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From her experience of French as a second language, which she learned as an adult, the author explores the relationship between “word” and “sex”, or “language” and “sexuality”. With reference to Freud’s studies on aphasia, and his “decomposition” of the word, she returns to the beginnings of language development for the infant in his carnal bond with his mother, stressing the pleasures provoked by and within words, which are at the heart of every relationship with an other. She suggests that throughout life, language retains something of this original tie between erogenous body and psychical life.