it shows that language is not a neutral object intended for scientific
contemplation, but subject to attempts at control – something that has not
escaped employers).^26 It will also analyse the power relations between
the various apparatuses (schools, media, state), the role of economic and
technological change which influences linguistic change (the influence of
text-messaging from mobile phones on the language of future generations
can be foreseen), and, naturally, the role of globalisation not only in that it
renders English the language of imperialism, but in that it alters the balance
of power within the conglomeration called ‘English’: everyone knows the
attractiveness of American argot for British adolescents. All of this pertains
to a form of socio-linguistics – a historical semanticsà laRaymond Williams –
but also to a linguistic politics – that is, a Marxist philosophy of language
whose basic concepts are those of linguistic conjuncture, momentof the
conjuncture, and linguistic power relations.
- Second positive thesis: language is a social phenomenon
At first sight, this thesis would seem to be a tired platitude. Everyone knows
that languages presuppose communities of speakers and that human beings
live in societies. Almost no one challenges Wittgenstein’s argument against
the existence of a private language, even if its precise philosophical objectives
remain obscure; and the myth of origins which (as we have seen) is preferred
by Marxists – the ‘heave-ho!’ theory – clearly assumes that language is the
product of labour in common and the division of labour. Whether language
is grounded in inter-subjectivity, or conceived as an effect of interlocution in
the objective framework of labour in common, a form of society is required.
In truth, however, the assertion is not as obvious as it seems: it shifts the
centre of interest from the individual speaker to the community of speakers,
makes the individual a subject-speaker in that she is interpellated by a language
that is always-already collective. In so doing, it runs counter to the dominant
philosophy of language and the research programmes in linguistics inspired
by it (which means most linguistics: generative, enunciative, pragmatic, etc.).
For, as we have seen, the dominant philosophy of language presupposes
already constituted subjects to whom language is always-already given in
the form of a faculty.
162 • Chapter Six
(^26) See Cameron 2000.