[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]though hinted at in an abstract way, has not yet been worked upon to any
great extent. And if we are to take seriously Saussure s claim about the
28 For and against Saussure
importance of the study of language to everyone, then this will have
repercussions for our ways of thinking about linguistic study: about its
objects, its methods and its aims.
We can begin by saying that the study of language in history must pose
a threat to the formal, abstract forms of linguistic study which have
dominated the twentieth century. Whether these be in the post-Saussurean
or Chomskyan schools (the dominant branches in the last seventyfive
years), it is clear that the decontextualised, ahistorical approach to
language must be called into question by a method which does not seek
for an abstract structure but looks instead for the uses, and their
significance, to which language is put at the micro- and macro-social
levels. And this is not just a question of turning away from langue to parole,
or from competence to performance, since that would be to accept the
misleading alternatives on offer in the established models. The new
approach would seek and analyse precisely neither abstract linguistic
structure nor individual use but the institutional, political and ideological
relationships between language and history. It would take as its object, for
example, the ways in which language has been used to divide some
groups, to unify others, to convince some of their superiority, to make
others feel outsiders. It would look to the role of language in the making
and unmaking of nations, of forms of social identity, of ways and patterns
of ideological and cultural beliefs. In short, it would consider the modes in
which language becomes important for its users not as a faculty which
they all share at an abstract level, but as a practice in which they all
participate in very different ways, to very different effects, under very
different pressures, in their everyday lives. It would seek neither the
abstract linguistic structure fixed in a static present nor the evolutionary
unfolding of linguistic elements in empty time. It would take as its focus
the complex, changing, often contradictory and difficult relations between
forms of language in history. And it would attempt to have as its basis the
belief that in the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of
greater importance than any other . It might even change the unacceptable
state of affairs in which the study of language is solely the business of a
handful of specialists .
CONCLUSION
The first pretender to the status of the science of language was Historical
Linguistics. But by this use of the term historical is meant nothing more
than the story, or account, of changes which have taken place in the past in
respect to a language or languages. It is the story of a language as it has
altered through time; it is l histoire de la langue . It is not, however, the
study of a language, or a number of languages, in relation to the political
context in which they are produced, of which they form a part, and in
For and against Saussure 29
which they have a significant role. That study is a question of language in
history, la langue dans l histoire . The record of that set of complex
relations is certainly external to any particular état de langue , and it is most
likely to be rather unsystematic in its nature. It is, however, a field to which
Saussure pointed in an important way. He noted it but could not, by dint of
his aims in the Course, pursue his interest in that area in that text.
But if language is to become more than the object of concern of a small
number of scientists, and if we are to recognise its central importance in
social and individual life, then it will be necessary not only to reject the
view of language as an abstract formal entity, sealed off from praxis and
time, but also to distinguish carefully between the history of language, and
language in history.
Chapter 2
For and against Bakhtin
historical linguistics is still far from historical&
(Gramsci 1985:170)
THEORY IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN HISTORY
One of the most salient facts about research conducted in the area of
language in history until relatively recently is its resistance to theoretical
work. This is surprising given the centrality of questions concerned with
the relationship between language and history in modern critical theory. It
is also peculiar in the light of the enormous theoretical and speculative
connections of the discipline of historical linguistics in the nineteenth
century ranging from anthropology to geology. Yet it is nonetheless true
that the field of language in history has been relatively untouched by the
sorts of questions, and answers, which have had such a transformative
effect upon literary studies in the past twenty years. One pertinent, if
historically odd, reason for such an omission is that the field has been
characterised by a rigorous adherence to the Saussurean division
(examined in the last chapter) between what is properly internal and what
is external to the study of language. As we have seen, internal linguistics
was to concentrate upon the formal relations between units in a system;
external linguistics on the relationship between language and ethnography,
language and political history, language and institutions, and so on. This
rigorous delimitation, by which the science of language was brought
about, has had the effect of causing the study of language in history to be
regarded either as a categorical mistake or as a sort of sideline which
serious linguists might follow in their spare time.
If there has been a single figure whose work has stood out against this
prevailing trend, although the tardy transmission of his texts delayed their
effect greatly, that figure would be Mikhail Bakhtin. In a sense his work is
a part of a series of shifts which have taken place in modern theory and
which have produced a new situation. The theoretical drift away from the
30
For and against Bakhtin 31
more arid types of formalism to what can be described as more discursive
and, both implicitly and explicitly, political forms of critique has had deep
effects. Across the fields of language study, literary theory, philosophy and
historiography, there has been a significant understanding of the social
constitution of both their objects and the political implications of their
modes of treatment of such objects.
In this change the texts of Bakhtin have had a pivotal role, and his
influence appears to grow apace. Yet if his influence in these domains of
research has been significant, not least in the production of an historical
self-consciousness, it is ironic that his works have had little or no effect
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