The enunciator, within a communicative act, is the person who receives and decodes the enunciator’s message. For his part, the enunciator is the one who encodes a message (choosing the appropriate words and structures) and emits it. Culture, experience, and encoding and decoding skills of both are involved in this process. Enunciator characteristics and examples

The concepts of enunciator and enunciator are part of discourse studies. In general, within the linguistic discipline, discourse is the use of spoken or written language in a social context. This can consist of just one or two words (as in No Parking ), or it can be hundreds of thousands of words (as in a book).

In the particular case of semiotics, a distinction is also made between the speaker (enunciator) and the person to whom the statement is addressed (enunciator). In this way, in a conversation, two interlocutors participate in an intersubjective exchange. In each turn of speaking, one advances propositions and the other accepts or rejects them.

Thus, on the surface level, both participants in a situation of enunciation take clearly different positions. However, from semiotics, at a deeper level, enunciator and enunciator unite in a syncretic figure that represents enunciative performance in its entirety.

Characteristics of the enunciator

The enunciator is one of the key elements in an enunciation situation (use of language in the form of concrete and singular statements in a social context). Basically, enunciation deals with the meaning of the level of expression from the perspective of different linguistic elements.

In this way, in this type of situation, the activity of the speaker is the focus. Within the statement, there are traces or indices left by the speaker or enunciator. And, on the other hand, there is the relationship that the speaker maintains with his interlocutor or enunciate. The message is built, among others, from the image of the speaker on the receiver. Enunciator characteristics and examples

When an enunciation situation takes place, the enunciator receives the message, adopting an active response position. Then, you may or may not share the points of view, or you may or may not refute what was raised by the enunciator.

Thus, it is a dynamic and symbiotic relationship. Depending on each communicative situation, every enunciator has the potential to become an enunciator and vice versa.

Examples

In political discourse

The enunciator occupies a crucial place in political speeches. These occur under conditions of heterogeneity of the recipient. Therefore, the speakers do not know exactly the characteristics of the recipients of the message.

However, in political communication, the subject who receives, hears, or sees the information must be constructed. The construction of this enunciator generates different identification possibilities. Look at the following example:

“Today our nation joins you in your affliction. We cry with you… We thank all those who have worked so heroically to save lives and solve this crime: those here in Oklahoma and those who are on this great land, and many who gave up their own lives to come and work side by side with you.

We are committed to doing all we can to help you heal the wounded, rebuild this city, and bring to justice those who committed this wrong… “(Bill Clinton, Oklahoma Bombing Memorial Prayer Service, April 23, 1995 , Oklahoma). Enunciator characteristics and examples

The then President of the United States delivered this speech on the occasion of a terrorist attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City. The advertisers were not only the relatives of the 168 victims, but all Americans. In some way, he sought the support of citizens in the event of possible reprisals.

In advertisements

Generally, advertisements are persuasive texts. Its objective is to create the need and interest on the part of the advertiser in a certain product or service. The final purpose is that he acquires them, and for this he uses all the communication resources at his disposal.

Among others, we can mention the campaign “Just do it” (just do it) of the famous sports brand Nike. In the beginning, the advertiser of his campaigns were almost exclusively the marathon runners. Then, an unusual interest in physical exercise arose.

At the end of the 1980s, he started the aforementioned advertising campaign. Although the sentence was very short, it contained everything that people felt when they exercised. It is a slogan that advertisers can relate to: the drive to excel beyond limits.

Another example of how advertising manages to identify with the advertiser and their challenges is the Always campaign. This started as a commercial explaining the stigma behind playing sports “like a girl”, implying that the child’s form is better. By the end of the ad, the message is clear: girls are just as fit and capable as boys.

In literary texts

Literary texts consist of written material whose purpose is to entertain. Examples of this are fiction novels or poem. Although its main function as a text is usually aesthetic, it can also contain political messages or beliefs.

Now, constantly, the proponents of a literary text make a re-elaboration of the original material. In their reading experience, each one updates in some way the implicit meanings in this type of discourse.

Thus, the following verses (part of a poem by the Venezuelan Andrés Eloy Blanco entitled The Infinite Children) will have different meanings depending on the vision of the world and the experiences of each reader: Enunciator characteristics and examples

… When you have a child, you have so many children that the street fills up and the square and the bridge and the market and the church and any child is ours when he crosses the street

and the car runs him over and when he looks out onto the balcony and when he gets close to the pool; and when a child screams, we do not know if ours is the scream or the child, and if they bleed and complain, at the moment we would not know if the oh! is hers or if the blood is ours …