This is a key term in Foucault’s attempt to make his method consistent as a theoretical structure. The long, central chapter on ‘The Enunciative Function’ serves to describe a specific, so far unrecognized level of existence for signs: Foucault calls this level the statement. In trying to define the statement, however, Foucault ends up defining the enunciative function by which the level of the statement operates. We have generally analyzed pieces of language based on their content (whether this is a proposition, an expression of a psychology, or both) or based on their material existence (their appearance once, at a specific time and place). If we analyze a statement in terms of the enunciative function, we seek to describe the discursive conditions under which it could be said, rather than the grammatical, propositional, or strictly material conditions under which it could be formulated. Thus, an enunciation always involves a position from which something is said; this position is not defined by a psychology, but by its place within (and its effect on) a field of discourse in all its complexity. The enunciative function, then, designates that aspect of language by which statements relate to other statements.
