The second form of domination of the dominant philosophy is what,
following Althusser, I have analysed in connection with Chomsky: the spon-
taneous philosophy of scientists (SPS), which informs most contemporary
linguistics. In general, we find it in the opening pages of linguistics treatises,
where the author feels obliged to run through some generalities on language
before proceeding to serious matters. Its most frequent form hesitates between
Chomskyan naturalism and the intentionalism of the Anglo-American
pragmatists, methodological individualism being what unites them. These
SPS are more diverse, less brutal, but also less powerful than the ideology of
communication, from which they are nevertheless derived. They represent
one of the explicit faces of the dominant philosophy of language.
This takes a third, wholly explicit form: that of a consciously formulated
philosophy of language, which, by that token, is more complex and more
interesting than the two preceding forms. In the current conjuncture, this
philosophy of language has two main forms, one of which derived from the
development of the other: the Anglo-American speech-act theory of Austin,
Searle and Grice; and Habermas’s theory of communicative action. As we
have just seen, this philosophy must be criticised but also reinvested: we
must think against – but also with – Habermas.
It is the articulated set of these three forms which composes the dominant
philosophy of language (and, here, the term ideology can no longer have
purely negative connotations: the illusion is also allusion). When explicit, it
is presented to us in countless variants, varieties and variations. But it always
imposes a choice on us, political as well as philosophical: abandon it or, in a
spirit of compromise, patch it up. If (and readers will not be surprised to
learn that the Marxist position inclines me to make this choice) we opt to
abandon it, we must formulate the principles of a different philosophy of
language. I shall do so straight away.
The dominant philosophy of language is articulated around six principles.
Not all its variants accepts all six principles; and perhaps none does. But they
all acknowledge a sufficient number of them to possess what Wittgenstein
calls a ‘family resemblance’.
The first principle is the principle of immanence. We recall that it characterises
structural linguistics and distinguishes between internal and external linguistics.
This principle tells us that the functioning of language can be understood –
i.e. offers purchase to a scientific study – only if language (or rather Saussure’s
langue) is considered in itself – that is, separated from all other phenomena,
Critique of the Philosophy of Language • 67