Merleau-Ponty and Speech Acts

For Merleau-Ponty, a speech act combines motility and intellect, e. g. the physical emission of sound, and the imbuing of that with meaning. So, when he further characterizes the act as a "surplus" and a "non-being", he is likely directing his concept of an embodied upsurge as a challenge to Sartre. However, his notion of 'non-being' vacillates in the relevant passages from Phenomenology of Perception. On the one hand, it seems to be a reference to the incompleteness of the course of a process with respect to its eventual attainment of Being. But, on the other, it also seems to be a reference to the incorporeality of a meaning prior to its incarnation in an empirical linguistic expression. Furthermore, he also alludes to an 'intention' to signify that is present at the outset of the speech act. More generally, while the thesis of the essential corporeality of Consciousness is one of the primary anti-Sartrean results of his Phenomenological study, there is no indication that Merleau-Ponty applies that thesis to Phenomenology itself. Hence, his reliance upon Intentionality to challenge Sartre suggests a relapse into the latter's Ontological dualism.