It is clear that scientific assertion is the language in which the most mythical
of myths comes to be formulated. The paragraph that follows is touching
and indicates that the old Engels shared the love of domestic animals for
which the natives of his adopted country are renowned: he refers to the dogs
and cats who ended up realising through their contact with human beings
that they would very much like to talk, but are prevented from so doing by
their undeveloped vocal organs. He also evokes the parrot, as skilful when
it comes to insults as a Berlin vegetable seller.
What we have here is a myth of the origins of language. But it is, ultimately,
more credible than Chomsky’s, in that it does not require any transcendence
(the evolutionary leap needed to explain Chomskyan innatism bears an
amazing resemblance to a creation); or Habermas’s, in that it does not lead
denying a fair proportion of linguistic phenomena and does not rest upon a
specious distinction between hominids, who work but do not speak, and
human beings, who do both. Among theories of the origin of language (the
‘bow-wow’ theory, which has language engendered by imitation of animal
cries; or the ‘ding-dong’ theory, which attributes a musical origin to language),
Engels’s so-called ‘yo-he-ho!’ theory (‘heave ho!’ in English), is not the most
fantastic. Nevertheless, we would hope to find something other than myth
in the founding fathers.
Looking through Marx’s early texts, we come across a series of notes or
digressions in the course of an argument, where language is summoned either
as a privileged example or as a subject. A series of theses emerges, which
recur even if they are not systemically (and not always explicitly) formulated.
I shall suggest some of them; and they will not surprise us. The first concerns
the social– i.e. non-individual – nature of language. As one might expect,
Marx does not engage in methodological individualism. The following passage
is typical:
But even if I am active in the field of science, etc. – an activity which I am
seldom able to perform in direct association with other men – I am still
sociallyactive because I am active as a man. It is not only the material of my
activity – including even the language in which the thinker is active – which
I receive as a social product. My ownexistence issocial activity. Therefore
what I create from myself I create for society, conscious of myself as a social
being.^2790 • Chapter Four
(^27) Marx 1975, p. 351.