Marxism and linguistic communication-1

There is a rising flood of interest among communication scholars as well as students of cultural studies in the importance of Marxism as a way of understanding the complexities of linguistic communication. From the beginning, Marxism did not figure prominently in the writings of Western communication theorists. The recent interest in the conjunction between Marxism and language can be partly explained by the fact that some communication scholars are finding the increasing influence of postmodernist and poststructuralist thinking on communication studies and cultural studies counter-productive. It is as a way of counteracting these tends that some are turning towards the work of Marxists and Marxism-inspired scholars of language and coimmunication.

When I discuss the influence of Marxism on linguistic communication I have in mind the writings of Marx and Engels as well as thinkers such as Voloshinov, Bakhtin, Lukacs, Goldman, Gramsci, Althusser, Raymond Williams and Jurgen Habermas. Marxism is not a static and closed system of thought as some vulgar Marxists would have us believe. On the contrary, it is a continually evolving body of thought whose forward vectors reflect the newer challenges that have arisen in society. In the next few columns, I wish to focus on the writings of two thinkers who expressed interesting ideas on linguistic communication, feeding on the invigorating power of Marx's concepts, keeping in mind their relevance to our own preoccupations in Sri Lanka.

Marxism is basically a materialist and historical interpretation of society. Marx saw as one of his central aims the uncovering of economic laws of motion that activate societies. It is important, I think, to first examine the concept of man proposed by Marx; this is crucial to understanding the concept of communication endorsed by him. He saw man as essentially a social being.

He asserted that, 'the real nature of man is the totality of social relations.' He downplayed the notion of 'individual human nature' which was then, as now held in the highest regard by various thinkers. Everything a man does, according to him, takes on meaning because of the way other human beings stand in a certain relation to him. The following oft-quoted statement of Marx that, 'it is not the consciousness of men that determines the being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines the consciousness' encapsulates his thinking on this topic very succinctly.

Marx, on a number of occasions, explicated the necessary idea of social being. He said that the individual activities gain meaning in terms of social life. He pointed out that even as he was scientifically active, an activity that can seldom be pursued in direct communication with others, he is socially active because he is active as a man. Not only is the material of my activity - such as the language in which the thinker is active - given to me a social product, but his own existence is a social activity. Consequently, the individual has to be understood and interpreted as a social being.

In order to explore more fully the Marxian approach to linguistic communication, we need to focus more closely on the way Marx glossed consciousness. As I stated earlier, Marxism is basically a materialist philosophy which regards matter as foundational.

As Engels, the chief collaborator of Marx remarked, 'the material sensuous perceptible world to which we belong' is the only reality; and that our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the products of a material, bodily organ, the brain, matter is not the product of the brain, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter. Clearly, therefore, Marxism conceives of consciousness as arising from matter in contradistinction to the idealists who give primacy to human consciousness.

As Marx emphatically asserted, 'the mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of man that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social existence determines their consciousness'.

This pathway of thinking has had a great impact on the conceptualizations of verbal communication of Marxist oriented thinkers. In the next few columns, I wish to focus on three of them - Valentin Voloshinov and Antonio Gramsci and Jurgen Habermas. Habermas was, in many ways, the least influenced by Marxist thinking on language. Their approaches share some features in common and display divergences in terms of interests.

It is important to bear in mind the fact that Marxism, unlike most other philosophies, does not talk of universal essences which transcend the bounds of class and society; Marxists believe that essence is embedded in, articulated through, a particular social formation.

This is indeed consonant with the Marxist thinking that consciousness is not a universal given but a socially generated one. As Marx observed, 'the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the assembly of social relations.'

It is against this backdrop of thinking that I wish to discuss the approaches to language carved out by Voloshinov, Gramsci and Habermas - three theorists who are rarely placed in proximity. What I propose to do is to explain their importance on the basis of my readings of their work and their relevance to Sri Lankan literature.

Valentine Nikolavich Voloshinov (1865-1936) was a distinguished soviet linguists and literary theorist. (There is a problem with Voloshinov's writings that has yet not been resolved to everybody's satisfaction - that is the rumour that the eminent literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote under the name of Voloshinov. Voloshinov was, of course, a prominent member of the so-called Bakhtin circle).

He drew productively on the thought of Marx to formulate a distinctive approach to linguistic communication.

He felt that Marxism had not explored the question of linguistic communication fully, and that he was seeking to uncover such an approach drawing inspiration from Marx's principles. Among his books, Marxism and Philosophy of Language proved to be the most consequential.

He pointed out very cogently that the functioning of human language has to be understood in terms of the activities of the social world. He demonstrated that language is socially constructed and is permeated by ideology.

There are no innocent statements. He went on to establish the fact that human consciousness is shaped by linguistic sign systems.

As language is socially constituted and as ideology is domiciled in language, Voloshinov drew our attention to the complex ways in which struggle of linguistic meaning coincides with class struggle. This is indeed a theme that he shared with Antonio Gramsci that I will discuss in subsequent columns. Voloshinov once remarked that, ‘Words are frequently the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener….each and every word expresses the one in relation to the other…..I give myself verbal shape from another’s point of view….a word is a bridge between myself and another.’ This reciprocity underlined by Voloshinov is crucial to comprehending his approach to language and communication.

Voloshinov was labouring against two dominant trends in the analysis of linguistic communication current at the time. The first is what he termed the individual subjectivism. This is the psychological approach to language which placed a heavy emphasis on the individual;; the individual occupied the centre of linguistic understanding. Some of the formulations of Freud were pressed into service to buttress this approach. Voloshinov was opposed to the excessive psychologization. As a matter of fact, he wrote a book on Freud which was critically of his excesses. While admiring Freud’s attempt to focus on issues of language, he criticized Freud for not pursuing sufficiently the vectors related to the social construction of personhood.

On the other hand , he was equally unhappy with the approach advocated by Ferdinand de Saussure, which he termed abstract objectivism. I will discuss these terms, individual subjectivism and abstract objectivism in later columns when I examine Voloshinov’s major work Marxism and Philosophy of Language in detail. Saussure privileged system over individual utterance and contemporaneity over history. Voloshinov was opposed to both these moves pointing out that they tend to minimize the importance of individual speech, context, and influences of history. It is interesting, the two terms individual subjectivism and abstract objectivism figure prominently in Bakhtin’s writings.

Voloshinov underlined the importance of context in linguistic communication. Let us consider the following situation. Two people are in a room; one says ‘well.’ There is no response from the other. Here a perfect communication takes place. However, we can understand the situation only if we know the tone of the voice of the speaker and the context of communication. The situation is; it is spring, and they see outside the window of their room a heavy snow fall. In this context, one recognizes the full force of the word, ‘well’.

Voloshinov repeatedly pointed out that our consciousness is forged in the material signs produced by an organized group in the process of its social intercourse. The individual consciousness is nurtured on signs. It mirrors their informing logics and laws. Indeed, the logic of consciousness, according to him, is the logic of the semiotic interaction of a given social collectivity. He proceeds to make the observation that if we deprive consciousness its semiotic content, there would be virtually nothing left in it. He took very seriously Marx’s assertion that consciousness is nurtured on language.

As this is an important thought-track, let us examine it a little more deeply. Language consists of signs. They emerge, come to life, only on the basis in inter-individual interaction. But this interaction is made possible by the dynamics of the social collectivity that they are a part of. It is important to remember, as Voloshinov states, that signs do not arise solely as a consequence of the interaction between two individuals; the context that facilitates is crucially important. It is only under the conditions of an organized social group that verbal signs come to life. Therefore, Voloshinov cautions us, when we seek to discuss the nature and significance of verbal communication, it is always important to bear in mind the Marxian emphasis on the primacy of the social context which invests it with meaning. In subsequent columns, I shall explain how this proposition takes on added significance of meaning when we explore the nature of literary communication in the Sri Lankan context.

In verbal communication, the content of utterance is important. Verbal signs that I earlier described as deriving their animating force from the social context of operation coalesce to form an utterance. As Voloshinov pointed out, an utterance is constructed between two socially organized persons. In the absence of an actual address, such a person is imagined into existence as a representative of the social collectivity from which the speaker comes from. There is indeed no such entity as an abstract addressee. As Voloshinov accurately pointed out, with such an abstract person, we would not have a language in common, either literally or figuratively.

The inner world of all persons has its stabilized audience which consists of the environment in which motives, values, reasons are fashioned. The more a person is rooted in a culture, the more closely his or her inner audience will correspond to the normal audience of ideological creativity. It is indeed evident that specifics of class and time are bounds that the ideal of addressee can transcend.

In verbal communication, as I stated earlier, a transaction, an exchange of messages, takes place between the addresser and addressee largely, although not solely, through language. According to the conceptualization of Marxists the social environment in which this transaction occurs determines its nature and meaning. As Voloshinov observed, the orientation of the world towards the addresses has an extremely high significance.

The word is a two-sided act; it is determined by the co-partnership of the one who utters it and for whom it is intended. Hence, the word comes into being as a consequence of the union of the speaker and the listener. As he went on to maintain a word is a bridge thrown between myself and another; if so, one end of the bridge depends on me and the other end on the listener.

Voloshinov pointed to three vital aspects of verbal communication based on his close reading of Marxism. First, there is the physical aspect of speaking, the emission of sound and the bodily activities that are involved in it. Second, there is the act of producing verbal signs drawing on the stock of social available to the speaker.

Third, there is the manipulation of verbal signs so as to set in motion a communication process, and this is totally determined by the social relations between the two parties involved in the communicative act. It is clear, therefore, how significant the social milieu is for linguistic communication. As Voloshinov remarked, ‘the immediate social situation and the broader social milieu wholly determine – and determine from within, so to speak – the structure of an utterance.’

Although the approach to linguistic communication endorsed by Voloshinov that I have outlined so far is Marxian inspiration, it is well to understand that this is an orientation not wholly alien to western thinking. For example, the theory of linguistic relativity associated with the name of Sapir and Whorf touches on a number of important areas of concern described by Marxist thinkers. For example, the following statement by Edward Sapir displays a close thematic affinity to Marxist thinking on the nature of verbal communication.

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, not alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for that society.

It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the real world is built up on the language habits of the group.’ Similarly the American philosopher G.H. Mead remarked. ‘Consciousness of meaning is social in origin. He said that, ‘in the process of communication the individual is an other before he is a self.’

The socially driven concept of verbal communication of Voloshinov has great implications for literary criticism and literary theory. In the case of modern Sinhala literary criticism, it is important that we widen the discursive boundaries of literary analysis by investing the reader with a great agency and by focusing on the linguistic, political, ideological contexts in which literary communication takes place. In order to achieve this much-needed goal, we need to take a broader view of language and communication. Indeed, this constitutes the logical starting-point. After all literary texts represent the highest and most self-conscious form of verbal communication. The writings of Voloshinov, which I will discuss in greater detail in later columns, open up a useful pathway for us to travel in reaching our destination.