The Influence of Benveniste’s Linguistic Thoughts on Roland Barthes’ “Writing” Theme

The theme of “writing” runs through Roland Barthes’ thoughts throughout his life. Barthes’ exploration of the theme of “writing” not only includes relevant theoretical analysis, but also contains a large number of text practices, which is his unique way of expressing literature in various disciplines. Among them, linguistics is a very important cornerstone of Barthes’ writing, and Benveniste’s linguistic thoughts have the most far-reaching influence on Barthes’ writing: Benveniste’s trans-linguistic analysis model inspired Barthes to break the boundaries of disciplines through writing; Benveniste’s analysis of the tense and voice of the verbs involved in the act of enunciation, as well as the personal relationship, greatly promoted Barthes’ cognition of language and satisfied his appeal for writing practice. In addition to language structure, Benveniste and Barthes also added attention to people and society in their ideological construction, emphasizing the importance of multiple subjects, which has a breakthrough significance for the traditional Western linguistic theory and literary writing theory.