The Seba library treats Infralinguistic in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including McGilchrist, Iain, Jung, Carl Gustav, Rank, Otto).
the majority of the messages we communicate are not in words at all. Animals communicate with one another, and even co-operate, without language, so why shouldn’t we?
McGilchrist argues that most communication operates below or outside linguistic structure, grounding the infralinguistic register in evolutionary and neurological evidence.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
mana is not a concept but a representation based on the perception of a ‘phenomenal’ relationship… In primitive speech only the fact of the relationship and the experience it evokes are indicated
Jung identifies the primitive concept of mana as a pre-conceptual, infralinguistic representation — a mode of meaning that precedes the abstraction and symbolic substitution characteristic of developed language.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
the mouth in itself originally possessed only a physioplastic expressiveness, whereas probably all genuine naming and certainly all verbal description of activity derive from the sphere of the hand
Rank locates an infralinguistic bodily-gestural substrate beneath all naming and verbal description, arguing that the hand and its expressive movements are phylogenetically prior to articulate speech.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
le langage n’est que symbolisme. Mais les différences entre les deux symbolismes illustrent et résument toutes celles que nous indiquons successivement.
Benveniste distinguishes the symbolism of language from the symbolism of the unconscious, implying that the latter operates through a different, infralinguistic logic that psychoanalytic practice must negotiate.
, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 1966supporting
the sign is discontinuous and the sentence is continuous… Nothing can be constructed with units. They cannot be linked together in these continuities that are sentences.
Benveniste’s analysis of the break between semiotic and semantic levels implies that below the sentence lies a region of discrete, non-synthesizable elements — an infralinguistic order that precedes enunciative meaning.
, Last Lectures: Collège de France 1968 and 1969, 2012supporting
wordless but suggestive feelings which appear in their stead and are more valuable than clever talk
Jung valorizes the affective, wordless register as more epistemically and therapeutically significant than verbal articulation, affirming the primacy of the infralinguistic in the analytic process.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
the affect must therefore be deployed in its full strength. Aestheticization and intellectualization are excellent weapons against dangerous affects, but they should be used only when there is a vital threat
Jung cautions that linguistic and aesthetic translation of affect should not prematurely domesticate the infralinguistic intensity that drives genuine psychic transformation.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
la transition d’un niveau au suivant met en jeu des propriétés singulières et inaperçues
Benveniste’s account of the non-linear transitions between linguistic levels implicitly points to infralinguistic properties that surface only when crossing from one structural order to another.
, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 1966aside