Marxism and linguistic communication - 2

Last week I discussed the importance of a Marxian approach to linguistic communication, highlighting the work of Valentin Voloshinov, Antonio Gramsci and Jurgen Habermas. In today's column, I wish to discuss at length the magnum opus of Voloshinov - 'Marxism and the Philosophy of Language'. This is indeed a book that is hardly discussed by Sri Lankan literary critics. However, it is my considered view that a careful reading of this text can enrich our understanding of the dynamics of literary communication in interesting and complex ways.

Valentin Voloshinov's 'Marxism and the Philosophy' of Language is a work that deserves to be studied very carefully. Clearly, in this work, he is drawing on some of the important ideas of Marx. At the same time, he has supplemented these ideas with certain formulations of the German thinker William von Humboldt whose theory of language stood in sharp contrast to that o Ferdinand dde Saussure's which was dominant at the time, as well as thinkers such as Ernest Cassirer and George Simmel. Humboldt was inspired by Romantic Philosophy and places great emphasis on the creative intentions and acts of speakers and listeners in a way that Saussure did not. While recognizing the importance of this line of thinking that was promoted by Humboldt. Voloshinov was also mindful of the fact that Humboldt did not pay adequate attention to the salience of language as a social system. Consequently, he sought to move beyond Humboldt in addressing what he thought as a fundamental issue in linguistic communication.

It was Voloshinov's considered judgment that a cogent theory of language and linguistic communication should take into account, and explicate, the diverse features and forces that lie outside words that influence meaning. Voloshniv emphasized that the fact of being understood by the participants in the linguistic act was vital to their meaning. He went on to underline the fact that words are understood by specific addressers and addresses that are located in specific social contexts. The idea of a concrete utterance related to a definite social location was central to his understanding of language. He saw words not as unchangeable and fixed entities but rather as changeable and adaptable signs that do not present themselves as self-equivalent signs. It is evident therefore, that Valentin Voloshinov sought to go beyond the limits of thinking that characterize the writings of Marx and Humboldt.

As I stated earlier, his book 'Marxism and the Philosophy of Language' is a treatise that merits close and sustained study. The book consists of three parts. Part 1 is devoted to a discussion of the philosophy of language and its significance for Marxism. Here he focuses on the study of ideologies and philosophy of language - the controversial relationship between base and superstructure - philosophy of language and objective psychology.

Part II deals with the problem of a Marxist philosophy of language. In this section of the book, Voloshoniv examines such topics as that of trends of thought in philosophy of language - language speech and utterance, verbal interaction and theme and meaning in language. I found the chapter on language, speech and utterance most stimulating in terms of some of the complex issues that we have to contend with.

Part III focuses on the question of history of forms of utterance in language constructions. This is a careful study of the application of sociological methods to the understanding of syntax. This section addresses issues of theory of utterance and the problem of syntax - exposition of the problem of reported speech - indirect and direct discourses and their modifications. In terms of insights related to literary analysis, the first two parts of the book, to my mind, are most valuable. Voloshinov considered Marxism and the philosophy of language to be a pioneering exegetical work that opened up new territories for scholarly exploration.

During the period when Voloshinov was composing his book, the most important book on language that had a profound impact on Russian scholars of language was Ferdinand de Saussure's 'Course in General Linguistics'. There is no doubt that he held Saussure in the highest esteem; however, at the same time, he found some of the formulations of Saussure to be misplaced and misleading. He quotes at length from 'General Course in Linguistics' to establish the point that his pathway of analysis is significantly different from that of the French Swiss linguist. He was especially critical of Saussure's distinctions between la langue (the system) and parole (utterance), as well as his distinction between synchrony and diachrony and the privileging of synchrony.

In terms of our own interest in language and literature in Sri Lanka, what is most interesting about this treatise is the persuasive way in which he explores the life of signs, their significance and the ways in which they are deployed in human society. In this regard, Voloshinov's interests intersect with these of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce who revolutionized the ways in which we think about signs. It is interesting to observe that post-modern philosophers like Gilles Deleuze have found Peirce's work inspiring in relation to their investigations into cinema.

For Voloshinov, the idea of dialogue is pivotal in understanding the nature of verbal communication. Mikhail Bakhtin, too, made dialogism a central concept in his critical writings. Voloshinov describes dialogue very comprehensively. He says, 'Dialogue can be understood in a broad sense, meaning mot only direct, face to face, vocalized verbal communication between persons, but also verbal communication of any type whatsoever.' What he is seeking to underline is the fact that all human cultural patterns can be derived from the frame of intelligibility furnished by the phenomenon of dialogue. Therefore, in his exegetical explorations, the concept of dialogue assumes the status of a master trope of investigation. For him, dialogue appears as a primary source and resource of social creativity.

It is indeed true that Voloshinov sought to draw on the vigor of Marxist thinking to formulate his views on language and linguistic communication. However, he realized that Marxism did not contain within itself a full-fledged theory of language, and hence it was up to him move in a direction that would promote that aim. As he once remarked, his goal was, 'marking out the basic direction which genuine Marxist thinking about language must take.....in approaching the concrete problems of linguistics.' Before long, his work began to incur the hostility of the soviet officialdom, who was disconcerted by his independence of mind, and he became a victim of the purges of the 1930s; his work was discarded and erased from scholarly memory.

However, his ideas on language and signification began to generate a great interest outside soviet Russia. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the famous Prague Linguistic Circle began to pick up some of his ideas and extend his interests in, and understandings of, language and communication in interesting trajectories. Voloshinov's ideas figured prominently in some of the work on semiotics by Jan Mukarovsky and Roman Jacobson cited his work with enthusiasm

Voloshinov admitted that Marxism contained certain trends of thought that were central to the development of a vigorous philosophy of language. 'First and foremost, the very foundation of a Marxist theory of ideologies - the basis for the study of scientific knowledge, literature, religion, ethics, and so forth - are closely bound up problems of the philosophy of language.' He developed this thought fully in his writings.

He went on to assert that, Everything ideological possesses meaning; it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology.' This line of thinking is vital to Voloshinov's expositions of language, and in my view could provide us with a useful basis for literary criticism in our country as well.

Drawing a distinction between an object and its representation through signs, Voloshinov made the following observation.' A physical body equals itself, so to speak; it does not signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature. In this case there is no question of ideology.' He proceeds to explain this further. 'However, any physical body may be perceived as an image; for instance, the image of natural inertia and necessity embodied in that particular thing. Any such artistic-symbolic image to which a particular physical object gives rise is already an ideological product. The physical object is converted into a sign.' Voloshinov works out this insight in various explanatory contexts with good effect.

Voloshinov's gloss on the sign is extremely important to understanding his view of language. He says, 'signs are particular, material things; and as we have seen, any item of nature, technology, or consumption can become a sign, acquiring in the process a meaning that goes beyond its given particularity - it reflects and refracts another reality. Therefore, it may distort that reality or be true to it, or may present it from a special point of view. Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation.....the domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs.

They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value. 'This avenue of inquiry opened up by Voloshinov is one that we can pursue productively. In Sinhala literary criticism there is much loose talk about ideology _(drushtivadaya) without paying adequate attention to its semiotic implications. Voloshinov carve out a path of analysis that is potentially relevant to our concerns. I shall explain the importance of this approach to language for literary analysis in relation to the fiction of a writer like Arawwala Nandimitra.

As Voloshinov rightly points out, all signs, as we know them, are given life by socially organized persons in the process of interaction. Consequently, forms of signs are determined by the social contexts of the participants involved in the communicative act. In order to understand the relationship between signs and social life, Voloshinov urges three methodological prerequisites that should be honored. They are: ideology should not be separated from the material reality of signs - the sign should not be separated from the concrete forms of social interaction - communication should not be separated from the material basis. This mode of analysis holds great promise for literary analysis that focuses on language and ideology.

Voloshinov focused deeply in his writings on the ceaseless interplay between individual psyche and social life in human communication. He maintained that even astute sociologist such as George Simmel failed to recognize the true dynamic of this relationship.

As he observed, 'in the verbal medium, in each utterance, however trivial it may be, this living dialectical synthesis is constantly taking place again and again between the psyche and ideology, between the inner and the outer. In each speech ct, subjective experience perishes in the objective fact of the enunciative word utterance, and the enunciated word is subjectfied in the act if responsive understanding in order to generate, sooner or later, a counter statement each word, as we know, is a little arena for the clash and criss-crossing of differently oriented social accents A word in the mouth of a particular person is a product of the living interaction of social forces.'

Voloshinov constantly urged the importance of utterance ad the need to ay close attention to it as a way of understanding the dynamics of verbal communication. He was extremely critical of what he termed abstract objectivism - the kind of approach to language studies promoted by Saussure and his followers. Instead, he underlined the salience of the speech utterance.

'Abstract objectivism, by taking the system of language and regarding it as the entire crux of linguistic phenomena, rejected the speech act - the utterance - as something individual. As we said once before, herein lies the false premise of abstract objectivism. For individual subjectivism, the entire crux of the matter is just exactly the speech act - the utterance. However, individualistic subjectivism likewise defines the act as something individual and therefore endeavors to explain it in terms of the individual psychic life of the speaker.

The utterance is a social phenomenon.' Voloshinov, then, repudiated both abstract objectivism and individual subjectivism focusing instead on the question of social interactivity. The social basis of the individual utterance was of paramount importance to him.

On the basis of his analysis, Voloshinov arrived at the following conclusions which are of great relevance to us; they can be applied with great effect in our exercises in Sri Lanka in linguistic and literary analysis. First, language is a stable system of normatively identical forms is merely a scientific abstraction. This abstraction is not adequate to the specific realities of language. Second, language is a continuous generative process implemented in the social-linguistic interactions of speakers and listeners.

Third, the laws of the generative process of language are not at all the laws of individual psychology; but neither can they be separated from the activity of speakers. The laws of language generation are sociological laws. Fourth, linguistic creativity does not coincide with artistic creativity, nor with any other type of specialized ideological creativity. But at the same time, linguistic creativity cannot be understood apart from the ideological meanings and values that fill it. Fifth, the structure of the utterance is purely a sociological structure. The individual speech act (in the strict sense of the word individual) is a contradiction in terms.

The attitude language and linguistic communication enunciated by Valentin Voloshinov that I have outlined can be made use of imaginatively and productively in our endeavors in linguistic and literary analysis. When one reads carefully Martin Wickremasinghe's commentaries in literary criticism, one fact that emerges with increasing force is his deep interest in the culturally grounded nature of language and linguistic communication. He demonstrated convincingly how in our literary writings, in fiction, in poetry etc. - we need to pay close attention to this truth. What the explorations of Voloshinov enable us to do is to combine this culturally anchored nature of language with the ideologically permeated nature of language. In my discussion of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, I have focused on Part I and Part Ii, mainly because they are more relevant to our preoccupations in Sri Lanka than the contents of Part III.

Let me illustrate this with a concrete example. Arawwala Nandimitra, over the years, has produced a significant body of novels and short stories that are popular with the reading public and many of which have received critical acclamation.

He probably has won more literary awards than any other living Sinhala writer. Nandimitra, in his novels and short stories, very often deals with the lives of the subalterns in Sri Lanka. He examines the conflicts and desires and dreams that obtain among the marginalized people living in the periphery of society.

The language medium he has fashioned in his creative writings serves to capture their being; these linguistic signs carry with them the weight of ideology that Voloshinov alluded to. At the same time, the omniscient narrators or first person narrators who retell the story for us employ a language medium that is saturated with middle class ideology. The tension between these two linguistic registers enables Arawwala Nandimitra to achieve some of his more subtle effects.

The approach to language formulated by Voloshinov is germane to an investigation into the work of a writer like Nandimitra in another sense too. Voloshinov talked a great deal about ideology. Ideology signifies a practice of representation and a subject position fashioned by that representation. What ideology produces is the very premise of the activities of a subject; it seeks to invest a subject with a sense of unity and coherence in the teeth of the ferocious contradictions of society.

One useful way of understanding the characters created by Arawwala Nandimitra in his fiction is through this conjunction of ideology and the process of representing fictional characters. Here again, Voloshinov offers us useful leads and valuable signposts on our road to self-discovery.

In my discussion of the topic of Marxism and linguistic communication, I chose to start out with Valentin Voloshinov for two reasons. First, his formulations are extremely relevant to the concerns of writers and critics working in Sinhala, Tamil and English.

Second, for all intents and purposes, he is virtually a closed book in Sri Lanka. In next week's column, I intend to focus on the writings of another thinker - very different from Voloshiniv - who was inspired by Marxism. He is Antonio Gramsci, the revolutionary Italian thinker.