In order to demonstrate the documentary value and scientific interest of a reader-hearer’s notes for understanding the work of developing theoretical thought, the author has engaged in some self-observation and a reflective return to a re-reading of annotations made on articles by Culioli and of notes taken during an oral seminar. The reprise and reconstruction, with a commentary in the form of annotations and notes of a different order, is limited to the metalinguistic conceptualisation of the notion of intensity and the enunciative operations inherent within it ; the concern is to account for the different timings and modes of production and reception of the theorisation. Thus, in an oral exchange, the comparison reveals a conceptual imagination that written communication holds in reserve. It also enables us to trace an image of the meanderings of transmission.