Faits de langue, faits de société

"Adopting Guillaume’s perspective on the relationship between (fr.) langage, (fr.) langue and (fr.) discours, the present article attempts to identify the factors under the effect of which appear various categories of language facts and specify to what extent it is possible to transform certain ephemeral discoursive phenomena into language facts by virtue of the permissive character of language (“permissive” here is to be taken in Guillaume’s sense). It also attempts to justify the point of view according to which language facts are interpretable in an indissoluble link with certain social phenomena."