- Fourth positive thesis: language is a political phenomenon
This thesis appears to be self-evident and possibly also a paradox.
A paradox: when, for example, it takes the form of a science of language,
theory is neutral. Science does not engage in politics and Stalin’s polemic
against Marr, and especially its reception in the West, can only be understood
as an abandonment of the opposition between bourgeois science and proletarian
science and the relief this created among specialists, scientists above all, but
also linguists and philosophers. There is only one physics; and to say that
language is a political phenomenon is to renounce science. This does not
prevent the linguist being an activist – witness Chomsky. However, the two
activities are strictly separate (even if some critics murmur that Chomsky’s
naturalism and his libertarian political convictions have something in common –
i.e. his belief in a human nature defined by linguistic creativity).
Naturally, it is not certain that linguistics, if it is a science, is a science like
physics: notwithstanding Milner ’s claims, it is not obvious that linguistics
does not have more to do with sociology than physics. This comes down to
asking whether the ‘human sciences’ are, in fact, sciences. By constructing its
concepts through exclusion, under the rubric of langueor ‘I-language’, internal
linguistics seeks to protect itself against such contamination. But we have
seen that there is a heavy price to be paid for this purification. We can now
give it a name: abandoning regarding language as a form of praxis. All the
more so in that the politics expelled by ‘science’ tends to come back in through
the back window: this is called methodological individualism, which has a
worrying resemblance to bourgeois liberal individualism.
The external linguistics that I am defending does not therefore detect a
paradox in the thesis. On the contrary, it sees in it what risks being an obvious
fact, or, rather, two. The first obvious fact is that politics occurs mainly in the
medium of language: programmes, tracts, speeches, motions, slogans, laws,
and decrees. Above all, if this politics claims or wishes to be democratic: its
essence is debate. Obviously, politics does not consist exclusively in discourse,
but it will be granted that the relation between politics and language is closer
than that between cooking and language: I can cook without recipes, but
political activity without words is war, which is (as we know) the continuation
of politics by other means – that is, something other than politics. In the United
States, there are specialists in political philosophy who describe war as a
malady of language and language – e.g. that of international conventions –
Propositions (II) • 183