A Marxist Philosophy of Language Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Paul Blackledge, Leeds – Sebastian Budgen, Paris – Stathis Kouvelakis, Paris – Michael Krätke, Amsterdam – Marcel van der Linden, Amsterdam – China Miéville, London – Paul Reynolds, Lancashire – Peter Thomas, Amsterdam VOLUME 12 A Marxist Philosophy of Language by Jean-Jacques Lecercle Translated by Gregory Elliott BRILL LEIDEN•BOSTON 2006 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LC Control Number: 2006047542 ISSN 1570-1522 ISBN-13 978 90 04 14751 5 ISBN-10 90 04 14751 9 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. 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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS In memory of my father, active Communist Contents Chapter One ‘Chirac est un ver’ .............................................................. 1 Chapter Two Critique of Linguistics ........................................................ 15 Chapter Three Critique of the Philosophy of Language ...................... 45 Chapter Four The Marxist Tradition ........................................................ 73 Chapter Five Continuations ...................................................................... 105 Chapter Six Propositions (1) ...................................................................... 139 Chapter Seven Propositions (2) ................................................................ 175 Conclusion: Contrasting Short Glossaries of Philosophy of Language ...................................................................................................... 199 References ........................................................................................................ 225 Index ................................................................................................................ 231 Chapter One ‘Chirac est un ver’ A not so bright Sun In the run-up to the war of imperialist aggression against Iraq, the Sun – a newspaper known for its xenophobicand,inparticular,anti-Frenchcampaigns– published an edition of several hundred copies in French attacking Jacques Chirac and distributed it free of charge in Paris. The front page featured a photomontage representing a rather dilapidated hexagon from which an enormous, spiralling earthworm emerged whose head was replaced by an unflattering photograph of Jacques Chirac. An enormous headline ran across the page: CHIRAC EST UN VER[Chirac is a worm] The accompanying text was the usual mixture of half-truths and barefaced lies. As a French speaker, I have a problem with this headline. I am well aware that it contains an insult (the headline does not read: Chirac est un lion). But I cannot understand the precise import of the insult. If the headline read: Chirac est un chien, une larve [grub], un serpent[snake], un dinosaure, I would have no problem understanding what was involved, since each of these animals, in its own way, is of ill repute. If it said: Chirac est un pou [louse], I would not get it straight away, but I would be able to extrapolate, since lice are not natural objects of sympathy. But 2 • Chapter One earthworms are a different matter: in French, they are neither obviously harmful, nor even altogether repugnant. People do say le ver est dans le fruit [the rot has already set in], but they also say nu comme un ver [as naked as the day she was born], where the main characteristic of the earthworm, as inscribed by commonsense – i.e. the language – is that it is defenceless, the humblest of God’s creatures. For my earthworm to be dangerous, inspiring fear or disgust, it must be solitary or plural, like the worms that devour corpses. The result of all this is that the French reader does not immediately grasp how Chirac est un ver constitutes an insult. Everything changes if I translate (I should say retranslate) the headline into English: CHIRAC IS AWORM In fact, the earthworm as seen by the English – i.e. through the prism of the English language – is an animal that is both contemptible and repellent. It is not humble; it is humiliated. The employee who has just been publicly humiliated by her superior might exclaim: ‘He made me feel like a worm’ (the closest French translation of this sentence would doubtless be: il m’a traité comme un chien [he treated me like a dog]). The kid who sulks might be mocked by her little friends with the help of the following nursery rhyme: Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. Going into the garden, To eat worms. And we should not forget that an archaic meaning of ‘worm’, still present in the titles of fairy stories, is ‘dragon’. The import of the insult is now clear. Chirac is both contemptible and repellent; and his opposition to the imperialist coalition roundly denounced. The Sun’s operation is not notable for its subtlety, but the insult is at least intelligible. The problem is that my opening utterance is not in English, but in French. Or rather: even though it has been formulated with French words, it is still in English. Since provocation is the order of the day, I want to yell: ‘And what’s more, these idiots don’t even know French!’. But this is precisely where the problem becomes interesting. Why on earth didn’t the Sun get hold of a competent translator? In truth, however, the translator is not the problem: the article