The ambiguity of speech emerges only for the listener, not the speaker

Evidence

Furthermore, for whom do the laws of language exist? Paulhan has given the essential answer: they are not for the one who speaks, they are for the one who listens. The person who speaks is only the choice of a meaning and apprehends the order of the words only in so far as he makes it. The only relations which he will grasp within this organized complex are specifically those which he has established. Consequently if we discover that two (or several) words hold between them not one but several defined relations and that there results from this a multiplicity of meanings which are arranged in an hierarchy or opposed to each other—all for one and the same sentence—if, in short, we discover the “Devil’s share,” this can be only under the two following conditions: (1) The words must have been assembled and presented by a meaningful rapprochement; (2) this synthesis must be seen from outside—i.e., by The Other and in the course of a hypothetical deciphering of the possible meanings of this rapprochement. In this case, in fact, each word grasped first as a square of meaning is bound to another word similarly apprehended. And the rapprochement will be multivocal. The apprehension of the true meaning (i.e., the one expressly willed by the speaker) will be able to put other meanings in the shade or subordinate them, but it will not suppress them. Thus speech, which is a free project for me, has specific laws for others. And these laws themselves can come into play only within an original synthesis. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1219

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Devil’s share’ — multivocal surplus meaning that only appears when speech is seen from the Other’s standpoint.
• XREF: Directly anticipates Beauvoir: the look of the Other as the condition of ambiguity and of multiplicity of meaning. — connects to: Enunciative power asymmetry still obligates speakers to give attention to get attention — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 265; Subaltern speech fails as a transaction between speaker and listener, not as utterance — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2296; Subject familiarity alone does not drive confident classroom speech. (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Enunciative power asymmetry still obligates speakers to give attention to get attention — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 265; Subaltern speech fails as a transaction between speaker and listener, not as utterance — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2296; Subject familiarity alone does not drive confident classroom speech. (+2 more)