split word, split subject, split soceity
TRANSCRIPT
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Pragmatics:I.21-54.
International rasmatics ssociation
SPLIT
WORD,
SPLIT SUBJECT,SPLIT SOCTETY1
Ron Kuzar
0. Introduction
I
would
ike to outline a direction of lexicalanalysis
hich
articulates he dynamic
relationbetween he stableand unstable
parts
of meaning.
n the first
part
of the
paper
I
will
critique the formalistic approach ("meaning s invariant")
and
the
sociologizing pproach ("meaning s contingent")and
will
then read
Voloshinov's
analysis f the
word,
in light of Althusser's onceptof the interpellatedsubjectand
P6cheux'surther corroboration of the speakingsubject. will suggest hat the
treatmentof language n a socialcontextmust always ake into account he split
between
variant
and invariant meanings of the word, the split
within
the
conscious/unconsciousubject,and the socialconflicts
polarizing
society.
The secondpart is a casestudy of the use of terms of
"death"
and
"injury"
in the language f the extreme ight in Israelduring the
1980s.
he linguisticdata
are not surprising, nd similar
practices
avebeen observed lsewhere. ehind the
commonplaceobservation that
"one
person's
tenoist is the other
person's
freedom-fightef'
ies a rhetor ical battlefield over sign theory. In the
past
three
decades
e
havewitnessed ynamic heoriesof the signprosper
n
post-structuralist,
post-modernist,
and
(neo-)Marxist
frameworks of several cultural domains
(literature, heater, ilm, etc), but the theory and
practice
hey have been applying
to their own objects of knowledge cannot be simply copied over to linguistics,
inspiringas they may be. What
we
lack, hen, s both a dynamic heory of the sign
and a link betweensuch a theory and our linquisticdata.
1. Traditional views
of the
word
The specific
object of investigation n this
paper
is the lexical morpheme,often
simply eferred o as the word. By
making
his
choice am not suggestinghat the
grammatical
morpheme s devoid
of ideological harge.The
vast
iterature on the
ideological amifications
of
gender
in language, and on
passive
and active
formulations f political responsibility, learly
demonstrateshat the
grammatical
'
I
would
like to express my deep appreciation to
the anonymous reader of hagmatics
whose
thorough review
guided
me
to
reconsider and refine my formulations in several places. An
earlyversion of section 5. was presented in1992,
at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Societas
LinguisticaEuropaea in
Galway, Ireland, in
a
lecture e;rtitled "Terms of Death and Injury in
IsraeliPolitical Discourse'.
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22 Ron
Kuzar
morpheme has a
role in ideology,
but thesewill not
be the focus here.
To
a
great
extent,
he horizons
of the twentiethcentury
reatment of lexis
were
set by Saussure.
The Saussurean
oncept of the word
elaborated on the
popular
notion
that the word
consists f a simple
epresentationalelation, namely
that a word stands or an entity. Saussure onceived his representationalelation
in two ways.
He relegated
t to the realm
of individualand socialpsychology,
nd
he
gave
t its differential quality.
On
the
plane
of individualpsychology,
he
act of significationwas
removed
from the
material
world
of words
and objectsand was
relocated n the
mind
as
signifiant'signifier'
and signifit'signified'.
he mind is the site of representation,
n
which
first of all the sigttifiant,
he sound mage,
epresents he signifit, the
entity
image,
i.e. the concept.
Only then can the representational
elation
be further
translated
nto entities.
The signifiant ranslatesnto
a
physical
equence
f sounds;
the signifid nto matter,
be it
physical
"tree",
horse")or abstract "to
judge").
The
psychologicalword "tree" s one, ts manifestationsn the real world are many: we
can utter the word
many times, and we
can reference many
trees. Since this
communicative rocess
s
performed
amongmembersof a
linguistic ommunity,
he
psychological
dimension
s
generalized
o
the social domain.
Socially, here is a
psychological
eservoir
of fixed representational
evices,angue,which
is abstract
and uniform; individually,
he physiological
omain of
its manifestations,
arole,
s
concreteand uneven.
The differential quality
of the
Saussurian ign ensues
rom the systematic
relation betweenwords,where
eachword possesses
function
elative o that of the
others,called valeur
value'.
Value
is a
psychological
elationas
well,
for it concerns
the psychological
words,
not their material
manifestations.n
Saussurean erms,
meaning
is a combination
of the signifi and
the
valeur
of
a
word.
It is both
representational
nd differential.
The only
variability
hat Saussure
ecognized
ithin "the
same anguage"was
diachronicvariability,
he passage
rom one tatde angue'state
of language'
o the
next. In
Saussure's
iew,
linguisticchange
occurs
when
an
erratic deviation n the
realm of
parole
is
generalized
nd as such
enters he angue.
The obvious
question
a formalist
would
ask Saussure
s: "Where
s the
point
of change?" r
"How
do you
determine when
exactlya
fact of.
arole
has become
a fact of langue?"Saussure's
ability to problematize the dichotomy has been forgotten, or even scorned as
"conceptual
confusion"
by Harris
(1987:
105).
What
Saussure
n fact said
was
as
follows (1959
[1915]:
701-102.
I have reinstated
riginalFrench terms,
such as
langue,
parole,
and
tat de langue):
In practice an dtat de langue s not a
point, but rathe r a certain
span of time during wh ich
the sum
of the mo difications that have supervened
s minimal.
t..1.
An absolute
state is
defined
by the absence of changes,
and since language changes
somewhat
in spite of
everything, studying an itat de
langue means
in
practice
disregarding
changes of little
importance,
ust
as mathematicians isregard
nfinitesimal quantities
n certain calculations,
such as logarithms.
[...1.
n short, a concept of
an 6tat de langue can
be only approximate.
In static inguistics,as n most sciences, o courseof reasoning s possiblewithout the usual
simplification
of
data.
This may
not be the most
elegantarticulation
of a dialectical iew,
but within the
context of an
otherwise
very
dichotomous iew
of linguistic
acts, t does ndicate
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Split
word,
split
subject,
split
society 23
that the
narrator of
the
Cours
had a clear senseof the
flexible nature of scientific
modeling.
Every
model is a reduction that
centralizes certain aspects
and
marginalizes
thers.
Which
aspect
s centralized
nd
which
marginalized ependson
the point
of view
of
the
scholar,and does
not ensue automatically.
That
this is
Saussure'siew can be observed lsoelsewhere1959[1915]:87):
Since changes never affect the
system as
a whole
but rather one
or
another
of its elements,
they can be studied only
outside
the
system.
Each alteration
doubtless
has its counter-effect
on
the system,but the initial
fact
affected
only one point; there
is
no
inner bond between
the
initial fact and
the
effect that it
may subsequently produce on the whole
system.
The
basic difference
between
successive
erms and coexisting
terms, between
partial
facts and
facts that
affect
the system, preclude
making both classesof
fact
the
subject matter of a
single science.
It is important to
bear in mind the
historical context of
Saussure's
work.
In
introducing the dichotomies langue-parole, synchronic-diachronic,
paradigmatic-Untagmatic,
tc.,
he did not
intend
to
introduce
equally
balanced
pairs,
but
to
establish
a
sciencebased on
the first member of each.
To
do so, the
singularity f
thesemembersof the
pairs
had
to be first of all clearly constructed
in
the context
of
a researchcommunitywhose
universeof scholarly
discoursewas
based n
the secondelement n eachpair.
A
problematization
f tensionswithin
a
dichotomy
ould only come about
once the dichotomy
had been constructed.
It
is
this formalist
aspectof the dichotomies
hat
was
instrumental
n the
structuralist aradigm-shift.
jelmslev
perfected
his dimension f
Saussure'sheory
to
an
"algebra
of language",
laiming 1961
[19a3]:
5-6) that
"Linguisticsmust
attempt to grasp language,
not as
a
conglomerate of non-linguistic
(..g.
physiological,
sychological,
ogical, ociological) henomena,
ut
as
a
self-sufficient
totality".
This formalist reading
of
Saussure till prevails
among proponents
and
adversarieslike.
The most extreme
eading
of
Saussure s a
formalist
advocating
he fixity of
the meaning
of
a word
can be observed in
Yishai Tobin's
neo-Saussurean
sign-oiented
approach (e.g.
Tobin 1990, 1994).
For
Tobin
the
distinction
between
the
inguistic ode and ts
discursivemanifestations
s
absolute. he
speakerutilizes
the
invariant meaning of a sign in
context,
and
endows
t with
its
variant
bent
through
creativity.In
other
words, he
employmentof
the invariant meaning
of
a
word
n a discursive
ontext
can
be
viewed
as
either
being faithful
to its invariant
meaning,n
which
case
t is objective,or as subjectively eviating
rom it. Aside
from the
obvious
possibility
of a
mistaken
usage
of a
word,
which would result in
a breakdown
n the communicative rocess,
ther deviations
rom fixity can only be
attributed
o the intention
of
the individual
gent 81):
[ . . ]
the
notion of inv ariant meaning
[is]
exploited
or
subjectivecomment: The speaker
ma y
use one sign other than ano ther,
in
order to
tell
us something about his
own
attitude
towards the scene
-
as
opposed
to
merely
giving
an
objective description.
Saussure'sroblematization f the invariance f langte is not mentionedby Tobin,
a
practice
which
ensures
a maximal exploitation
of
the
dichotomy.
The same
process
ook
place
among
holdersof the
opposite
view.
A most
radicalopposition
to
the
Saussurean onceptual
ramework has
evolved in
the
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24 RonKuzar
integrationalist approach.
Their
critique
is, again,
based
on ascribing a
purely
formalist reading o Saussure'sext. Once
Saussure
s set up
as a pure formalist, t
is easier
to
take issue
with
him. Roy
Harris, a major
expounder
of
the
integrationalist chool eadsus to believe
Harris
1987:223)
hat for Saussure
the
separationof synchronyrom diachrony s neither ust a descriptive onvenience or
an artifact of linguistic
heorizing".
For someone
who
has
made Saussure
major
object of his
knowledge
his is a strangeoversight.
The integrationalist chool s
very
articulate n
problematizingthe
Saussurean
dichotomies
n
its own
way.
Roy
Harris abolishes
angue and
parole,
synchrony
and
diachrony,and even
language'
itself as the
subject
matter
for a separate
science,
reducing it
(indeed
not
as a
matter
of
principle,
merely as a convenient
classification)o three
domains
Harris 1990: 0):
flntegrationalism]
rejects
any a priori
attempt
to circumscribe
the phenomena
of
language
or to draw a distinction between anguageand non-languagewhich will be valid in each and
every case. Instead,
it delimits
its own sphere of investigation
by reference
to dimensions
of communicational relevance
which
apply to all forms of
sign behaviour
in
human
communities.
Such
an inquiry may conveniently distinguish between three different
scales
or levels o[ relevance,
depending
on
our
mode
of
involvement
in communicational
processes.
One scale,
which
may
be
termed
"macrosocial",
deals
with
factors which situate
any
given
communication
in its particular historical and cultural context. A second,
which
we
may term
'biomechanical",
deals
with
factors
of a physiological and physical
nature
which
determine the parameters of communication
within
that situation. The third scale
is the
integrational scale itself,
concerned with communication
as a
function of the individual's
experience
n the context
of
a
given
situation.
A reduction
of a disciplinary field to
other
"more
basic"
fields
is in itself
a
stimulating
and egitimatemove.The
ustification
or linguistics
sa separate
cience
has been
challengedmore
than
once n the
history
of linguistics,
most
recently
by
some
currentsof cognitive
psychology
nd
inguistics.
ut
while
performing
his
kind
of reduction one must
be aware of the
fact
that the other discipline s burdened
with
controversies
nd
internal
rifts over
questions
f both
theory and practice,at
least as much as one's
own. Without
being
conversantwith the agenda
of
the
neighboring
discipline,one risks usingone
particular
standpoint
within
it,
perhaps
the
easiest
o understand,
which
might be
obsolete,
r else
seriously
hallenged
y
others. If we take the macrosocial caleas an example,Harris (1990: 50) informs
us that
"to the
macrosocial
scale belong factors of the kind
which
orthodox
linguistics
elegates o such sub-disciplines
s dialectology
nd sociolinguistics".
y
saying
hat, Harris only
oins
the ranks of
thoseperforming disciplinary
shortcuts,
so characteristic
f much
of the work
done
within
the
"hyphenated"
isciplines; e
does not address he
problem inherent
n
such a move.
A
brief
look at some
of the alternatives fferedby the integrationalist chool
will suffice o demonstrate
hat
after a
grand critical our
they
have landed
on
the
most formalist
groundsof other disciplines. he integrationalistheory of
meaning
is based
on John
l,ocke's
heory of freedom and socialcontract Taylor 1990),
and
on Keynesianeconomy (Harris 1987:232,,1990:51-52).Although the ideological
bent of
the linguistic
heories
hemselves
s
not the main objectiveof our discussion
here, t
is hard
not to notice
he affinity
between
erms of
scientific
argumentation
and
the
capitalist
deological
onstructs
f
agencyand
market
economybasedon a
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Split
word,
plit
subject,plitsociery 25
freely loating exchange
alue.
The
pose of scientificdiscourse, o
be
discussed
below,
s thrown
into deep relief
in light
of
its ideological ommitment.
The
Lockean ooting of
the theory
assumes
hat the individual is
a free
agent
equipped
with
free
will
to combine
form
and
meaning n any
possible
way.
This
is
an deaderived rom Locke'sviewpointon humannature n generaland on politics
in
particular
(Taylor 1990: 12I):
The
roots
of
political
norms are then traced to the individual's
sacrifice
of
a share of their
own
natural
freedoms and powers to the political authority of laws,
the aim of this sacrifice
being the avoidance of
the
social
anarchy
that
would
arise
were
every individual
allowed the
full exerciseof their
natural
freedom.
The
utilization
of this
political principle
to
linguistics ollows (Taylor 1990: 123):
The
prescription
f norms
presupposesprior ascription f freedom
o the
ndividualagent,
linguistic or political. For if we are not free, then we cannot chooseto obey the
recommendedrescriptions. ignification emains n
the l,ockean
perspective
free
act of
thewill;
but
it is
a
voluntaryact
which
he ndividualagent
houldmake
conform
o socially
imposed
orms.
Linguistic change is
viewed as
interplay between
the two aspects of free
will: the
will
to conform to
the
norm,
and the
will
to
take responsibility and be
part
of
an
attempt
to change the norm.
The Keynesian simile in
the
integrationalist
theory is based on
the
demythologization
and
eradication
of the
gold
standard in economics
(Harris 1990:
52):
Myths cannot
be shown to be false, because
myths
are
never
founded
on propositions
which
were
demonstrable in
the
first place. Keynesian
economics did not demonstrate
that
"gold
standard"
economics
was
wrong, but
merely
that
faith
in
the "gold standard"
was
unnecessary, nhelpful, and in various
ways obfuscating and
harmful. The Keynesian
stratery
is to point
out
that the assumption
that
currency
notes are pieces of
paper standing for
quantities of precious metals
fails
to
make
sense of
economic
reality,
where in practice
money
functions
as
a
complex
of
mechanisms
which
facilitate the
distribution of
goods
and
services. Money does not in addition need
to "stand for' anything. Analogously in
the
linguistic
case, once
we
see that
language can
be treated as a complex of
mechanisms for
facilitating communication there is no need to insist that linguistic signs "stand for'anything
else n addition.
A
word, hen,
does
not a
pioi
stand or anything. t
only
acquires unctionality
as
a contingentmechanism,
ubject o the aforementionednterplayof norm
and free
will.
At the beginningof
the
century
such a
position
could have
possiblyposed
a
conceptualalternative to Saussurean
hought, within the same domain
of
a
modernizing evolution.
nstead of the total determinismof
the
social
system, t
would
have suggesteda
total
free
will
of
the individual speaker. Instead
of
a
Janus-facedixed sign, t could have offered a sign with both form and function
beingalways ontextually
contingent.But
in
the 1990s, fter
a whole century
of
an
elaboration f Freud's deas,
mporting he social nto
the psychological
ake-upof
the ndividual,he
integrationalists under the
guise
of a holisticapproach cannot
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Splitword,
plitsubject,plitsociery 27
followerof certain
tenets of American
structuralism.
he autonomyof syntaxhas
left
lexical meaning
outside
the core agenda
of Chomskyan
linguistics.
The
opposition o this stance
came
primarily
from the short-livedschool
of
generative
semantics.
ts beginningsmay be anchored
n
McCawley 1968) who advocateda
method of generating surface forms from componentially analyzed semantic
structures. or
example,
A
kill B"
would
be derived rom
"A
cause
[become
not
[B
alive]]]".
Through
a seriesof
transformations he more compact
form "kill"
is
arrived
at
without
recourse o deep structure.
n
later
developments f generative
semantics
he tree-structurewas
abandonded
nd
direct mapping
was
carried out
from semantic tructure o
syntactic
tructure.
At first
this
mechanism ppeared
ery
powerful,
but
eventually urned out to be applicable o an extremely imited type
and
number of
words.
In all its developments
componential analysisdid not
constitute challenge
o invariant meaning,but only an attempt to decompose
allegedly ompositionalwholes
nto their
-
yet again invariant
primitives.
Though
generative
emanticsdied out as a school, the spirit of componential analysis
lingered
n in a
broad variety
of schools.
This is
probably why
the
attack against
componentialanalysis,waged
by
Fodor et al.
(1980), did not
mark
the late
school of
generativesemanticsas
its
targetof criticism,
but a more
general
TSP (The StandardPicture),
a
term which
couldbe seenas applying
also
o
certainmore orthodox
generative
approaches. t
is clear, hough,
hat
if
semanticsiesbeyond he boundaryof autonomous
rammar,
then
what
is attacked
is
not
generative
inguistics
per
se,
but
only
semantic
approaches
ompatible
with
it .
Psycho-linguisticsaintains uch
a
semantic
pproach.Note how despite
his
awareness
f
the debate
ollowing
Fodor et
al. (1989), rvelt (1989:
182)
chooses
to ignore ts added
complexities:
A
speaker's
mental
lexicon is
a
repository
of
declarative knowledge about the words of
his
language.
From
the point
of
view
of language
production,
each
item in
the
lexicon
is a
listing
of
at least
four kinds
of features.
There is, first,
the specification
of
the
item's
nteaning.
This is the set of conceptual conditions that
must
be fulfilled in the
message or
the item
to become
selected.
For the entry eat the meaning is
something like
"to
ingest
for
nourishment
or
pleasure'.
[. . . ]
There are,
probably,
additional
properties
stored with
an item.
It may have
particular pragmatic,
stylistic, and affective features that make
it
fit
one context of
discourse
better
than another.
[...]
Certain
so-called registers
(talk to
babies, alk between lovers, etc.)
seem
to select
for
lexical items
with
particular
connotational
properties. Whether
such
featuresshould be
considered as concept ual
conditions
on the item's use is a matter
of
much dispute. We will
not
go
into
it.
Non-decompositional pproaches estore
the
word
as a
primitive
notion and
relegatehe
inter-relationships
etweenwords
to domainsoutside he word, such
as semantic
memory structure
representedas
linked networks
of lemmas
and
retrieved y
meansof
spreadingactivation
Roelofs 1992).The invariability
of
the
meaning
f the
word
is not
weakened,
perhapseven strengthened,
y this
move.
That mainstream sycho-linguisticsas aligned tselfwith mainstreamChomskyan
linguisticss
a clear indication that it
prefers
to remain
entrenched n the same
unproblematic odernisticpositionof
scientifically ound
procedures,
nd is
willing
to commit tself
to interdisciplinarity nly
where
the other discipline
maintains a
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28
RonKuzar
similar
position.
However, sincehistory
and
certain
rends
n the
social
disciplines
do not carry a
scientific
dentity card, hey
are out
of bounds
or
similar
enterprises.
As a result, any
word-internal
dynamics
hat
might be motivated
by historicaland
social orces
s
unfathomable.
2. The
dialectical view of the word
Having
suffered
many
years
from
political
silencing n its original Russian
version
in the Soviet Union,
Voloshinov's work
resurfaced
n the seventies hrough
its
translation
into
English.
The
challenge
of
capturing
the
relation
between
fixity
and
variability
was
met by
Voloshinov's heory
of the
sign (Voloshinov 198617929]), ne
of the early attempts in the twentieth century to
provide
a framework
for
viewing
the
sign in dialectical terms.
For
the last twenty odd
years
his
views
have been
circulating (under his own name or under a presumedrestoration of Bakhtin's
authorship),making an
mpact
on
the
writings
of semioticians
nd iterary
critics,
but
in linguistics hey have not yet received
he
attention
they
deserve.
Voloshinov'swork, intended o be
a contribution o Marxist
theory, s based
on the
standard
suppositionsof Marxism, schematically ummarizedhere
in six
points:
(u)
The ontologicalsupposition:The world
is
material,
despite
he
question
of
grasping
or representing t.
(b) The
historical
supposition:History
is a
social
process,
motivated by class
conflict.
(c) The
sociological
supposition:Classconflict is
motivated
by the economic
infrastructure :63se). It is accompanied y superstructural
henomena.
(d) The epistemological upposition:The individual
grasps he
world
through
consciousness.
(") The
psychological
upposition:The psyche :individual consciousness)s a
product
of social orces.
(0 The
gnoseological upposition: here are two modesof consciousness:rue
and false.True consciousnesss
scientific
nowledge; alse
consciousnesss
ideology.
Voloshinov
identified
the
function
of language n
the
domains of suppositions
(d)-(0. As for supposition c),
he
insisted hat the signwas not a c lass eature,but
rather a
property
of
the
whole
communityof speakers. his
was a radical
political
stance n the
USSR
of those days,
while
the hegemonicdogma
voiced
by Marr
contended
hat
language
was
a
superstructural
xpression f class.
ronically,only
in 1950
was
Marr's
theory
supersededby Stalin's
article
on linguistics,
which
determined
hat languagewas a tool of
society
as a
whole,
not
of a
particular
class.
Stalin,
who was
esponsibleor the extermination f intellectuals uch
as
Voloshinov,
turned out to be the agent of his ideas.
For
Voloshinov,
language
is
a
social device
for
inter-individual
communication, thus it
is
first and foremost dialogic in character.
Voloshinov
rejected
idealistic conceptionsof the
psyche,
and insisted
hat
ideolog
and
psyche
consist of the same material, i.e. of language,
with
only a secondary
difference
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Split
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29
between hem:
in ideology
speech
s overt, n the
psyche
t is covert,
nner speech.
(Vygotsky's
962
U9341inner
peech raws,no doubt, on
"many
of the same social
and
scholarly
urrents";
eeEmerson1986:27).Hence, he
word
is the atom of
both
ideology nd
psyche.
t
shouldbe clear hat
for
Voloshinov
he
pair
ideology-psyche
doesnot boil down to the pair social-individual.he psyche s sociallyconstructed,
the counterpartof
social
being natural, not individual (34). The
difference between
ideology nd
psyche
s
merely a
matter of
organization, f
grouping
nto
systems:
[..]
any cognitive thought
whatever,
even one
in
my consciousness,
n
my
psyche,
comes into
existence
[..]
with an orientation toward an ideological
system
of
knowledge
where
that
thought will
find
its place. My thought, in this sense, rom the
very
start
belongs to
an
ideological system and is
governed
by its set of laws. But, at
the
same
time,
it belongs
to
another system that is
just
as much a unity and
just
as
much in possessionof its own set of
laws
-
the system of
my
psyche. The unity of this second
system is
determined not only by
the
unity
of
my biological organis m, but
also
by
the whole
aggregateof conditions of life
and society n
which
that organism has been set.(35)
What
makes anguage
apableof carryingout
its outer and inner communicational
function s the
nature of its building blocks, he
fact
that they are semiotic units,
signs.
houghmorphologyand
syntax
ave,no doubt,meaningas
well,
t is the word
that bears t
in its
ultimate fashion:
"The
word
is the ideological
phenomenonpar
excellence"
13; italicized n
the
original).Three functionalelements
play
a role
in
the process
f signification. he
first
element s theme:every
word
has a
theme,
which
is its
contextual unction. Theme is
the unique, singular,
rreproducible
culmination of a historical event. The second element is "reproducible and
self-identical
n all instancesof repetition"
(100),
referred to as meaning n a narrow
technical
ense.
Hence, the
study of signification an
take
two
paths:
that
of
the
investigation
f
theme,and
that
of the
investigation f meaning.
Voloshinov
blames
Structuralismincluding
he Bloomfieldian
variety)
or legitimizingonly
one path:
Such
discriminations
as those between a word's usual and
occasional meanings,
between
its
central and
lateral meanings, between its
denotation
and connotation,
etc.,
ate
fundamentally unsatisfactory.
The basic
tendency
underlying all such
discriminations
-
the
tendency o ascribe
greater
value to the central, usual aspect of meaning, presupposing that
that aspect eally does exist and
is
stable
-
is completely
fallacious.
Moreover, it
would
leave
theme unaccounted for, since theme, of course, can by no means be reduced to the status
of the occasional
or
lateral
meaning of
words.
(102)
Needless
o say,similar criticismcould be leveledat the integrationalist
pproach.
And in fact,
Voloshinov
does t,
premonitionally
as t
were:
Meaning is the
technical
appararus
for
the implementation of thente.
Of course, no absolute,
mechanisticboundary can be drawn between theme and
meaning. There is no
theme without
meaning
and
no meaning
without theme.
Moreover, it is
even
impossible to convey the
meaning of a particular
word
(say, in the course
of teaching another
person
a foreign
language)without
having
made
it
an
element
of
theme,
.e.,without
having constructedan
"examplen tterance.On the other hand, a theme must base tself on some kind of fixity
of
meaning; otherwise it loses its connection with
what
came before
and
what
comes after
-
i .e., t
altogether
oses ts significance.
100)
fu mentioned bove, heme s a sum total of linguisticand
non-linguisticactorsof
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Ron
Kuzar
a si tuat ion.
Hence,
theme
minus meaning leaves us with a residue, one
of
whose
factors is the evaluative accent:
Any word used
in
actual speech possesses
ot only theme and meaning in the referential,
or content, sense of these words, but also value judgment: i.e., all referential contents
produced
in
living speech are
said
or written
in
conjunction with
a
specific
evaluative
accent.
There is
no
such thing
as
word without evaluative
accnt.
(103)
A theory
of
change
has much to
do with
the
recognition
of the evaluativeaccent:
[...]
with res pect o changesof
meaning,
t
is precisely
valuation
hat plays he
creative
role.
A change in
meaning
is,
essentially,
always
a
reevaluation: Tlte transposition of some
particular word
from one evaluativecontext to another .
(105)
If taken
verbatim,
these words
of
Voloshinov
are
problematic,
or he
appears o
attribute every single change to evaluativeaccent. Having
read Saussure
very
carefully,
Voloshinov
had a theoretical eason o
identiff
and enliven
he
Saussurean
duality exactlywhere
it
could not
have been
picked
up by reductionists f all kinds.
Voloshinov would easily
concede hat changes
ake
place which are
motivated by
the linguisticsystem
analogy, tc.),not
by
socialstruggle. hrough historizationof
his
project we
are able
to
map and mitigate
overstatements.
oloshinov
himself
admits hat he is committed
[...]
to the modest task
of delineating
the
basic directions that
genuine
Marxist thinking
about languagemust
take
and the
methodological
guidelines
on
which that thinking
must
rely in
approaching the
concrete
problems
of linguistia.
(xiii)
So let us
concentrate on the central component
of
Voloshinov's
discourse, he
nature of
the
evaluative
accentas a
political phenomenon:
Existence
reflected in sign
is
not merely reflected but refracted.
How
is
this
refraction of
existence n the ideological sign determined? By
an intersection of
differently
oriented social
interests within one and the
same sign
community,
i.e. by
the
class struggle.
Class
does
not coincide
with
the sign
community,
i.e., with the
community
which
is the totality of
usersof the sameset of signs or id eologicalcommunication. Thus
various
different classeswill use one and the same anguage.As a result, differently oriented accents
intersect
in
every ideological
sign. Sign
becomes
an arena of the class struggle.
This
social
ntultiaccentuality
of the
ideological sign is a
very
crucial aspect. By and
large, it
is thanks
to
this
intersecting of
accents hat a
sign maintains its
vitality
an d
dynamism and the capacity
for further
development.
(23)
Being
part
of the social
struggle,
he
sign ought to
be
subject o the gnoseological
supposition (D above,
namely that some of its accents would
embody false
consciousness,hile
others
would
represent he
truth. This is
in
fact upheld:
A sign
does
not simply exist
as
part of
a reality
-
it
reflects
and
refracts another reality.
Therefore
it
may
distort
that
reality or be true to it
[my
emphasis],or may perceive t
from
a special
point of
view
[...].
(10)
If one of the accents
s
taken
to
be
true. s there anvthins
hat marks t as such? s
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Split
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thereany
way
to identifu ts true nature?
For Voloshinov he
word
does not have
a true/false nclination n toto; truth may be sorted out and negotiated
hrough
accents.
Voloshinov's
iew
solves communicative
roblem.
n
the Saussurean odel
a mismatch of signifi4s among interlocutors necessarily esults in collapsed
communication,
hile n Voloshinov's
model,
which ecognizeshe mutualawareness
of interlocutors o different
accents
n the same
word,
communicationdoes
not
break down. Rather the
sense
of the word emergesand re-emerges n different
frontsof
the
socialstruggle. hus, or a dialecticalmodel of meaning,
Voloshinov's
concept
f multiaccentualitys indispensable, ut its
weak point,
the
psychological
constitution f
the
user of language, alls for revision.
Such a model is further
enhanced
y the concept
of the speaking ubject,as developed
by
Michel P0cheux,
underan Althusserian onceptual ramework.
Althusser formulated
the
mechanism
by
which
ideology determines
the
natureof the individual,and supplieda possible ridge between he socialand the
individual. e defined deologyas
"a
'representation'
of the imaginary elationship
of individuals o their real conditionsof existence" 197I
[1970]:
162). Ideology
produces
nd s reproduced y ndividuals
who
have
always-alreadybeeninterpellated
as subjects:
[...]
the individual
is
interyellated
as a
(free)
subject n order
that he shall submit
freely
to the
commandntents
to the
Subject,
i.e. in
order that
he shall
(freely)
accept his subjection, i.e. in
order that he shall
make
the
gestures
and actions of his subjection
'all
by himself. (182,
italics n original)
Althusser'sonceptof the interpellated ubject,
oesway
beyond
Voloshinov's
iew
of the psyche
as
inner speech see
Voloshinov's
earlier book Freudianism,,1976
11927)).
aving
been
ormulatedhalf a century
ater,
t
uses
more mature Freudian
concepts. lthusser
basically
accepted
Freud's
perspective
f the split subject:
Freud
has
discovered
for us that the real subject,
the
individual
in his
unique essence,
has
not
the
form of an ego,
centred
on the
negon,
on
nconsciousness'
or on
"existence"
whether
this is the existence of the for-itself, of the body-proper or of "behaviour'
-
that
the
human
subject s de-centred,constituted by a struct ure
which
has no
ncentren
either,
except
n
th e
imaginary misrecognition of
the
"egon,
.e. in the ideological formations
in which
it
recognizestself. (1971
[964]:
218)
P0cheux
1982
[1975])
urther
articulated
Althusser's
hilosophy
n
the domain
of
ianguage. or Pcheux,
he
very act of signification,
f
attributing
a
slice of reality
to a signifier,s an operationof the always-already
nterpellated ubject.Althusser's
statement n
the interpellation
of
the subject, s now
applied o the linguistic
acet
of the subject, he speaking
ubject,
assuming he following shape:
[...]
ndividualsare
interpellated"
asspeaking-subjects
as
subjectsof their discourse)
by
the
discursive
formations
which
represent
"in
language" the ideological
formations that
correspond to them. (112)
Beinga speaking ubjectnecessitatesntersubjectivity,he other.
Therefore,
what
is
conceivedy
the subjectas
"having
somemeaning" oincides
within
the discursive
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RonKuzar
make-up of that
subject with
a more general
deological ormation, communally
maintained
by a societyof
subjects.
While
this
view
historicizes nd relativizeswhat
Voloshinov
called meaning,
subjecting
both meaning
and
accent
o a modality of
being historicallygenerated,
t doesnot keep Voloshinov's
istinctionbetween
one
part of ideologywhich becomeshistoricallyembodiedas he meaningof a word as
a
general "fictiort",,
ommonsensically
eld
as
valid
by all speaking-subjects
f a
linguistic
community within
a broad
historical
phase,
and another
part
of ideology
which
embodies
the accent of a word
at stake
in a
particular
social conflict,
in a
singular
historical conjuncture.
It
would
only be
fair to
Voloshinov
o
mention that although
he did not
maintain a refined view
of the
split subject, he did
observe
gaps
within
consciousness,hich produce
misconceptions. oloshinov
used he
term reification
to describe the
misconceptions
esulting from this gap.
He criticized
modern
linguistics
or reifying he
normatively ixed part
of a meaning
of
a word.
His use of
the term reification follows a clear path in Marxist theory. It has ts roots in Marx's
terms Verdinglichung
and Versachlichung
(Marx
1894: 366),
employed for the
objectification-mystification
of the commodiry,wherein
an economic
relation
had
ossified
as an entity.
Luk5cs broadened
he concept,so
as to apply to social
and
cultural relations
n
general:
[ . . . ]
a relation between
people takes
on the characterof a thing
and thus acquires
phantom
objectivity",
an autonomy
that seemsso strictly
rational and all-embracing
as to conceal
every trace
of its fundamental nature:
the relation between
people. (1990lI922l:83)
Voloshinovapplied the term reificatiorto the waystructuralism or what he called
abstract
bjectivism treated
he linguistic
ign n
general,
nd
the
word
in
particular.
The
word
asa
socialentity,a relation
betweenpeople,
hasa normativized
nvariable
part,
and a sociallycontingentpart.
The normativized art
is reified by Saussurean
structuralism
within langue,
and acquiresphantom
objectivity
n the
form of an
autonomous
ystem. his entity hen
becomes he
soleobjectof the
preferred
mode
of
linguistic nvestigation,
ynchronic
escription.
he aspectof change
s relegated
to the
less
valuedparole.
Though this view
of reification
s
explanatorily
nferior
to
the effects
of a split subject,
t does address
he
question
of
internal balance
betweenvariable
and invariable:
Abstract
objectivism
[...]
is incapable of tying together
the existence
of language in its
abstract, synchronic dimension with
the evolution
of language.
l,anguage exists
for the
consciousness
of the speaker as
a system of normatively
identical
forms, but only for the
historian as a process
of
generation.
This excludes any possibility
for the speaker's
consciousness to be
actively in
touch
with
the process
of historical
evaluation. The
dialectical coupling of
necessity
with
freedom and
with,
so
to speak, inguistic responsibility
is, of course,
utterly
impossible on these grounds.
A purely
mechanistic conception
of
linguistic necessityholds sway
here.
(81)
Despite
the lack of a split word
in P6cheux's
work,
it is thanks o
his
view
of the
split
speaking ubject hat a
more mature heory
of scientific
nowledge
regarding
the
gnoseological
supposition
(0 above
-
can emerge. We
may recall that
Voloshinov
considered ne of the
accentso be
"true to realitv" .
Althusser
could not
sustainsuch
a straishtforward
voiceof truth":
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[...]
both
he who is
writing
these lines and the reader
who
reads them are themselves
subjects,and
therefore ideological
subjects
a tautological
proposition)
[...].
That the author,
insofar as
he
writes the
lines
of a discourse which claims to be scientific,
is completely
absent as
a
"subject"
from
'his"
scientific
discourse (for all scientific dismurse is by
definition a
subject-less
discourse, there
is no
'subject
of
science'except in an ideology
of
science) s a different question which I shall leave on one side for the moment. (171)
This enigmatic
passage
has
attracted
much critical fire,
for the possibility
of a
subject-lessiscourse s an entity
within
materialist
theorizing does
not come into
clear elief
without
further
explication.
Althusser e-addresses
he
topic two
pages
later,
with no
higher credibility:
But to remgnize that
we
are subjects
[...]
-
this recognition only
gives
us the
nconsciousness"
of our incessant
(eternal)
practice of
ideological remgnition
-
its consciousness, .e. its
recognition
-
but in no sensedoes it
give
us the (scientific) knowledge
of
the
mechanism
of
this recognition. Now it is this knowledge that we have to reach, if you will, while speaking
in ideologl, and from
within
ideolog we have to outline a discourse which tries to break
with
ideologr,
in
order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e.
subject-less)
discourse
on
ideology.
(173)
Aware
of this nelegant
exposition,Pcheux ried to unravel t. He
drew
a distinction
between
the
process
f the
production
of knowledges"
hich
s subject-less,nd the
"scientific iscourse"which can never be
"pure", .e.
"unconnected
with
any deology"
(I42). Thus it
is not
the discourse
which
is transformed
from being
ideological
to
being scientific.
Discourse
is ever-ideological; et
from
discourse
a
body of
knowledge an be extractedwhich is ever-emergent. his distinction,despite its
potential,
nly
short-circuitsn Pdcheux's xplication, ecausehe deterministically
ties t to the intellectualproduct of the proletariat:
[...]
the
historically novel character
of
proletarian ideological practice
[...]
consists,
in my
opinion
at
any
rate,
of working explicitly
and consistently on the
subject-form. (158)
P0cheux
ttributes
he
veracity
of
proletarian
discourse o its self-reflection
n
the
subjectorm. For him it is a mechanism
aturally
built into proletarian
knowledge:
The paradoxical
result of this repercussion
of the
process without
a subject of knowledge
on the
individuals
who
are its agents
is therefore
that it realises
in the subject-form
a
challenging
of
the subject-form.
[...]
a
process n
which
ideological interpellation continues
to
operate as it were against itsef.
(195)
A refinementof P6cheux's rientation
s necessary
o support his
contribution to the
modelof meaning.
Pdcheux's
osition
hat
[...]
one
neverbreaks
with
ideology
n general,
ut always
with
some
particular deological
formation,
historico-materiallynscribed
n
the complex
et
of the
ideological ormations
of a
given
social
ormation.
(184)
reads as a promising
generalization
hat
proletarian
knowledge.
Using Engels's pair
labels for the product
of ideological and
could modify his
own
position
on
of. notion and concept as
convenient
scientific thought,
respectively, the
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34 RonKuzar
accumulation
of knowledge n such
an alteredP6cheuxianmodel shallbe
viewed
as
an
incessantprocess
of
elaborationand distillationof focal
notions
nto concepts,
carried
out by subjects ognizant
of their being nterpellatedas speakingsubjects,
and as producers
of a notional-ideological
iscourse. n
essential orollary of
this
process s the understanding hat becauseof the nature of words - all words - as
ideologically motivated
signs,
.e.
as notions, the
simultaneous
distillation of all
notionsas concepts
within
one finite stretchof discourses impossible. oncepts
under
focus may be
viewed
as
partially
distilled
insofar as
the
subject has
successfully xpressed
he ideologicalboundaries
n
which
his or her discourse s
taking place.
The acquisitionof
knowledge s thus an unevenprocess
f discursively
shifting
between oci of
attention, n the
course
of which accentual naccuracies
re
constantly isregarded o as o elaborate nd
articulateother
accentualnaccuracies.
This
constantmovement can take
place
within one
text,
within
the works of
one
author,
or inter-textually
within
a discipline,
ut
since
at any
historicalmoment the
body of texts is finite, knowledge s alwayspartial, and doesnot cease o be an
attribute of the speaking
subject.This mode of knowledge ia
self-awaremodesty
seems o me the appropriatealternative o
the condescending
onvictionof
positivist
truth.
Subject-less iscourse s
the utopian horizon of this process,wherein
the
communityof
scholars
trives
o
infinitelymaximizedistilled
concepts nd
minimize
opaque
notions,as
part
of the collective nterprise
f obtainingknowledge. t is
this
sort of
process
hat may
be considered ubject-less,
n the
sense hat
it is incessant
and social. n
Kuzar
(1997)
refer to this
activifyasscholarship, s opposed o
the
static
and
mythical notion
of scientiftcity.Within
such
a
framework, then, the
acquisition of
knowledge does not
aim
at
scientific ruth but at scholarlykttowledge.
This conceptual
ramework doesnot offer a verification
est
with
regard to
the
voice
of truth in social
conflict. However, some
operational
parameters
of
veracity
can
be postulated.
n a particular
historicalconjuncture, text will express
the interest
of its social
sector
hrough
(a) a materialistconceptual ramework,
(b)
cognizant
of
the
duality of
word,
speaking-subject,
nd
society,
y
(c)
implementing
relatively
distilled concepts,(d)
accompaniedbv accents
consonant
with these
concepts,
(e)
while minimizing
the
employment
of crude notions. Such a
text
possesses
higher evel
of
veracity
han one which
acks
hese
characteristics.
his
set of parametersupholds the ontological uppositklr supposition a) above) as
primary,
i.e. as supported merely by
belief.
Thus,
it cannot be
subjected to
theoretical
challengeby an idealistworldview,which
denies
his
supposition.
An
idealist
worldview
s, herefore,
ot a challengehat
canbe
ntellectually orked
out,
but a proposal o adopt
an alternativebelief.
In
what parts
of
our
discipline
s the recognitionof
the threesplits elevant
to scholarly
practice?
Does this
approach orestall ormal
linguistics?My
answer
would
be
that wherever
he invariablesystemic spect
of language
s selected s he
object
of investigation,
he
three
splitsmay be consciously
marginalized;
wherever
change
and
variation
are involved,
he
three
splitshave a
central
theoretical
role.
Suchan approachdoesnot preclude inguisticormalismsmerelyon the groundof
their
being ormal and
marginalizinghe contingent.What s
mportant
o remember
is that even where
systemic nvestigation
s carried out, the
boundariesbetween
system
and
non-system
ave
to
be activelydelineated, nd
-
where
necessary
problematized.
This is so, because he boundaries
etween
system
and
non-system
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35
are
orm,
not
substance;hey do
not
automatically
merge
rom the
physical
matter
of language,but are observed by the invest igating
subject, and
as
such are
controvertible.
The alternatives
o
this
scholarly
practice
are twofold. At
one end of the
spectrum ne finds most contemporary inguisticpractice,which assumes hat the
boundaries re clear-cut.This assumption ventuallybuilds
up and solidifies
as
a
certain
ind of
socialamnesia seeJacoby7975), .e. a communal
orgetting
of
the
act
of
delimitationby
which the
discipline
was nitially constituted.This
forgetting
becomes alientwhen the investigation
ncounters orderline cases,which at
that
point
of
amnesia
already ail
to
activate
a
recollection
of the unevenness
f the
materialand of the observingsubject.
This forgetting has an even more striking
effect,
when
the
"forgetful"
researcher
ttempts
o
explain
not
only that
which
is
systemic,ut also
hat
which s changing,
n
systemic
erms.This s, hen,
carried
out
via opaque
and
crude
notions,
such as
"subjective
omment" (Diverian school of
Columbia), creativity"(Palmer 1972: 184ff.), "intention of speaker" (illocution
theories),
displaced
peech"as expressedn "lying, rony,
esting,
poetry, narrative
fiction"
(Bloomfield
1933: 14I-2),,
"Humpty
Dumpty's language" (Fromkin
&
Rodman1993:123-4)
loaded"
words and
"abuse"
f
words
(Bolinger 1980)
all of
which
are not
subjected o conceptual istillation, nd have ittle explanatory
ower.
At
the other
end
of
the spectrum
we
find the
school
of integrationalism,
whichproblematizes
he
concept
of
system,
ut
insteadof dialecticallyncorporating
it into
its model
rejects it altogether, and cultivates
n
its
stead an idea of
sociologizedontingency, ometimesnamed
holistic.Such a Heraclitian
position
nowadays an only be
viewed
as
obsolete. A l,ockean
conception of social
formations
which
assumes n
integral
ndividual
whose
scientificallyminded
ego
exercisesree
will, does
not fare any better.
3.
Metaphorical
summary: The
word
as a
piston
The operationof
the word
as a split entity
constitutedby social factors can be
representedhrough the image of a
piston (see illustration). To liberate our
discussionrom
the
confusing
ffect of
using
meaning or both
general
and specific
senses,shallhenceforthuse he following erms:c-meaning
contingent
meaning)
for
Voloshinov's
heme,
n-meaning normative
meaning)
or his meaning.,eaving
accent ntouched. he
pistonchamber
s
divided
n
two. The
top
chambercontains
c-meaning. big
part
of
it
is
n-meaning.
When
used in
conformity with the
dominantdeology, he
boundary
between he n-meaningand
the
dominant accent
is
hard o
conceive.
Under
the disc are the
subversive ccents,
which
try to
apply
upward
pressure,
while
the dominant accent
(as
part of a cohesivedominant
ideologyinked to
it
by the rod) exertsdownward
pressure, rying to
minimize or
annul he subversive ccents.Clearly,
many
words
in
language
have
-
at
a
given
point
n
history
no
subversive ccents, o
that the
disc of the piston rests at the
bottom of the tube and the single chamber representsconsensus.The only
difference etween
his chamber
and the Saussurean ign s
its
inherent
potential
to become
dynamic
and socially controversial.
The
relative size of the
lower
chamber
nd the
upper
chamber
epresent he acuteness f
the
struggle
within
a
word; he
higher he
disc, he more conflictual he word.
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Ron
Kuzar
Dominqnt ldeoloEy
This
metaphor
epresents
ome
mportant
characteristics
f
the
word
and
the
dynamic
relation
between
ts
parts,
such
as the
puzzling
existence
f ideologically
inactivewords,
he level
of social
conflict
nvolved,
he blurred
distinction
between
normative
meaning
and dominant
accent,
he ink
between
nternaldominant
accent
and
external
ideological
framework,
and most importantly, the fact that social
conflict
does
not concern
only
a local
struggle
between
wo (or
more) accents,
ut
affects he
whole
internal
constitution
of
the word,
as the
arena of
social
conflict.
I think this
metaphor
demonstrates
ll these
eatures,
but
like
any
metaphor,
the
designans
s not
isomorphic
with
its
designatum,
and
if stretched
too
fir, it
can
distort what
I have
meant
it to
symbolize.
4. kxicons
So far only singlewords have been discussed. ut ideology s not supportedby a
random
assortment
of
words,
but
by a web
of interconnected
words.
The
terms
vocabulary
or
lexicon
are used
to express
his
network.
A distinction
is
sometimes
made
between
he dictionary,
hat physical
bject hat
we
keep
on
our shelves,
nd
the lexicon,
which
is the
abstract
ist
of lexemes
accompanied-inter
alia
-
bytheir
(8
Domintrnt
$ubversive rrivc Acccnls
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Split
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society 37
meanings. he
nature of the lexicon s a byproductof the tenets
of
one's
inguistic
theory;
hus he Saussureanexicon s
a
socialentity,
while
the
Bloomfieldian and
Chomskyan
exiconsare individual.Both have a
certain evel of
fixity which will be
absent
n the
exiconof
integrationalists, ho view
t as
an
expression f momentary,
ever-contingentnd ever-evolving orm.
But if
we
adopt a view of the
word
as the arena
of
social
conflict, and
of
multiaccentualitys deologically
perativeand effectiveboth in the conscious nd
the
unconscious
omainsof mind and discourse,
hen
also he scopeof the lexicon
ought o
be
viewed
dynamically.
We
may start
rom the largest
social
exicon,
which
for
languages uch as English,
French,
or Swahili
might be multi-national; this
category
s
empty
or
purely single-state
ational anguages uchas
Hebrew,
but
not
necessarily
or non-state ethnic communities such as Basque or Kurdi.
Cross-categorial
ombinations lsoexist,
where
vast mmigrationwaves ake
place.
The cross-state
ross-national anguage
-
in the broadest sense of the word
"language"contains he most diversifiedexicon, he onewith the highestpotential
for
multiaccentuality. nglishon the internet s
its
ultimate embodiment.
However,
sucha vast
multiplicity of accents
does
not necessarily
orrespond
o social splits
relevant o
the whole community
of speakers.The
particular
accentsof French
separatist
deology n Canada are
not normally
relevant to
the French-speaking
community
f Switzerland, nd only remotely o the community
of
France, unless
forcefully
imported into national discourse
by the French
president.
The
segmentation
nto
geographically
ecluded
ommunities oes not necessarilymply
social
onflict, n the
narrow
senseof the word.
At
the second
evel, after the multi-national
exicon,
we
find the national
lexicon,
hich s
usually
he
broadest exicon egistering elevantmultiaccentuality.
Under
t
we
may have
different
sub-lexicons hich represent
a historically ocalized
social
onflict,be it
about
economic,
national,ethnic, sexual,or any
other
issue.
Within
a
particular
sub-lexicon
multiaccentualitys reduced.Further differentiation
is
meaningful swell.
A
lexicon
does
not exist n
advance f
the
subjects
maintaining
it,
but rather
t
is an abstractionwhich we
as
scholars
xtract
rom
texts
produced
by
thosesubjects. ence, any
coherentsequence
f
texts,any inguisticcorpus,will
have once
defined its own lexicon. t
is,
herefore,
ustified
o talk about exicons
such
as hat
of a
particular
newspaper during a certain
historical
period),
or
that
of radioand television tations e.g. hose hat are state-controlled),he lexicon of
a single
uthor,or a single ext (story,
article,book,
poem,
user
manual, etc.).
Within each
sub-lexicon, ear-uniaccentuality ill
usually
prevail
for
words
actively
elevant o the holder
of
that lexicon.
Regularmultiaccentuality
ill
be the
lot
of all
other words
which
are either rrelevant o the current
deologicalagenda
or are
relevant n
ways
not
conceptualized.
art of the strategy
of
negotiating
he
meaning f
a
word
is to unmasksuchaccents,
hus often enforcing
heir
movement
from the
unconscious
o the conscious.
This
model resolves he Marr-Voloshinov (or
Marr-Stalin) controversy.
Whether
r
not language s
class-oriented
s
a
question
hat presupposes
clear-cut
dichotomy etweensocietyand class.Sucha dichotomy s crude,and is potentially
undermined
y the
very
dea of
multiaccentuality f
word
and exicon.Languagehas
both society
and
class
orientations hrough
the
social struggleand the interplay
between
ub-lexiconsn the socialsphere.
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38
Ron
Kuzar
5.
Case
study:
Terms
of "death"
and "injury"
in Israeli
political
discourse
of the
1980s
The
case
study presented
here
nvolves ome
politically
salient
words
n
the lexicon
and sub-lexicons f IsraeliHebrew of the 1980s. he text that wasselected or the
investigation
was
Haggai
Segal's
book (Segal
1987) "?qxim yekaim":
Korot
"hamexteret
hayehudit"
"Dear
Brothers":
The
Story
of
"TheJewish
lnderyround"; the
quotation
marks
n both
cases
re
original
and
meaningful).
he
text
s characteristic
of
all the
genres
of
Segal's
writing
in
the 1980s:
participant-historiography,
journalism,
and fiction
(short
stories).
The
book was
written
in
jail
while
the author
served
a three-year
sentence
for his part
in the
attempted
assassination
f
Palestinian
mayors
of
the
West
Bank by sabotaging
heir cars.
The
mayorswere
not
killed,
but two
of them
lost
their
legs.Segal
was
a
member
of a
group
of settlers
known
as The
Jewish
Underground,
who
killed and
injured
Palestinian
eaders
and
civilians n the early 1980s.He wrote the book in order to explain to the Israeli
public
he
emergence
f that
underground.
I
present
here
only
a
partial
report
of
a larger
body
of evidence.
Seven
lexical
means
will be
instantiated
here, out
of a total
of some
50
terms
of
"death"
and "injury"
(totalling740
tokens).
n
what
follows will
use
meaning
as a
general
term,
andn-meaning
:lormative
meaning),
-meaning
:contingent
meaning),
and
accent
as explained
n
section
3.
above.Accent,
he ideologically
valuative
lement,
will
be rendered
as
a
proposition.
t should
be clear
that
while
n-meaning
and
accent
are generalized
oncepts.
-meaning
s always
ontingent,
t is the
particular
meaning
at
a specific
historical
moment.
Therefore
t can only
be generalized
on
statistical rounds.
Many
similar
occurrences
f the
same
c-meaning
ulminate
n
an
accent,
however
there
is
no need
to assume
hat
all
c-meanings
re
equal.
It
is
enough
to show
that
one of them
prevails
statistically.
word
on statistics
s
in
order
here.
What
Segal
does
n
his book
is to show
how
the
actions
of
the Jewish
underground
were
a
natural
and inevitable
consequence
of Arab
terrorism.
Therefore
the
killing
of Jews
by
Arabs s part
of the
narrative.
The passages
ealing
with
Arabs
killing Jews
and
with
Jews
killing
Arabs
are equal
n
size.
My statistical
assumption
s that
both
casesare
equally
epresented.
5.I.lYords
fro*
the root
r.cx
This
root appears
n
the noun
recax
murder',
in
the related
active
and passive
verbal
forms
(lircoax'to
murder',
eheracex'to
be
murdered',
n
the verbal
noun
recixa
murder(ing)',
and in the
adjective
acxani'murderous'.
N-meaning:
C-meaning:
Accent:
Statistics:
Premeditated
illing with
a
negative
ethical
evaluation.
Any event
of suchkilling
between
all
members
of
all national
groups, save the caseof Jewskilling Arabs. Predominantly
used
or
Arabs killing
Jews.
Arabs
murder
Jews.
Jews
do
not murder
Arabs.
145
occurrences,
f
which
101
elate to
Arabs
killing
Jews.
n
92
of these
occurrences
he speaker
s the
author
or a
quoted
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39
fellow-settler.
It should e
noted that
the negative thical
evaluation,
which
s sometimes
eferred
to as he
"connotation"
f
this verb (as
opposed o
the neutral connotationof
'kill'),
is partof the n-meaningn our analysis ere,since his evaluation s sociallyagreed
on.
It is only in the actual
application of
words
of this
root
that we would
find
different
behavior,
.e. n the
linguistic
practice
epresenting
deology.
Examples:
In these,and
all following examples he
name of the speakerprecedes
he
quoted
sentence.
5.7.7.
rabskilling
Jews:
(1)
Segal: Over twenty
of the inhabitants
of Kiryat-Arba
[a
settlement]
assembled
n one of the local apartments
o discussheir
possible
actions
n
light
of
the
lack of governmental
esponse o the
murder recax. 74)
(2)
Segal:
The murder recaxof
Aharon Gross
n
the
central
square
of the city
[Hebron]
was
carriedout in the midstof the strike
t..].
147)
(3)
Segal:
A few hours
after
the
murder recex
ministerArens came o Hebron.
(148)
(4)
Segal:
Two
travelers,
a man and a
woman,
were
murdered nircexu
n Gaza.
(e3)
(5)
Settler
Moti Shvat:
t
was
exactlyhere
that
they murderedracxu
Yehoshua
Sluma
during
the Tu-Bishvatholiday. 13)
(6) Settler
Yitzkhak
Ganeiram:
feel
that it is impossible
o
remain
silent
after
the murder
recax. 73)
5.7.2.
sraeli autlnrities,
as
quoted
by
Segal,
on Arabs killing
Jews:
(7)
Labor
minister
[1968,
ld quotation]
Yigal
Alon:
We
must not accept he
fact
that becauseof a murderous racxani pogrom in 1929,we, out of our own
will,
should
make Hebron
judenrein.
(25)
(8)
Commander
f Judeaand
Samaria
The
West
Bank],Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer:
We want
you
to come with us to the
military
headquarters; here
we
will
discuss
ur response o
the murder recax. 68)
(9)
Israeli
Radio announcer:
Today is the shloshim
[thirtieth
day
of mourning]
of
the murder recax
of the
yeshiva
(Jewish
religious
academy) students
n
Hadassa
House
[in
Hebron].
(99)
5.L3. Nort-Arab gentile, Ukraine leaderPetlyura,killing Jews:
(10)
Segal:
hen I read
out loud an
editorial rom Haaretz
[daily
newspaper]
rom
some
fifty years ago
-
after the
acquittal in a
French court of
Shalom
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40 RonKuzar
Schwarzbard,he executorof Petlvura. he
Ukraine
murderer oceaxof Jews.
(26r)
5.1.4.Five casesof Arabs killing Arabs:
(
11)
Segal:Two
persons,
who
had
been
considered ollaborators
ith
Israel,
were
murdered
nircexu
during the activity
of
the
[Palestinian]
National Guidance
Committee, as a direct result of its
incitement.
87)
(I2) Settler Elyakim
Haetzni:
There
were
years
n
which a number
of Arabs
were
murdered
nircexu
daily by the PLO.
(143)
The
killing of Arabs
by Arabs is often mentioned n
the writings
of the right
as
testimony or the different valuesof Arab
society,
where ife is
much cheaper.
The
implication is that when Jews kill Arabs they should be judged by internal Arab
standards, ot by
the
higher Jewishstandards.
5.1.5.
Nine casesof
Jews
killing Jews
These
concern he
killing of Israeli
peace
demonstratorEmil
Greenzweig
during
a
PeaceNow demonstration:
(13)
Segal:The murder recaxof Emil Greenzweig nd the bitter tensionbetween
left
and
right,
while
the
war
in
lrbanon
was
still
going
on,
filled him
[underground
member]
with worries
hat the ever-growingmanifestations f
national
polarization
will
lead
to
nationaldisasteror even civil war.
(145)
5.1.6.27 casesof Jewskilling Arabs
If these examples turned out to be bona
fide
labels of the
act, the
decisive
formulation of
the
accentaboveshould
have
been challenged.
owever, his
is not
the case. In all occurrences he naming of the act as
'murder'
is rhetorically
estranged.
In 11 cases
t
is Segal
quoting
directly
or
indirectly he
languageof the law,
i.e. Segal s citing the accentof rivals,but
often
explicitly nserts
his own reservation
into
the text.
(14) Segal:After
four months
lan Tor was
arrested or
"intentional"
murder
recax
[of
a demonstratingArab female pupil]. (90)
The
quotation marks
around
"intentional"
servehere as this
kind of reservation,
which estranges he accentof
'murder'.
(15) Segal:They
[settlers
being attacked]will probablyweigh
n their
minds
for
a few seconds
whether
it is
worthwhile
o defend hemselves,
or
they
may
be
arrested
or
perhaps
even charged
with
intentional
murder recax.
97)
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4l
The
estrangement
f "murder" s expressed ere
rhetorically, hrough the creation
of
relative
symmetry
(where
convenient), epresenting
he oppressor-oppressed
relationas
a dispute
between
equals
over land. Thus
attacks of
Jews
on Arabs and
fuabs on Jewsare symmetrical
moves n this
"territorialdispute". n such
a
context,
theabsurdity f the situationof a human beingunderattackhaving o consider he
legal mplications
of self-defense erves
as
the
resenration owards the use of the
lexeme
murder".
(16)
Segal:Six
people
were chargedwith
murder recax
n
the
college affair.
(239)
The
event referre,d
o as
"the
college affair"
was
a
planned
assassination f Arab
studentsn
the Islamic
College
of
Hebron,
carried
out
with submachine uns.
The
rivals'accent
of "murder" is
quoted
in
light
of
the lightnessof
the event which
was
merelyan
"affair".
This lexicaldevice
will
be discussed
elow.
5.1.7.16
cases
of state and civil
sociery
unctionaies
about Arabs
killing
Jews:
Other
settlers,heir
attorneys, he
udges
n their cases, olitical
eadersof
the
right,
and
some
government
officials are quoted
by
Segal
as sharing he ideology of the
settlers.
o a
great
extent
this
is accurate:
(17)
Anonymous
settler:How come Jewsare arrested
on
the
eve of Sabbathas
if
they
were dangerous
murderers ocxim?
171)
The
words
as
f' estrange he accent.
(18) Settler
Yehuda Etryon: Committing killings
without
a comprehensivedesign
to
attain
national
eadership
might be ethically nterpretedas plain
murder
recax.
160)
The
phr