Holborrow Studies in Language and Capitalism

"Putting the social back into language"

Social - Marx, Volosinov & Vygotsky
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Move from language as "stand alone system" - refute Pinker/ Saussure - nothing outside of text?
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"For those like Pinker, the autonomy of language arises from its physiological roots in “a
distinct piece of the biological make-up of our brains”; language has its own spontaneous
impulses (Pinker 1995: 18). Humans are genetically hardwired to produce language;
linguistic capacity is an “instinct”, embedded in the brain that becomes manifest more or less
independently of social or cultural factors. Pinker bases his work on Chomsky who, from the
1950’s, proposed that language depended on an innate “grammar module” in the mind."

at issue - biological determinism

"In
this way of thinking, the direction is from language to the social and manages to give
language reality-creating powers quite as formidable as those to be found in claims that
language is society-free. For example, Foucault, maintained that ‘discursive practices’ were
all-encompassing. For him, discourse itself constituted and reproduced power relations in
society. Foucault’s view of language has remained influential in studies of language and
power. The discipline of Critical Discourse Analysis owes much to Foucault, as Fairclough
confirms (Fairclough 1995)"

ideology - distinction "Foucault, in point of fact,
carefully chose not to use the term ideology which he saw as being too directly connected
with the economic infrastructure, and too Marxist (Foucault 1979:36)."
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article - reinstate language in a social setting.
3 writers -exploring them does so!

Marx
fragments - but point to this!
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"Marx identified the origins of language
as being inextricably linked with the emergence of consciousness. In the 1844 Manuscripts,
he saw language as ‘the vital element’, of consciousness (Marx 1975: 356). In The German
Ideology, written in 1846, he sketches a fuller picture of the materialist basis of historical
development and how human relations are determined both by their own needs and by the
mode of production." How do visual artists resist this? Another kind of language that is not being accounted for...a spirit?

Language response to social problems

 "In so far as both language and consciousness involve the ability to generalize beyond the
particular and the present and to process abstract thought, they overlap and are
interconnected."
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"But Marx does not proceed in this way: consciousness and language are intertwined
because of the social basis of the origins of both. Language and consciousness are not two
essential faculties running along their own tracks, but specifically human attributes which
came into being and evolved together within a particular material and historical context." Reminds me of great divide theories

"Labour is an exclusively human characteristic which sets humans apart from animals. It
allows humans to establish a relationship with nature, rather than be dominated by it. Nature
then becomes something that humans, unlike animals, can change." This freaks me out.

Bees - language - Marx: "Man not only effects a change
in form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials.
(Marx 1976: 284)" sort of priveledged - is that good?
Also - animal relationships - recently shown on PBS; clear there is something else going on there
Why are we so worried about language?
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limitations of calling this "language" - biological determinism
Invention vs. programmatic
" Animal
and insect instincts do not have these infinite outcomes and their behaviour is uniform and in
reaction to a limited range of circumstances. Human labour has to change constantly to
meet new needs and this is only possible because humans are able to stand back from the
task and reflect, looking back and forward in time, on what they do. Human language makes
this process possible."  Hmmn. other systems in nature do so as well; I don't like this depiction of nature.  Casts nature systems itself as static

displacement

" Beakin describes the same development with language: “As we learn to speak we
enter the world of consciousness, a world created by others before us, to which our own
consciousness can contribute” (Beakin 1996:26)."

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herd conciousness to entering into relations with others
"At a further stage, alongside an increased division
of labour, the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘mental’ labour appears. Thus abstract
thought, “consciousness emancipated from the world”, capable of transforming material life,
not just experiencing it, emerges alongside social production. From these developments in
human society, the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, ethics etc.” becomes
possible (Marx and Engels 1974:52)." Just Marx

Darwin - resists labour
"
 Engels,
by contrast, stresses the significance of upright gait and the freeing of hands for human
labour in the development of speech. “When after thousands of years of struggle, the
differentiation of hand from foot and erect gait were finally established, man became distinct
from the ape and the basis was laid for the development of articulate speech and the mighty
development of the brain that has since made the gulf between man and ape unbridgeable”"

Engels  Language - part of  emerging consciousness
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 Engels notes here the unity of material social activity and language. The genesis of
language is in human labour — “the point at which humans have something to say to each
other”.
More to language?
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Thoughts

 "that ideas seem cut loose of reality, as if free-floating, above the constraints of the
material world. Human mind over matter is a powerfully seductive idea. Instead of history
being seen as part of a dialectical process between humans and the material world, mind
comes to be seen as the prime mover of historical change. With the development of society,
the growing complexity of human endeavour, the specialization of labour, social organization
became codified into law and politics, the human mind came to be seen as the supreme
organizer of these things. “Men became accustomed to explain their actions as arising out of
their thoughts instead of their needs” (Marx and Engels 1970:72)." I like this because it gets back to isues in attitudes towards nature.
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Again - economics complicated part of a system
"“also exercise their influence upon the course of their
historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form” (Marx and
Engels 1970: 487). In other words, while the social relations of production set limits to
developments in the superstructure, there is an interaction of all elements."

Reminds me of Friere: "Conversely, social consciousness for those without power in society suffers from the
distortions of powerlessness."

3. "Marx saw that ideological forms were terrains
to be contested, arenas “in which men become conscious of. . . conflict and fight it out”

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Volosinov
" Vološinov’s starting point is the ideological nature of all signs, including language. He
defines a sign as that which “represents, depicts or stands for something outside itself”
(Vološinov 1973: 9)."

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Different symbols lead us in different directions
 "For Vološinov, this signing process is the means by which consciousness takes shape and is
socially constructed. Signs emerge in the process of interaction between one individual
consciousness and another; not just any two human beings but between two who are
‘organized socially’, and part of a social group (1973: 12)." Consciousness through signs
But we are something...consciousness w/o language? How can we know?

"Seeing language as part of human consciousness, Vološinov stresses the changing and
generative nature of language." refutes individualistic subjectivism "Croce, to mean that
language was primarily a question of individual style. Such a view was, according to
Vološinov, untenable because it relied on the subjective concept of ‘linguistic taste’,"

abstract obectivism "Saussure effectively converted language into “an inviolable, incontestable norm which the
individual can only accept”. This view robs language of any creative dynamism;"

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"Vološinov sees the weakness of Saussurean linguistics as being twofold. First, he criticizes
the arbitrariness of a methodology that sets up self-contained categories of language system
(langue) from utterance (parole), and which then casts aside the latter as being too randomly
individual to merit scientific study"
" A child
does not just inherit a language which she then has to learn. She uses language in a social
context and thereby fashions it. Language is socially distinctive because each speaker
brings his or her social experience to it. The langue/parole distinction artificially breaks up
the linguistic whole, and fails to capture the interaction of both aspects in the actual practice
of language." TOtally reminds me of organic farming movement - permaculture

"Second, Vološinov sees Saussure’s abstract objectivism as an ideological stance. “What
interests the mathematically minded rationalist is not the relationship of the sign to the actual
reality it reflects, nor to the individual who is its originator, but the relationship of sign to sign
within a closed system already accepted and authorized” (1973: 57—58). Abstract
objectivism places language on a pedestal removed from its users."


focus on dead language

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Language and verbal interaction
" The meanings and different connotations for a
word or a piece of language are constructed by the speakers, who give each utterance their
particular evaluative accent.
The importance of this observation that language changes and that users shape language
has been borne out by later developments in discourse studies and pragmatics"

"I'm hungry"

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V - common knowledge - 2 ppl in room "well"
"speakers, in what is common to them. This common ground he lists as (1) the physical
space, (2) the common knowledge and understanding of the situation and (3) their common
evaluation or assessment of the situation. "

"Vološinov’s view of language and its different elements — the ideological,
the social, the unstable and the creative aspects — gains theoretical unity through his
concept of verbal interaction. This goes to the heart of the social nature of language which,
for Vološinov, is not just one dimension of language, but its sine qua non. Language is made
for an addressee. (a listener or a reader); there is no such thing as language into a vacuum."
Again, similar to environmental perceptions

variations - themes

meanings - smaller constituants
"‘Theme’ is not merely a combination of smaller ‘meaning’ units but something which
is more than the sum of its parts formed in verbal interaction and in a social and historical
context. Theme is an instance of the generative process of language. It is verbal interaction
in operation."
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evaluative accent
ideologies:
"It was certainly the case the
nineteenth century when imperial rivalry gave birth to intense ideological representation in
language. Today too, almost anywhere where English is spoken (and where it is not) this
particular ideological contest is played out with intensity, often in response to the daily official
war-speak of “axis of evil”, “coalition of the willing” “precision bombing” “islamo-fascists”"
class struggle

inner speech
"Inner speech
represents the identification of language with consciousness and the social element of both.
The term reappears in Vygotsky as a component of consciousness and psychology, as we
shall see. Vološinov examines the phenomenon from a linguistic standpoint. For him, words
are the building blocks of thinking. Consciousness is “bathed by and suspended in, and
cannot be entirely segregated or divorced from the element of speech” (1973: 15). Words
are the means by which consciousness is accessed and signs are part of the inner psyche
and inner speech is thinking, “the skeleton of inner life” as Vološinov terms it. (1973: 29).
The piecing together and distilling of experience takes place through signs, and signs are the
means of mental processing (1973: 85)."
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"Only the inarticulate cry of an animal can be said to be organized from the inside
because of its nature as a behavioural reflex. By contrast the organizing centre of human
utterances is not within but outside — the social context. The social context is both the
immediate situation of the utterance and the broader aggregate of conditions in which the
speakers are living (1973: 93)."
Against great divide stuff:
"Vološinov is interested in reported speech forms for another reason: for what they can reveal
about grammatical forms and how they vary and change. Grammatical terms associated with
indirect speech are as paradigmatic as they are different across languages. In Latin, strict
concordance applies; in Russian it is less rigid. Reviewing these, Vološinov describes how
reported speech has historically changed from strict syntactic enclosing of reported speech
to a more fluid approach where the boundaries of the message are weakened and where
reporter and reported overlap."
Russian flexibility

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Grammatical forms in constant state of adaption and change

Grammar and style!! Japan (West always privileges itself?)

"But his literary examples allow him to reveal the difficulties of categorizing style and
grammar as separate entities, thus revealing at the same time the shifting sands of grammar
itself. A demarcation between grammar and style for Vološinov is spurious since “[t]he
borderline is fluid because of the very mode of existence of language, in which,
simultaneously, some forms are undergoing grammaticization while others are undergoing
degrammaticization” (1973: 126). Elsewhere Vološinov notes that style and grammar
overlap. In the case of highly elaborate categories of address in Japanese, for example,
compared to relatively few in English, he makes the claim that “we might say that what is still
a matter of grammar for the Japanese has already become for us a matter of style”"


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Vygostsky
"Vygotsky’s rediscovery of the dialectical relationship between social activity and
language became his method. He explained it thus:
I don’t want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a lot of quotations. I
want to find out how science has to be built, to approach the study of mind having
learnt the whole of Marx’s method. (Vygotsky 1978: 8)
Vygotsky elaborated on Marx’s theme of language as ‘practical consciousness’ and
described the organic interconnections of thought and language."
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disagrees with static - we have language metalese - Pinker
"Vygotsky, however, demonstrated that language is the means by which reflection,
generalization and thought processes take place and that these cognitive processes are
socially formed. Vygotsky’s writings describe both the highly personal and at the same time
profoundly social facets of language."

Tools!
" Tool use was the mediated activity by
which humans changed nature and the world around them. This was externally orientated
activity that produced effects in the material world. Vygotsky saw parallels between physical
tools and humans’ psychological tools, or signs. Both mediated human activity, but one was
orientated externally and the other internally; one was a means of managing nature, the
other aimed at mastering humans’ own behaviour. While qualitatively different, nevertheless
the two sets of tools overlap and together produce new forms of behaviour. Tools and
speech provided the means of meeting human’s needs and were therefore crucial to
humans’ unique intervention in nature. The development of the use of signs paves the way
for the development of higher mental processes and internalized"
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Speech stages and socialization
rather than fixed - language is "formative".
Important - language does NOT construct reality
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Inner speech and thought : "Thought and word’, he notes that word meaning is an
instance of the unity of thought and word — one cannot be separated from the other. “The
meaning of word represents such a close amalgam of thought and language that it is hard to
tell whether it is a phenomenon of speech or a phenomenon of thought” (1986: 212). But
central to a word meaning is that word meanings change."
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abbreviated thought - words - Anna Karenina & Hamlet

Individual!!
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1. "emergence of language in early human society
show that language arises from a complex, two-way process in which, through social labour
and interaction, humans gradually increase their mastery of the environment.
What Marx noted for human consciousness in general, Vygotsky reformulates at the level of
the individual. The development of child language carries the same social components that
are present in the development of language at the beginning of human society."

2. "Second, and as a consequence of this social rootedness, language overlaps with ideology.
The generalizing potential of signs, from which language is built, the way that signs, in
Vološinov’s terms, refract and reflect reality, makes them a critical aspect of the ideological
process. But, while the weight of the dominant class in society can skew ideological
significance, including language, towards their world view, there is nothing predetermined
about the outcome of these ideological accents. They are constantly contested by speakers."

3. "Third, Vološinov’s pioneering study of an aspect of grammatical change sheds light on the
unstable nature of language. He overturned assumptions about the hard-and-fast rules of
grammar."

4."But the evolution of grammar has wider implications. It is evidence of a different
interpretation of language. Over-biological and over-ideological approaches ignore the
central dynamic of language: that it is made by speakers in unpredictable ways. Vološinov
grasped that the generative nature of language emanated not just from individual creativity
but from the shifts and alterations in society. “In the vicissitudes of the word are the
vicissitudes of the society of word-users” (Vološinov 1973: 157). It is this crucially social
nature of language that explains why language is such a political question."

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