Le coup de hache de la norme et la conquête des droits

This issue of Actes Sémiotiques considers norms as the ‘missing link’ between language and speech. Eugenio Coseriu's essay Système, norme et parole (1952) is the source of inspiration for all the articles, as the Romanian linguist extended and implemented the Saussurean and then Hjelmslevian project of studying signs ‘within social life’ (Saussure 1916: 33). For Saussure, language was already ‘a social fact’, i.e. “institution” and ‘collective consciousness’ (Saussure 2002: 262-263). Hjelmslev distinguished between speech in ‘use’ and speech as ‘act’, while also recognising that language enables the construction of “schemes” and stabilises itself in ‘norms’ (Hjelmslev 1942). However, it was Coseriu who included the debate on the relationship between language and speech in the broader and more complex sphere of ethical regulations, pointing out the interconnections between semantics and pragmatics. The normative break structures a complex panorama of passions, narrative and axiological conflicts. Through its syntactic function, the norm is transformed into a semantic object and a potential source of crisis and rupture. Once the axe has fallen, the dichotomies of the norm's structure immediately appear as clear ideological divisions: between right and wrong, good and evil, good and bad. Therefore the broad field of contrast and resistance to norms is essential. Humans change, and so we need jurisprudence that, while maintaining a cautious attitude, is capable of intercepting and shaping the future. Faced with laws established for the benefit or in the sole interest of a few, we struggle, in the narrative sense, to conquer rights.