The second thesisis the positive converse of the first. If language is not an
abstract system, it is because it is a human practice – that is, a continuous
process realised in verbal interaction, which is a social interaction. We have
here an example of the post-Cartesian inversion which makes subjectivity a
result of inter-subjectivity, not vice-versa. The result is that the language in
question, which one will no longer seek to distinguish from langage, is not a
fixed code of rules, which are sometimes conventions and sometimes laws
of nature (depending on whether one adopts Saussure’s position or Chomsky’s),
but regularities identified in usage. This position is not specific to Marxist
thinking about language: it is formulated in Roy Harris’s research programme,
which he calls integrational linguistics.^13
The third thesismaintains that the laws of linguistic evolution are sociological,
not psychological. It follows from the previous thesis. If language is a process
in a state of constant variation, and if this process is social, then any form of
psychologism – i.e. any form of methodological individualism – is excluded.
In the same way, any form of intentionalism is excluded: the meaning of the
utterance does not depend on the speaker ’s intended meanings; or, rather,
the speaker negotiates the meaning of her utterance with her interlocutors,
who are present in the dialogue, or who are in the past and represented by
the sedimentation of meanings in the language which constrains the present
utterance. An utterance never emerges in a vacuum, is never an origin, but
a link in a chain of utterances.
The fourth thesisis a consequence of the third. Linguistic creativity, which
has always fascinated linguistics (every sentence I pronounce is virtually
completely new – except, of course, for this one, which I have pronounced
annually in front of cohorts of students), is usually explained by the utilisation
and/or exploitation of a set of rules. Thus, Chomsky speaks of ‘rule-governed
creativity’. Voloshinov attributes linguistic creativity – and this is his fourth
thesis– not to the utilisation of rules, but to the ideological content of the
speech acts emitted in interlocution. It is ideological constraints – those of
the sedimentation of meanings and the interpellation of speakers as sub-
jects – that are subject to creative exploitation. For any interpellation summons
a counter-interpellation. The insult that wounds me and seeks to fix me in
114 • Chapter Five
(^13) See Harris 1998 and Harris and Wolf 1988.