- Email: [email protected]
Marxist Theories of Language*
526 Marty, Anton (1847–1914)
Marty, Anton (1847–1914) S Watanabe, Tokyo, Japan ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Martin Anton Maurus Marty, philosopher of language, was born as the ninth child of eleven children of a shoemaker and sacristan named Jacob J. A. Marty in Schwyz, Switzerland. His elder brother, Alois Joseph, a Benedictine, became one of the founders of the Catholic University of America. Marty studied philosophy and theology at a Catholic seminary in Mainz, Germany, where he published a prize-winning thick thesis (about 300 pages) titled Die Lehre des hl. Thomas u¨ber die Abstraktion der u¨bersinnlichen Ideen aus den sinnlichen Bildern nebst Darstellung und Kritik der u¨brigen Erkenntnistheorien. Scarcely 20 years old at that time, he already showed the strong influence he had received from Franz Brentano’s Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. He came to be Brentano’s student at Wu¨rzburg University and was greatly influenced by his mentor’s empirical psychology. In 1869 he started teaching at the Catholic lyceum in Schwyz as professor of philosophy and received ordination of a higher degree. When Brentano, a Catholic priest, left his church in protest against the promulgation of the infallibility of the popes as a dogma, Marty also retired from his church. After leaving Switzerland, he studied at Go¨ttingen University with Hermann Lotze, a physicalanthropological philosopher, as his mentor, took his doctor’s degree with a dissertation titled ‘U¨ber den Ursprung der Sprache’ and was appointed professor of philosophy at a newly-established university at Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy in Ukraine) in 1875. Owing apparently to his thesis Die Frage nach der geschichtlichen Entwickelung des Farbensines (1879),
he was called to the German University of Prague in 1880 and devoted himself to exploring scientifically the new field of linguistic philosophy, which he regarded as an integral part of linguistics until he retired in 1913. He was appointed dean of the Department of Philosophy, Vienna University, in 1890. Though he suffered from depression in his later years, he continued to finish his lifework Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie (Vol. I, 1908). His collected works were edited by Eisenmeier, Kostil and Kraus as Gesammelte Schriften (2 vols. 1916, 1920), which did not include his thesis published in book form. Otto Funke, professor at Bern University, who further developed Marty’s ideas, edited Marty’s unpublished works as Nachgelassene Schriften (Bern, 1940–1950), which include important works such as ¨ ber Prinzipenfragen der Sprachwissenschaft,’ ‘U ¨ ber ‘U Wert und Methode einer beschreibenden Bedeutungslehre,’ ‘Von den semasiologischen Einheiten und ihren Untergruppen,’ and ‘Von den logisch nicht begru¨ndeten synsemantischen Zeichen.’ His biography Anton Marty: sein Leben und seine Werke (Halle, 1916) was written by Oskar Kraus. Marty’s significance for the history of linguistics chiefly lies in his cogent argumentation against the nativistic parallelism between mind and language, which was introduced into linguistics by Wilhelm von Humboldt and reinforced by Heyman Steinthal and Wilhelm Wundt. Marty’s idea concerning innere Sprachform was empirical-teleological. His influence was perceptively great in Japan in the 1940s, with the respect that Funke, philologist and Marty’s expounder, is highly respected among English philologists there. See also: Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835).
Marxist Theories of Language G Mininni, University of Bari, Bari, Italy ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 5, pp. 2390–2393, ß 1994, Elsevier Ltd.
The hinges of a Marxist consideration concern the links binding the language to the structure of society, to models of material praxis, and to forms of ideology. An evaluation of the relationship between Marxism and the sciences of language coincides with
the overall judgment expressed by many scholars on the historical experience of the so-called ‘real socialism’: the questions on the agenda are relevant and unavoidable, but the answers given are, on the whole, misleading or disappointing. The questions posed by Marxism as an interpretive methodology of social relationships may be worded as follows: which linguistic arguments prove that ‘man is the sum of social relationships?’ How are the different systems of beliefs, socially shared knowledge, cultural values, and rules of a human community continuously rebuilt in his language? How do the ideal–typical
Marxist Theories of Language 527
needs for mutual understanding and the real contingencies of differentiation and social struggle weave together in the language? These queries question all the symbolic articulations connected with the difference between manual labor and intellectual work.
Looking for a ‘True’ Marxism in Linguistics What is the meaning of ‘being a Marxist in linguistics?’ First of all, it must be stressed that from a methodological point of view, it is not a question of applying Marxism to linguistics (Ponzio, 1989), as such an approach carries the idea of a ‘will of power,’ which is not acceptable for cultural practices guided by the paradigm of the search for a historical, consensual truth. Any attempt at a mere external application legitimates a defense mechanism aiming at protecting the autonomy of language science against the obtrusiveness of ideological knowledge. To adhere to a Marxist theory of the language does not mean to draw the proposals of a linguistic explanation from the dogmas of social philosophy, but to identify a route of interpenetration between the problems posed by linguistic practice (or reflection) and the possibilities of an unbiased analysis of the same at a social level, just like the one Marx carried out to explain how the capitalist economy of his time worked. Classics’ Indications
The hypothesis of a direct accessibility between Marxism and language sciences may seem surprising when one considers that the assertions concerning language are poor and fragmentary in the classical literature of Marxism. Some passages from the German ideology are extremely enlightening, especially those where Marx and Engels (1970) explain that language originated from the need for relationships with others, and is the matter that from the beginning ‘contaminates’ the spirituality of a ‘real, practical conscience,’ which is typical of man. Other noteworthy references can be found in the section about Nature’s dialectic; here Engels develops Darwin’s theme of the ape’s humanization processes and suggests the existence of a strict connection between language and work. Of course, from an early date (Lafargue, 1894), scholars’ attention was attracted by the possibility of identifying a class-prejudiced characterization both in the use of language and in the process of its historical evolution (see Class Language). This assumption does not justify in the least the absurd contraposition of a ‘socialist’ or ‘revolutionary linguistics’ to a ‘capitalist’ or ‘reactionary one,’ which would necessarily occur if Marxist theoretical and ideological principles were schematically applied in a scientific investigation of linguistic problems.
Scylla and Charybdis in Marxist Linguistics
A subtle plot of historical and political conditions led Joseph V. Stalin to denounce the fact that Mikolai J. Marr (see Marr, Mikolai Jakovlevich (1864– 1934)) (the recognized spokesman of Marxist theory in linguistics until then) had incurred such an aberration in his doctrine, as he had reconciled his own monogenetic (or Japhetic) hypothesis of language with assertions about its superstructural and classprejudiced nature. The great normalizer of the Soviet State often intervened in the linguists’ debate published in Pravda (summer 1950), and – as an expert on Marxism, not on glottology – he presumed to outline the correct picture of a Marxist interpretation for linguistic questions. Stalin’s position – which seems to be supported by common sense and is consistent with the scientific programs of Saussure’s structuralism and Durkheim’s sociology – turns out to be fundamentally incorrect both in its method and in substance, although it is absolutely justified by virtue of a certain sociolinguistic policy. As a matter of fact, on the one hand, the pretension to solve a scientific debate by a substantial appeal to authority appears unacceptable; on the other hand, the rebuttal of Marr’s thesis is carried out with the help of trivializing arguments. However, from the point of view of the history of thought, Stalin’s intervention is an affirmation and, at the same time, a denial of a Marxist theory on language. It is an affirmation because it demonstrates de facto that any theoretical language elaboration is bound by reasons of social and political practice. Language sciences, too, obey precise constraints deriving from the development of human relationships and draw inspiration from the ideological climate in which a society lives. Actually Stalin’s concern to preserve languages conceals the ‘sovietization’ process imposed on the different nationalities gathered in the former USSR, and aims at defusing social conflicts. But Stalin’s position patently clashes with that dimension of Marxist theory, so it necessarily adheres to a ‘critical linguistics,’ that is to say, a linguistics that tries to unveil the dominant mechanisms operating in communicative practices (see Critical Discourse Analysis). For a number of reasons, Stalin could not adopt such a view, and in order to avoid the problems that Marr had reasonably posed but incorrectly solved (Borbe´ , 1974), he takes refuge in an attitude of denial: as a language system has its own autonomous organization and is an instrument of national identification, language is not a superstructure and does not have a class character, so Marrism is not the equivalent of Marxism in linguistics. Stalin’s position is not only mistaken, as he commits the ‘minimalist error’ (Mey, 1978) of considering language as a mere by-product of the cultural
528 Marxist Theories of Language
life of a nation, but it is also responsible for putting an end to the debate on the potential of Marxism in linguistics, through its own mystification (Marcellesi and Gardin, 1974).
Language Sciences and Critique of Ideologies If we escape both monsters of Marrism and Stalinism, are there other implemented models of interpenetration or mutual control between the social theory of Marxism and linguistic questions?
Vossler) and abstract objectivism (which was exemplarily represented by Saussure) (see Saussure, Ferdinand (-Mongin) de (1857–1913)). Voloshinov demonstrated that the Marxist point of view calls for an analysis of the socioideological material ‘molded’ by verbal interaction in order to rebut both the unsubstantiality of individual creativity in linguistic expression and the narrow-mindedness of a superindividual system of rules escaping the manifold pressures of language usage. Social Cognition and Linguistic Praxis
‘Bakhtin’s Circle’
In fact, an authentically Marxist position in the language sciences is worked out in the postrevolution decade in Russia by the so-called ‘Leningrad School.’ Michail M. Bakhtin (see Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975)), Valentin N. Voloshinov (see Voloshinov, V. N. (ca. 1884/5–1936)), and Pavel N. Medvedev tried to develop a semiotic theory of culture based on Marxist principles. Their conceptual pattern set three interpretative routes: decoding psychic processes both historically and socially; exploring the polyphonic dialogics intrinsic in a language; identifying the sociological constraints of a literary text. The Marxist relevance criterion of such an approach is the criticism of the forms of ideology and the way ideology works. In Voloshinov’s opinion (1973), a Marxist conception of the problems posed by language philosophy is warranted by the need to explore the sign nature of ideological phenomena. As a result, the study of the ideologies embodied in the ethical, religious, juridical, political, and literary institutions of a society must be based on an explanation of the principles regulating their constitutive elements: i.e., signs. The identification of the ideological sphere with semiotics enables us to explain the formation of an individual conscience as a socioideological phenomenon; one must therefore imagine an unseizable dialectic interaction between the mind’s working and the activation of sign-ideological systems (see Dialogism, Bakhtinian). The specifically psychological aspects of such an explanatory route were developed by Lev S. Vygotsky (see Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich (1896–1934)); his theory advocated that superior psychic processes (memory, language, will, etc.) are interiorizations of social interactions mediated by signs. To explain the connection between language and ideology, Voloshinov resorted to a metaprocedural strategy: he showed which ideologies are carried by linguists. Two macrotrends are therefore identified in the study of language, which appear as epistemological constants and are still in force: individualist subjectivism (from Humboldt to Croce and
The debate interrupted by Stalin and the programs started by the ‘Leningrad School’ were reconsidered in the 1960s both by Soviet scholars who were interested in giving a historical and materialist direction to semiotic structuralism (Reznikov, 1964) and by other scholars working in the field of social criticism in the capitalist West (Cornforth, 1967). An interesting bridge between these two perspectives had been sketched in Italy by Antonio Gramsci’s brilliant intuitions and was later consolidated in Poland by Adam Schaff (1967). The need for a ‘Marxist linguistics’ was set by the Polish philosopher in the sphere of a knowledge theory beyond the opposite extremes of mechanistic materialism and subjective idealism. According to Schaff, a Marxist theory emphasizes the role of mediating procedure that language plays between what is subjective and objective, mental and social, biological and cultural. This theory acts as a central support for a conception of man as the being who is responsible for the creation of his own cognitive and relational models. Even if some differences can be found from the point of view of inner logic as well as on the level of phylogenetic and ontogenetic acquisition, the process of ‘thinking–speaking’ is substantially unitary, as cognition is an effect of social praxis and communicative relations are full of cognitive contents. This dialectic unity enables us to reject both the reflex theory suggested by a naı¨ve materialism and the theory of significant systems autonomy, proposed by some updated versions of idealism. Furthermore, Schaff’s Marxist language theory aims at being immediately employed in the practical questions weighing on the decision-making ability of a human person as an actor and a maker of his or her social world. On this subject, Schaff also considers a social categorization process that emphasizes the connection between ideology and language, that is, ‘thinking–speaking by stereotypes.’ The resort to stereotype and to prejudice gives emphasis to the fact that as the relationship between the individual mind and reality is mediated by the sphere of meanings, the workings of the mind itself are influenced
Marxist Theories of Language 529
by historical and social conditionings. Stereotypes reveal the real control that social groups have over the contents and processes of individual thought. Schaff’s pragmatic point of view allowed him to give stereotypes of the sociointegrative and defense functions that make the workings of the mind compatible with the political structure of society. Similar conclusions are drawn by all those currents of sociolinguistics and pragmalinguistics that wonder about the connections between the conscience of sociality carried by the language and the limits of what the historical conditions of praxis allow human subjects to mean when they are diversified by factors such as age, sex, culture, class, degree of social control, etc. Some theories within ‘social linguistics’ are marked by an implicit adhesion to a Marxian inspiration, such as ‘praxematics,’ coming from Lafont’s school or Mey’s pragmatic approach. Lafont (1978) works out a linguistics focused on the ‘praxeme’: this is an instrument for the production of sense in speech and, at the same time, a unit of analysis in the relation between the language user and the practical social conditions that make it possible for the uses of linguistic varieties to clash. In outlining the basic question ‘Whose language?,’ Mey (1985) makes a constant, critical comparison between the categories obtainable from analysis of industrial society (such as production, oppression, and manipulation) and the instruments of linguistic analysis. According to Mey, the Marxian inspiration in sociolinguistics lies in the need for a theory that can explain the intricate relationship between language as a sociocultural product and the forms of the overall reproduction of a society. The solution he proposes entrusts pragmatics, as the theory of linguistic use, with the task of explaining the various ‘wording’ possibilities connected with the clashing nature of groups, with different approaches to knowledge and with different power distributions. Sign Systems and Social Reproduction
The principles of historical–dialectical materialism imply that language is interpreted by abstractions that are in turn determined by the sum of practices regulating man’s ‘organic exchange’ with nature, bearing in mind the often distorted representations imposed by the historical limits within which man is obliged to live his social relationships (Erckenbrecht, 1973). The Marxist idea of language aims at specifying the features of the production of sense carried out by man in the present circumstances of his history and, therefore, at identifying the role of sign systems within the process of ‘social reproduction’ as a whole. This category indicates the totality of techniques and procedures through which human groups
perpetuate their presence in the world. In this perspective, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi’s tentatively investigated connection between language and work is justified (1983). At first sight, Rossi-Landi seems to exaggerate when he applies the Marxian labor theory of value to the field of language and to other nonverbal forms of human communication. Indeed, the most important thing is the epistemological and methodological indication of the need for passing from the surface level of exchange and/or the sign market to the underlying level of social labor that is implicit in cultural signification and communication processes. This change of focus makes it possible to criticize the dichotomy traditionally accepted by linguists (out of common sense) between the ‘system’ and ‘use’ of the language, both in its classical version of Saussure’s opposition between ‘langue’ and ‘parole,’ and in its neoclassical version of Chomsky’s opposition between ‘competence’ and ‘performance.’ The adherence to these two categories enables linguists to exorcize the fetish of an explanatory autonomy, by confining the pertinence of Marxism to the illustration of the social function of a language. By the contrast, in Rossi-Landi’s view, those abstractions are useful only if they are rooted in the ground of ‘common speaking,’ which defines historically the linguistic a priori of the human being. The philosophical methodology of ‘common speaking,’ which was later generalized in a semiotic methodology of ‘common semiosis’ by Rossi-Landi, achieves the Marxist theory target of unveiling the ideological consistency of the ‘logosphere’ and clarifies the mediating role that sign systems play between the economic basis and the super structures of society.
What Shall We Do? The Marxist perspective, however narrow it may appear, binds those who study linguistic problems to historical–dialectical materialism and obliges them to consider the connections between linguistic theory and the theory of praxis as being relevant. This double bond results in the urgent need to explore the linguistic signs’ ideological texture. But for the linguist, the adherence to such an explanatory route entails the commitment to carry out his own language investigations according to an emancipatory project concerning the potentials of human beings. To be a Marxist in linguistics means to adopt an intrinsically debunking perspective of the relationships of social control that are formed and/or expressed in the language. Of course, it is not necessary to be a Marxist to work out a critical and emancipatory linguistics, but the opposite is true: it is necessary to take a critical attitude to be authentically Marxist in linguistics. Marxism
530 Marxist Theories of Language
aims at putting a sort of ‘metasemiotics,’ meant as a critical theory of ideologies, at the basis of the language sciences. This perspective is shared by those (such as the late Pierre Bourdiese) who try to use Marxian categories (class, commodity, labor, surplus value, alienation) in the analysis of the relations of linguistic reproduction in society, and by those who take only a critical stance from Marxism, thinking that this is enough to perfect the technical solutions provided by linguistic knowledge. Both ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘reformers’ share the same desire to look for a small red petal in the white cup of reflexation on language. See also: Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975); Class
Language; Critical Discourse Analysis; Dialogism, Bakhtinian; Marr, Mikolai Jakovlevich (1864–1934); Pragmatics: Overview; Saussure, Ferdinand (-Mongin) de (1857– 1913); Voloshinov, V. N. (ca. 1884/5–1936); Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich (1896–1934).
Bibliography Borbe´ T (1974). Kritik der marxistischen Sprachtheorie N. Ja. Marrs. Kronberg: Scriptor Verlag. Cornforth M C (1965). Marxism and the linguistic philosophy. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Erckenbrecht U (1973). Marx’ Materialistische Sprachtheorie. Kronberg: Scriptor. Lafargue P (1936(1894)). ‘La langue franc¸ aise avant et apre`s la Re´ volution.’ Critiques litte´ raires, 35–85. Lafont R (1978). Le travail et la langue. Paris: Flammarion. Marcellesi J-B & Gardin B (1974). Introduction a` la sociolinguistique. La linguistique sociale. Paris: Librairie Larousse. Marx K & Engels F (1970). The German ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Mey J L (1978). Marxism and linguistics: Facts and fancies. Journal of Pragmatics 2, 81–93. Mey J L (1985). Wh¯ ose language? A study in linguistic pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ponzio A (1989). ‘Semiotics and Marxism.’ In Sebeok T A, Umiker-Sebeok J & Young E P (eds.) The semiotic web 1988. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Reznikov L O (1964). Gnoseologicˇeskie voprosy semiotiki (The gnosiological problems of semiotics). Leningrad: University Press. Rossi-Landi F (1983). Language as work and trade. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Schaff A (1967). Szkice z filozofii jezyka (Essays on Philosophy of Language). Warsaw: Wiedza. Voloshinov V N (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Matejka L & Titunik I R (trans.). New York/ London: Seminar Press.
Mass Expressions H Bunt, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Le Tilburg, The Netherlands ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
By ‘mass expressions’ one usually means expressions formed with so-called mass nouns, words like water, rice, poetry, and garbage, which differ morphologically and syntactically from count nouns, like book, apple, chair, and house, in that they do not have both a singular and a plural form and differ in the possible combinations with numerals, determiners, and adjectives. In particular, mass nouns do not admit combination with numerals, with the indefinite singular article, and with a range of quantifiers: *a water, *both rice, *five poetry, *many garbage, *several music. Count nouns, on the other hand, do not combine well with certain quantifying adjectives, such as English much and little; Spanish mucho and poco; or Danish meget and lidt, which combine only with mass nouns. In contrast with count nouns, mass nouns allow the formation of determinerless singular noun phrases: There’s furniture in this room versus *Theres chair in this room. Such bare NPs are often
called ‘mass terms’ and include phrases like imported furniture, eau de cologne, mousse au chocolat, orange juice from Brazil, and refined pure Cuban cane sugar. The count/mass distinction is found in many languages but is not universal and has different manifestations in different languages. The Hopi language has been mentioned by Whorf (1939) as a language that has no mass nouns, and several Asian languages, such as Chinese (Mandarin Chinese) and Japanese, do not mark the count/mass distinction and have been claimed to have only mass nouns (Sharvy, 1978). Also, what is described by a count noun in one language may be described by a mass noun in another; e.g., English fruit is a count noun, whereas Dutch fruit is a mass noun (a fruit can be translated either as een stuk fruit (a piece of fruit) or as een vrucht. In English, by far the majority of mass nouns aremorphologically and syntactically singular; a minority of mass nouns are syntactically plural. A plural example is measles: it would be funny to ask *How many measles have you got (except maybe in a conversation between two doctors, as a way of referring to measles patients). In other languages, plural mass nouns are quite frequent – e.g., in Swahili the word for water is
Marty, Anton (1847–1914) S Watanabe, Tokyo, Japan ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Martin Anton Maurus Marty, philosopher of language, was born as the ninth child of eleven children of a shoemaker and sacristan named Jacob J. A. Marty in Schwyz, Switzerland. His elder brother, Alois Joseph, a Benedictine, became one of the founders of the Catholic University of America. Marty studied philosophy and theology at a Catholic seminary in Mainz, Germany, where he published a prize-winning thick thesis (about 300 pages) titled Die Lehre des hl. Thomas u¨ber die Abstraktion der u¨bersinnlichen Ideen aus den sinnlichen Bildern nebst Darstellung und Kritik der u¨brigen Erkenntnistheorien. Scarcely 20 years old at that time, he already showed the strong influence he had received from Franz Brentano’s Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. He came to be Brentano’s student at Wu¨rzburg University and was greatly influenced by his mentor’s empirical psychology. In 1869 he started teaching at the Catholic lyceum in Schwyz as professor of philosophy and received ordination of a higher degree. When Brentano, a Catholic priest, left his church in protest against the promulgation of the infallibility of the popes as a dogma, Marty also retired from his church. After leaving Switzerland, he studied at Go¨ttingen University with Hermann Lotze, a physicalanthropological philosopher, as his mentor, took his doctor’s degree with a dissertation titled ‘U¨ber den Ursprung der Sprache’ and was appointed professor of philosophy at a newly-established university at Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy in Ukraine) in 1875. Owing apparently to his thesis Die Frage nach der geschichtlichen Entwickelung des Farbensines (1879),
he was called to the German University of Prague in 1880 and devoted himself to exploring scientifically the new field of linguistic philosophy, which he regarded as an integral part of linguistics until he retired in 1913. He was appointed dean of the Department of Philosophy, Vienna University, in 1890. Though he suffered from depression in his later years, he continued to finish his lifework Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie (Vol. I, 1908). His collected works were edited by Eisenmeier, Kostil and Kraus as Gesammelte Schriften (2 vols. 1916, 1920), which did not include his thesis published in book form. Otto Funke, professor at Bern University, who further developed Marty’s ideas, edited Marty’s unpublished works as Nachgelassene Schriften (Bern, 1940–1950), which include important works such as ¨ ber Prinzipenfragen der Sprachwissenschaft,’ ‘U ¨ ber ‘U Wert und Methode einer beschreibenden Bedeutungslehre,’ ‘Von den semasiologischen Einheiten und ihren Untergruppen,’ and ‘Von den logisch nicht begru¨ndeten synsemantischen Zeichen.’ His biography Anton Marty: sein Leben und seine Werke (Halle, 1916) was written by Oskar Kraus. Marty’s significance for the history of linguistics chiefly lies in his cogent argumentation against the nativistic parallelism between mind and language, which was introduced into linguistics by Wilhelm von Humboldt and reinforced by Heyman Steinthal and Wilhelm Wundt. Marty’s idea concerning innere Sprachform was empirical-teleological. His influence was perceptively great in Japan in the 1940s, with the respect that Funke, philologist and Marty’s expounder, is highly respected among English philologists there. See also: Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835).
Marxist Theories of Language G Mininni, University of Bari, Bari, Italy ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 5, pp. 2390–2393, ß 1994, Elsevier Ltd.
The hinges of a Marxist consideration concern the links binding the language to the structure of society, to models of material praxis, and to forms of ideology. An evaluation of the relationship between Marxism and the sciences of language coincides with
the overall judgment expressed by many scholars on the historical experience of the so-called ‘real socialism’: the questions on the agenda are relevant and unavoidable, but the answers given are, on the whole, misleading or disappointing. The questions posed by Marxism as an interpretive methodology of social relationships may be worded as follows: which linguistic arguments prove that ‘man is the sum of social relationships?’ How are the different systems of beliefs, socially shared knowledge, cultural values, and rules of a human community continuously rebuilt in his language? How do the ideal–typical
Marxist Theories of Language 527
needs for mutual understanding and the real contingencies of differentiation and social struggle weave together in the language? These queries question all the symbolic articulations connected with the difference between manual labor and intellectual work.
Looking for a ‘True’ Marxism in Linguistics What is the meaning of ‘being a Marxist in linguistics?’ First of all, it must be stressed that from a methodological point of view, it is not a question of applying Marxism to linguistics (Ponzio, 1989), as such an approach carries the idea of a ‘will of power,’ which is not acceptable for cultural practices guided by the paradigm of the search for a historical, consensual truth. Any attempt at a mere external application legitimates a defense mechanism aiming at protecting the autonomy of language science against the obtrusiveness of ideological knowledge. To adhere to a Marxist theory of the language does not mean to draw the proposals of a linguistic explanation from the dogmas of social philosophy, but to identify a route of interpenetration between the problems posed by linguistic practice (or reflection) and the possibilities of an unbiased analysis of the same at a social level, just like the one Marx carried out to explain how the capitalist economy of his time worked. Classics’ Indications
The hypothesis of a direct accessibility between Marxism and language sciences may seem surprising when one considers that the assertions concerning language are poor and fragmentary in the classical literature of Marxism. Some passages from the German ideology are extremely enlightening, especially those where Marx and Engels (1970) explain that language originated from the need for relationships with others, and is the matter that from the beginning ‘contaminates’ the spirituality of a ‘real, practical conscience,’ which is typical of man. Other noteworthy references can be found in the section about Nature’s dialectic; here Engels develops Darwin’s theme of the ape’s humanization processes and suggests the existence of a strict connection between language and work. Of course, from an early date (Lafargue, 1894), scholars’ attention was attracted by the possibility of identifying a class-prejudiced characterization both in the use of language and in the process of its historical evolution (see Class Language). This assumption does not justify in the least the absurd contraposition of a ‘socialist’ or ‘revolutionary linguistics’ to a ‘capitalist’ or ‘reactionary one,’ which would necessarily occur if Marxist theoretical and ideological principles were schematically applied in a scientific investigation of linguistic problems.
Scylla and Charybdis in Marxist Linguistics
A subtle plot of historical and political conditions led Joseph V. Stalin to denounce the fact that Mikolai J. Marr (see Marr, Mikolai Jakovlevich (1864– 1934)) (the recognized spokesman of Marxist theory in linguistics until then) had incurred such an aberration in his doctrine, as he had reconciled his own monogenetic (or Japhetic) hypothesis of language with assertions about its superstructural and classprejudiced nature. The great normalizer of the Soviet State often intervened in the linguists’ debate published in Pravda (summer 1950), and – as an expert on Marxism, not on glottology – he presumed to outline the correct picture of a Marxist interpretation for linguistic questions. Stalin’s position – which seems to be supported by common sense and is consistent with the scientific programs of Saussure’s structuralism and Durkheim’s sociology – turns out to be fundamentally incorrect both in its method and in substance, although it is absolutely justified by virtue of a certain sociolinguistic policy. As a matter of fact, on the one hand, the pretension to solve a scientific debate by a substantial appeal to authority appears unacceptable; on the other hand, the rebuttal of Marr’s thesis is carried out with the help of trivializing arguments. However, from the point of view of the history of thought, Stalin’s intervention is an affirmation and, at the same time, a denial of a Marxist theory on language. It is an affirmation because it demonstrates de facto that any theoretical language elaboration is bound by reasons of social and political practice. Language sciences, too, obey precise constraints deriving from the development of human relationships and draw inspiration from the ideological climate in which a society lives. Actually Stalin’s concern to preserve languages conceals the ‘sovietization’ process imposed on the different nationalities gathered in the former USSR, and aims at defusing social conflicts. But Stalin’s position patently clashes with that dimension of Marxist theory, so it necessarily adheres to a ‘critical linguistics,’ that is to say, a linguistics that tries to unveil the dominant mechanisms operating in communicative practices (see Critical Discourse Analysis). For a number of reasons, Stalin could not adopt such a view, and in order to avoid the problems that Marr had reasonably posed but incorrectly solved (Borbe´ , 1974), he takes refuge in an attitude of denial: as a language system has its own autonomous organization and is an instrument of national identification, language is not a superstructure and does not have a class character, so Marrism is not the equivalent of Marxism in linguistics. Stalin’s position is not only mistaken, as he commits the ‘minimalist error’ (Mey, 1978) of considering language as a mere by-product of the cultural
528 Marxist Theories of Language
life of a nation, but it is also responsible for putting an end to the debate on the potential of Marxism in linguistics, through its own mystification (Marcellesi and Gardin, 1974).
Language Sciences and Critique of Ideologies If we escape both monsters of Marrism and Stalinism, are there other implemented models of interpenetration or mutual control between the social theory of Marxism and linguistic questions?
Vossler) and abstract objectivism (which was exemplarily represented by Saussure) (see Saussure, Ferdinand (-Mongin) de (1857–1913)). Voloshinov demonstrated that the Marxist point of view calls for an analysis of the socioideological material ‘molded’ by verbal interaction in order to rebut both the unsubstantiality of individual creativity in linguistic expression and the narrow-mindedness of a superindividual system of rules escaping the manifold pressures of language usage. Social Cognition and Linguistic Praxis
‘Bakhtin’s Circle’
In fact, an authentically Marxist position in the language sciences is worked out in the postrevolution decade in Russia by the so-called ‘Leningrad School.’ Michail M. Bakhtin (see Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975)), Valentin N. Voloshinov (see Voloshinov, V. N. (ca. 1884/5–1936)), and Pavel N. Medvedev tried to develop a semiotic theory of culture based on Marxist principles. Their conceptual pattern set three interpretative routes: decoding psychic processes both historically and socially; exploring the polyphonic dialogics intrinsic in a language; identifying the sociological constraints of a literary text. The Marxist relevance criterion of such an approach is the criticism of the forms of ideology and the way ideology works. In Voloshinov’s opinion (1973), a Marxist conception of the problems posed by language philosophy is warranted by the need to explore the sign nature of ideological phenomena. As a result, the study of the ideologies embodied in the ethical, religious, juridical, political, and literary institutions of a society must be based on an explanation of the principles regulating their constitutive elements: i.e., signs. The identification of the ideological sphere with semiotics enables us to explain the formation of an individual conscience as a socioideological phenomenon; one must therefore imagine an unseizable dialectic interaction between the mind’s working and the activation of sign-ideological systems (see Dialogism, Bakhtinian). The specifically psychological aspects of such an explanatory route were developed by Lev S. Vygotsky (see Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich (1896–1934)); his theory advocated that superior psychic processes (memory, language, will, etc.) are interiorizations of social interactions mediated by signs. To explain the connection between language and ideology, Voloshinov resorted to a metaprocedural strategy: he showed which ideologies are carried by linguists. Two macrotrends are therefore identified in the study of language, which appear as epistemological constants and are still in force: individualist subjectivism (from Humboldt to Croce and
The debate interrupted by Stalin and the programs started by the ‘Leningrad School’ were reconsidered in the 1960s both by Soviet scholars who were interested in giving a historical and materialist direction to semiotic structuralism (Reznikov, 1964) and by other scholars working in the field of social criticism in the capitalist West (Cornforth, 1967). An interesting bridge between these two perspectives had been sketched in Italy by Antonio Gramsci’s brilliant intuitions and was later consolidated in Poland by Adam Schaff (1967). The need for a ‘Marxist linguistics’ was set by the Polish philosopher in the sphere of a knowledge theory beyond the opposite extremes of mechanistic materialism and subjective idealism. According to Schaff, a Marxist theory emphasizes the role of mediating procedure that language plays between what is subjective and objective, mental and social, biological and cultural. This theory acts as a central support for a conception of man as the being who is responsible for the creation of his own cognitive and relational models. Even if some differences can be found from the point of view of inner logic as well as on the level of phylogenetic and ontogenetic acquisition, the process of ‘thinking–speaking’ is substantially unitary, as cognition is an effect of social praxis and communicative relations are full of cognitive contents. This dialectic unity enables us to reject both the reflex theory suggested by a naı¨ve materialism and the theory of significant systems autonomy, proposed by some updated versions of idealism. Furthermore, Schaff’s Marxist language theory aims at being immediately employed in the practical questions weighing on the decision-making ability of a human person as an actor and a maker of his or her social world. On this subject, Schaff also considers a social categorization process that emphasizes the connection between ideology and language, that is, ‘thinking–speaking by stereotypes.’ The resort to stereotype and to prejudice gives emphasis to the fact that as the relationship between the individual mind and reality is mediated by the sphere of meanings, the workings of the mind itself are influenced
Marxist Theories of Language 529
by historical and social conditionings. Stereotypes reveal the real control that social groups have over the contents and processes of individual thought. Schaff’s pragmatic point of view allowed him to give stereotypes of the sociointegrative and defense functions that make the workings of the mind compatible with the political structure of society. Similar conclusions are drawn by all those currents of sociolinguistics and pragmalinguistics that wonder about the connections between the conscience of sociality carried by the language and the limits of what the historical conditions of praxis allow human subjects to mean when they are diversified by factors such as age, sex, culture, class, degree of social control, etc. Some theories within ‘social linguistics’ are marked by an implicit adhesion to a Marxian inspiration, such as ‘praxematics,’ coming from Lafont’s school or Mey’s pragmatic approach. Lafont (1978) works out a linguistics focused on the ‘praxeme’: this is an instrument for the production of sense in speech and, at the same time, a unit of analysis in the relation between the language user and the practical social conditions that make it possible for the uses of linguistic varieties to clash. In outlining the basic question ‘Whose language?,’ Mey (1985) makes a constant, critical comparison between the categories obtainable from analysis of industrial society (such as production, oppression, and manipulation) and the instruments of linguistic analysis. According to Mey, the Marxian inspiration in sociolinguistics lies in the need for a theory that can explain the intricate relationship between language as a sociocultural product and the forms of the overall reproduction of a society. The solution he proposes entrusts pragmatics, as the theory of linguistic use, with the task of explaining the various ‘wording’ possibilities connected with the clashing nature of groups, with different approaches to knowledge and with different power distributions. Sign Systems and Social Reproduction
The principles of historical–dialectical materialism imply that language is interpreted by abstractions that are in turn determined by the sum of practices regulating man’s ‘organic exchange’ with nature, bearing in mind the often distorted representations imposed by the historical limits within which man is obliged to live his social relationships (Erckenbrecht, 1973). The Marxist idea of language aims at specifying the features of the production of sense carried out by man in the present circumstances of his history and, therefore, at identifying the role of sign systems within the process of ‘social reproduction’ as a whole. This category indicates the totality of techniques and procedures through which human groups
perpetuate their presence in the world. In this perspective, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi’s tentatively investigated connection between language and work is justified (1983). At first sight, Rossi-Landi seems to exaggerate when he applies the Marxian labor theory of value to the field of language and to other nonverbal forms of human communication. Indeed, the most important thing is the epistemological and methodological indication of the need for passing from the surface level of exchange and/or the sign market to the underlying level of social labor that is implicit in cultural signification and communication processes. This change of focus makes it possible to criticize the dichotomy traditionally accepted by linguists (out of common sense) between the ‘system’ and ‘use’ of the language, both in its classical version of Saussure’s opposition between ‘langue’ and ‘parole,’ and in its neoclassical version of Chomsky’s opposition between ‘competence’ and ‘performance.’ The adherence to these two categories enables linguists to exorcize the fetish of an explanatory autonomy, by confining the pertinence of Marxism to the illustration of the social function of a language. By the contrast, in Rossi-Landi’s view, those abstractions are useful only if they are rooted in the ground of ‘common speaking,’ which defines historically the linguistic a priori of the human being. The philosophical methodology of ‘common speaking,’ which was later generalized in a semiotic methodology of ‘common semiosis’ by Rossi-Landi, achieves the Marxist theory target of unveiling the ideological consistency of the ‘logosphere’ and clarifies the mediating role that sign systems play between the economic basis and the super structures of society.
What Shall We Do? The Marxist perspective, however narrow it may appear, binds those who study linguistic problems to historical–dialectical materialism and obliges them to consider the connections between linguistic theory and the theory of praxis as being relevant. This double bond results in the urgent need to explore the linguistic signs’ ideological texture. But for the linguist, the adherence to such an explanatory route entails the commitment to carry out his own language investigations according to an emancipatory project concerning the potentials of human beings. To be a Marxist in linguistics means to adopt an intrinsically debunking perspective of the relationships of social control that are formed and/or expressed in the language. Of course, it is not necessary to be a Marxist to work out a critical and emancipatory linguistics, but the opposite is true: it is necessary to take a critical attitude to be authentically Marxist in linguistics. Marxism
530 Marxist Theories of Language
aims at putting a sort of ‘metasemiotics,’ meant as a critical theory of ideologies, at the basis of the language sciences. This perspective is shared by those (such as the late Pierre Bourdiese) who try to use Marxian categories (class, commodity, labor, surplus value, alienation) in the analysis of the relations of linguistic reproduction in society, and by those who take only a critical stance from Marxism, thinking that this is enough to perfect the technical solutions provided by linguistic knowledge. Both ‘revolutionaries’ and ‘reformers’ share the same desire to look for a small red petal in the white cup of reflexation on language. See also: Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975); Class
Language; Critical Discourse Analysis; Dialogism, Bakhtinian; Marr, Mikolai Jakovlevich (1864–1934); Pragmatics: Overview; Saussure, Ferdinand (-Mongin) de (1857– 1913); Voloshinov, V. N. (ca. 1884/5–1936); Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich (1896–1934).
Bibliography Borbe´ T (1974). Kritik der marxistischen Sprachtheorie N. Ja. Marrs. Kronberg: Scriptor Verlag. Cornforth M C (1965). Marxism and the linguistic philosophy. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Erckenbrecht U (1973). Marx’ Materialistische Sprachtheorie. Kronberg: Scriptor. Lafargue P (1936(1894)). ‘La langue franc¸ aise avant et apre`s la Re´ volution.’ Critiques litte´ raires, 35–85. Lafont R (1978). Le travail et la langue. Paris: Flammarion. Marcellesi J-B & Gardin B (1974). Introduction a` la sociolinguistique. La linguistique sociale. Paris: Librairie Larousse. Marx K & Engels F (1970). The German ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Mey J L (1978). Marxism and linguistics: Facts and fancies. Journal of Pragmatics 2, 81–93. Mey J L (1985). Wh¯ ose language? A study in linguistic pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ponzio A (1989). ‘Semiotics and Marxism.’ In Sebeok T A, Umiker-Sebeok J & Young E P (eds.) The semiotic web 1988. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Reznikov L O (1964). Gnoseologicˇeskie voprosy semiotiki (The gnosiological problems of semiotics). Leningrad: University Press. Rossi-Landi F (1983). Language as work and trade. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Schaff A (1967). Szkice z filozofii jezyka (Essays on Philosophy of Language). Warsaw: Wiedza. Voloshinov V N (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Matejka L & Titunik I R (trans.). New York/ London: Seminar Press.
Mass Expressions H Bunt, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Le Tilburg, The Netherlands ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
By ‘mass expressions’ one usually means expressions formed with so-called mass nouns, words like water, rice, poetry, and garbage, which differ morphologically and syntactically from count nouns, like book, apple, chair, and house, in that they do not have both a singular and a plural form and differ in the possible combinations with numerals, determiners, and adjectives. In particular, mass nouns do not admit combination with numerals, with the indefinite singular article, and with a range of quantifiers: *a water, *both rice, *five poetry, *many garbage, *several music. Count nouns, on the other hand, do not combine well with certain quantifying adjectives, such as English much and little; Spanish mucho and poco; or Danish meget and lidt, which combine only with mass nouns. In contrast with count nouns, mass nouns allow the formation of determinerless singular noun phrases: There’s furniture in this room versus *Theres chair in this room. Such bare NPs are often
called ‘mass terms’ and include phrases like imported furniture, eau de cologne, mousse au chocolat, orange juice from Brazil, and refined pure Cuban cane sugar. The count/mass distinction is found in many languages but is not universal and has different manifestations in different languages. The Hopi language has been mentioned by Whorf (1939) as a language that has no mass nouns, and several Asian languages, such as Chinese (Mandarin Chinese) and Japanese, do not mark the count/mass distinction and have been claimed to have only mass nouns (Sharvy, 1978). Also, what is described by a count noun in one language may be described by a mass noun in another; e.g., English fruit is a count noun, whereas Dutch fruit is a mass noun (a fruit can be translated either as een stuk fruit (a piece of fruit) or as een vrucht. In English, by far the majority of mass nouns aremorphologically and syntactically singular; a minority of mass nouns are syntactically plural. A plural example is measles: it would be funny to ask *How many measles have you got (except maybe in a conversation between two doctors, as a way of referring to measles patients). In other languages, plural mass nouns are quite frequent – e.g., in Swahili the word for water is