The Politics of English: A Marxist View of Language PDF
Preview The Politics of English: A Marxist View of Language
The Politics of English The Politics of English A Marxist View of Language Marnie Holborow SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi © Marnie Holborow 1999 First published 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd Jt 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash - I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 6017 1 ISBN 0 7619 6018 X (pbk) Library of Congress catalog record available Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting, Rhayader, Powys Printed and bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press, Gateshea Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction 1 2 In the Beginning was Society: Marx, Volosinov and Vygotsky on Language 13 3 Money Talks: The Politics of World English 53 4 Women, Language and the Limits of Feminism 97 5 The Politics of Standard English 149 6 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 197 Index 213 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those in the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University for making my sabbatical leave possible, and particularly Dermot McMahon, Veronica Crosbie and Maurice Scully who covered my teaching while I was away. I am also very grateful to Deirdre Beecher in the Library for her unstinting help with Inter-Library Loans. I am grateful to Julia Hall and Kate Scott at Sage Publications for their valuable assistance during the process of getting the book to print and to Norman Fairclough for his generous encouragement. I am indebted to many socialists, in Britain and in Ireland, who, over the years, have set me thinking in this direction, and particularly to Sheila McGregor for a talk that she gave at Marxism 97 in London on Language and Consciousness, to John Molyneux for his invaluable article on the political correctness debate and to Chris Harman and Alex Callinicos whose writings on the origins of human society and the cul-de-sac of postmodernism provided the starting point for this book. Particular thanks also go to Jeannie Robinson for her detailed (and very cheering) reading of the draft and to James Eaden for his suggestions. Thanks, too, to Paul Holborow and Jan Nielsen for providing me with some of the political landmarks that started me off on this route. I'd also like to thank my father and mother, John and Cicely Holborow, who have always encouraged me, even from afar. Finally, most of all, I would like to thank Kate Allen for her incredible and much appreciated patience with me and Kieran Allen for his valuable criticisms of the drafts, and a lot of other things besides. 1 Introduction They declare they are only fighting against 'phrases'. They forget, however that they are in no way combating the real world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. (Karl Marx, The German Ideology) There is little disagreement that language and politics are con- nected. Traditionalists may claim that language itself stands free- floating above politics but they consider attitudes to language as intensely political. These they see as dominated by a radical leftist current that has infected teachers, social workers and, worse still, university professors. At the other end, postmodernists, and others, see language as the nucleus of political life, steeped in power and defining people's role in the world. Why has language come to be so politically contentious? In what sense can one speak of language being political? Why is English at the centre of the political controversy? Does language determine people's ideas of the world? How much can language shift political realities? These are some of the questions that are the concern of this book. The politics of English runs along many axes. At one level, the sheer extent of the use of English around the world brings into sharp linguistic focus the effects of globalization. It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the language of capitalism at the turn of the twenty-first century is English. Not surprisingly therefore, reactions to English are shaped accordingly. English is either the modernizing panacea or the ruthless oppressor, depending on your place in the world. At another level, because of its dominance and its social spread, English has also been the language that has most eclectically absorbed political changes and tensions. So it was with the 'politically correct' controversy at its height in the early 1990s with
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