Speaking requires taking a contingent position within language.

Evidence

Meaning is in that sense a wager. You take a bet. Not a bet on truth, but a bet on saying something. You have to be positioned somewhere in order to speak. Even if you are positioned in order to unposition yourself, even if you want to take it back, you have to come into language to get out of it. There is no other way. That is the paradox of meaning. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 221

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the constitutive paradox of speaking: one must be positioned in language even to question one’s own position.
• XREF: connects to: Understanding speech requires projecting oneself toward the speaker’s possible ends. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1216; Language enables conventions rather than being constituted by them. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 420; Performative utterances create states of affairs rather than merely describing them. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 83 (+1 more)