The Function of Speech in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty The submitted doctoral thesis is an attempt to describe the development of the intentional function of speech in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. The intentional function is defined as the change of expressed meaning that is engendered by the expression itself. We trace Husserl's position from the Logical Investigations and the first book of his Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, where he describes speech as the non- productive mirroring of other kinds of intentionality, to the late text The Origin of Geometry, where he discerns two functions of speech: it provides thought its ideality, which is different from the ideality of species; and it provides thought its objectivity, i.e. the form of object that lasts in history as identical. In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty adopts Husserl's late position with several profound modifications. The starting-point ceases to be the linguistic sign, and speech becomes a kind of gesture. As a consequence, the difference between linguistic and non-linguistic ideality disappears. Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty holds that the expression accomplishes the meaning of what it expresses. In this way, speech becomes creative and ceases to be just an empty intention of...
