In the first he stated that "words, expressions,
propositions, etc., change their meaning according to the
[ideological] positions held by those who use them,
which signifies that they find their meaning by reference to those positions; that is, by referenceto the
ideologicalformations in which those positions are
inscribed" (1982, p. Ill). The second thesis Pecheux
statedthat "every discursiveformation, by the transparencyof the meaningconstitutedin it, concealsits depenaenceon the 'complexwhole in dominance'of discursive
formations, itself imbricateswith the complexof ideological formations" (1982,p. 113).

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
'

have been recast, of course, in the light of insights


drawn from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci,
and Lukacs and most importantly, in my view, of Soviet
psychologists and linguists such as Vygotsky, Bakhtin,
an

d Vi I

brought

0 ovsmov among 0
to

the

fore

power

thers. It was Pecheux w h0


and

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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Robert W. Rieber, Encyclopediaof the History of PsychologicalTheories,00110.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8,


@Springer Science+BusinessMedia, LLC 2012
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