October 26, 2012
Langue and Parole
Sharon Daniel’s The Public Secret is a perfect example of
langue and parole. Langue, as you know, is a system of language that makes speech
possible. Parole is the use of that system of language, but it is not the
system itself. Many people say that langue and parole are different from one
another, but Daniel’s The Public Secret disproves those statements. If you
examine Daniel’s project you can see that the stories told by the women
prisoners are parole and the project itself is the langue. Each account
presented is using the project as a means to externalize their statements.
Without the project itself one would not be able to hear these statements,
which shows that parole needs langue and langue needs parole. The way this
project is presented is quite unique. You never see the faces of the women who
tell their stories, but you can feel their struggle. Daniel’s presents the
stories as just brief quotes that pop in an out of the screen and strike your
curiosity to a point where you have to place your mouse over it to hear the story. Two quotes that really jumped out at me were in the “The
Public Secret/Utopia” section. One quote read, “Why does that kid have 60 to
life for throwing a beer can?” and the story that was within the quote was
shocking. The other quote read, “…Your body, any part of it is state property”
and the story that followed talked about how a girl got a sunburn and received
a 115, a fine for damaging state property.
2 comments:
I really liked this analysis with langue and parole. When going through this webtext, I never thought to look at it from that perspective, but it makes perfect sense. After all, as you said, without the project there would be no voices and without the voices there would be no project.
I addressed a similar idea in my blog post about the relationship the text and the way it is told. However, the connection between Langue and Parole and Daniel's text did not dawn on me until I read your blog post. I completely agree when you say mention that "you never see the faces of the women who tell their stories, but you can feel their struggle." It is true because the medium through which the text is presented provides almost like a second tier to the text by taking it one step further and adding more emotion and reality to the text.
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