French society at a particular moment of its history) with the aid of the concept
of social formation: this aims to conceptualise, in some historical conjuncture,
the precise distribution of survivals and anticipations, the complex mix of
elements of different modes of production coexisting in this conjuncture. If
we extend our analogy, we have a definition of what a languageis: a linguistic
formation, an unstable state of tensions and contradictions affecting the praxis
of language in a given historical and cultural conjuncture (the term ‘cultural’
being intended to delimit the geographical, and not merely historical, limits
of the conjuncture). So, a language is not a relatively stable system that evolves
exclusively according to immanent systemic constraints, but a system of
variations, which changes with the change in historical conjunctures. Language
is indeed a historical phenomenon.
If historical events – e.g., as Fussell shows, the Great War – can have a
direct impact on the language, in defiance of Stalin’s good sense, and even
if this impact is not identical in the domains of the lexicon, semantics, phonetics
and syntax, it is because of a characteristic of language whose universality
simply reflects that fact that it is a social practice, a set of processes and not
a result or a system. This characteristic is the tendency to metaphorical drift
that affects the meaning of words because they are immersed in the history
of those who utter them and develop with conjunctures. Let us attend to
Gramsci on this point:
Usually, when a new conception [of the world] replaces the previous one,
the previous language continues to be used but is, precisely, used
metaphorically. The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor,
and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language
is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and
civilizations. When I use the word ‘disaster ’ no one can accuse me of believing
in astrology, and when I say ‘by Jove!’ no one can assume that I am a
worshipper of pagan divinities. These expressions are however a proof that
modern civilization is also a development of paganism and astrology.^15And, a little later, Gramsci affirms that ‘[l]anguage is always metaphorical’,
a thesis which has Nietzschean accents, but which is firmly historicised, for
the metaphorical relation links the contemporary meaning of the word and
156 • Chapter Six
(^15) Gramsci 1971, p. 450.