52157242 Deleuze Guattari Linguistics
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Linguistics as an Indiscipline: Deleuze and Guattari's PragmaticsAuthor(s): Therese GrishamSource: SubStance, Vol. 20, No. 3, Issue 66: Special Issue: Deleuze & Guattari (1991), pp. 36-54Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685178
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Linguistics as an Indiscipline:
Deleuze and Guattari'sPragmatics
ThereseGrisham
Linguisticsngeneral s still in a kindof majormode, till hasa
sortof diatonic caleand a strange aste or dominants, onstants,and
universals.
-"Postulates of Linguistics,"A Thousand lateaus
I don'tbelieve hatwehavemuchcompetencen linguistics.But
competencetself s a rather bstruselinguisticnotion.
- "Entretien ur MillePlateaux"
GILLESDELEUZE ND FELIXGUATTARI'Slateau 4, "November 20,1923-Postulates of Linguistics"appears to be continuous with the historyof linguistics, through its citations of major figures in the field and its use
of established terms, but it is already escaping the field at the very pointsat which it uses this terminology or cites important linguists. It therefore
cannot be evaluated using the objects, issues, and methods proper to the
discipline. And, while certainly a political critique of some of linguistics'most treasured principles (thatlanguage is communicational, forexample),
it goes far beyond critique. Ultimately, it concentrates on the "indis-
ciplines" at work in linguistics, not only in terms of "minor" uses of lan-
guage, but within the history of the field itself. To understand how
Deleuze and Guattari approach twentieth-century linguistics, in order to
move beyond it, I would like to begin with an overview of the field, before
developing pragmatics in relation to Deleuze and Guattari'sreworking of
major figures in linguistics.
The State of Linguistics
Linguistics participates in established orders of discourse-whether
involving the philosophy of language or the philosophy of mind-which
are informed by the will to knowledge or truth. It does so by establishing a
constant, ideal truth of language (langueor competence) with a principle of
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Linguistics 37
rationality as the mode proper to the investigation of its objects, to
paraphrase Foucault. In so doing, linguistics ignores the specific reality of
language. Language only appears in it as a "certaininterjection between
speaking and thinking."' The sign is that interjection,for example.Since Saussure, this designation of language has involved a version of
the "scientific method" as applied in the human sciences. According to
Saussure, in order for linguistics to establish itself as a science, it must first
find a viewpoint on language from which a "natural order" arises, so that
language can be classified among the "categoriesof human facts" (9). This
dependson
findinga fundamental
unityor
essence of language. But sig-nificantly, Saussure distinguished linguistics from other sciences on the
basis that the object in other sciences "antedates the viewpoint," while for
the linguist, "the viewpoint antedates the object" (9). (So much for a
natural order). While this might be an arguable characterization of other
sciences (specifically the social sciences), positing this object and its essen-
tial unity (the system of langue)made Saussure's theory "scientific" and
therefore "superior"to other viewpoints, "taking precedence over them"
(8). This underlying system (which Saussure insisted was not an abstrac-tion, but a psychological and physiological reality) allowed for the rational
procedures and methods of linguistic research, including ordering func-
tions. The linguist collects and interprets data, separating what is essential
from what is accidental or extrinsic to language and determining the forces
permanently and universally at work on language. In short, Saussure gaveus a methodology and a range of objects which helped establish linguisticsas a modern discipline.
Saussure's work was carried on in Europe by Jakobson, who estab-
lished the distinctive-feature system of phonemes, and proposed that
diachronic linguistics should study language as a system of synchroniccuts. It was altered and modified by Martinet, Benveniste, and Hjelmslev,
among others. In the United States, Saussure's system has influenced
Chomsky's work. But, while Saussure still wanted to define langueas the
"whole set of linguistic habitswhich allow an individual to understand and
be understood, for which a community of speakers is necessary" (87, italicsmine), Chomsky makes a stronger claim for langue,or what he calls com-
petence. Competence, in Chomsky's model of language, is the perfect
knowledge an "ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous
speech-community" has of his or her native language (ATS3). Competencedescribes the innate cognitive capacity shared by human beings that allows
them to understand their native language and be understood in it. What
Chomsky adds to Saussure's picture, in addition to a transformational
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38 ThereseGrisham
grammar that reflects competence (which in turn reflects cognition), is that
syntax, rather than the sound-image or phoneme is the "true"object of
linguistics. Linguistics should give us a picture of the "mental reality"
underlying language (16), which will then give us insight into the "human
essence"-into what distinguishes us from other life-forms. (RR 92)
The objective claims that Chomskyan linguistics made for itself as a
science are descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The former asserts that
a given grammar must accurately describe its object, the linguistic com-
petence of a native speaker, corresponding to observational data. There can
be many descriptively adequate grammarsof a language.The latter makes
a much stronger claim, implying that theoreticalassertions have an empiri-
cally determinable truth-value. A given grammaris selected over others by
association with a theory that " ... constitutes an explanatory hypothesis
about the form of language as such" (ATS 27). This ultimately means that
explanatory adequacy must appeal to linguistic universals-what minimal
rules operate in all languages, and the ways childrenuniversally learn their
native languages (called a language-acquisition device). According to this
model, children should acquire their native language according to increas-
ingly complex transformationalrules that unfold as the child learns. How-
ever, as long ago as the early 1970s it was demonstrated that this notion
contained a fundamental circularity, namely that the child, in order to
determine the correctgrammarof his or her language, has already to know
that grammar. In addition, according to both "nativist" and "empiricist"
accounts, children learn language by applying certain heuristics to the
languagein their environment in order to determine the correctness of
their sentence productions.Since a transformational grammar cannot meet the criteria of ex-
planatory adequacy, it is left with the possibility of being descriptively
adequate. But, a generative grammaris only one "description"of language
among many generative and other grammars. Competence is a difficult
thing to prove, since, as William Labov observed in SociolinguisticPatterns,
"no one is aware of this competence, and there are no intuitive judgments
accessible to reveal it to us" (226). The linguist of the Chomskyan variety,supplying the necessary corrections to speakers' intuitions, curiously ends
up, by his very method, making the data conform to his model ratherthan
changing the model on the basis of the data.
Thus we can glimpse the inherent circularity in this version of the
"scientific"model of language. At the heartof Chomsky's quest for insight
into the "humanessence" lies this circularity,the a prioriassumption of the
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Linguistics 39
thing whose existence one wants to prove, a prior positing of the nature of
the thing whose nature one wants to reveal.
Yet, there remains a mania for models and systems at work in the
field. Linguists do not take seriously what Deleuze and Guattaripoint out
in "Postulates of Linguistics"-that "every language is an essentially
heterogeneous reality . .." (ATP, 93). Linguists treat this as a fact without
theoretical value. Even Saussure acknowledged that langage,the "whole"
of language, is a "heterogeneous mass of speech facts"(14).In addition, the
search for essences, buttressed by the claims of science, has a politicaldimension that remains
unexamined,even
by sociolinguists and feministlinguists.
Saussure's and Chomsky's models have been subject to politically-based criticisms, the most cogent of which came from Volosinov and
Labov. Both turn away from langueor competence s the objectof linguistic
study, and concern themselves with speech or utterance. With their dis-
courses, the possibility opened up for the objects and methods of linguis-tics to shift. But, as we will see, the shift itself is not important to Deleuze
and Guattari, since it only recapitulates the strictures and productions ofthe discipline. Deleuze and Guattari find instead those lines that carryone
away in the very discourses of those who have been used to constitute the
reterritorialized field itself. These lines, in the discourses of Labov and
Volosinov, lead away from the established domain of linguistics, in partby
de-systematizing it, and toward a much more radical connection of lan-
guage to its political and social "outside," one that offers suggestive pos-sibilities for transforming visions and approaches to language and politics.
Finding these lines is one of Deleuze and Guattari's strategies; it is the
practice of deterritorializing concepts.In Marxism and the Philosophyof Language,Volosinov calls langue a
system of "normatively identical forms" that standardizes each factually
specific and unique utterance (65). His terminology directly comments on
Saussure's statement that "langue s the norm for all other manifestations of
speech" (9), and refers to Saussure's notion of the underlying constants
(sound-images, phonemes) of individual utterances. Saussure's formula-tion is a consequence of the ideology of "abstractobjectivism," that is, a
preoccupation with the mathematical relation of sign to sign, or the inner
logic of a sign system, which is part of a rationalist project.This conception
privileges individual consciousness, even though abstract objectivists
"constantly stress . . . that the system of language is an objective fact
external to and independent of any individual consciousness" (65).
Saussure's "social fact"(13) is nothing but masked individualism:
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Actually, representedas a systemof self-identicalsynchronically]m-mutablenorms, t can be perceived n this way only by the individual
consciousness is-l-visthe language ystem,the systemof normsncon-
testable or that consciousness.. we would discoverno inertsystemofself-identical orms. nstead,we would indourselveswitnessinghecease-lessgenerationflanguagenorms 65-6).
Volosinov's de-privileging of the individual consciousness that per-
ceives langueas constant and immutable also involves, then, destroying the
notion of synchrony:
... apart romhow... [langue]ppearsoanygiven ndividual tany givenmoment n time, anguagepresents pictureof a ceaseless lowof becom-ing .... [There]s no realmoment n time whena synchronicystemof
language ouldbe constructed.66)
A synchronic system acts merely as a conventional scale on which to
register the deviations occurring at every real instant in time (66).
Because Saussure asserts the unmediated reality and objectivity of
language as a system of normatively identical forms, the system of langue
can be seen as theproduct
of a deliberationonlanguage
that is notactuallycarried out by "the consciousness of the native speaker himself and by no
means carried out for the immediate purposes of speaking" (67). Rather,
the speaker is concerned with the particular, concrete utterance he is
making and so is concerned only with that aspect of linguistic form which
can figure in the given, concrete context and fits the conditions of the
situation. The speaker is not interested in the constants of the form but in
the form's flexibility and adaptability. So, too, the hearer is not concerned
with recognizing the form used but of understanding it in a particularcontext, its meaning in an utterance, amounting to recognizing its novelty,
not its identity (68). This shifts the ground from what operates in hidden
fashion in the unconscious to what the speaker-hearer's "concerns"are in
the speaking circuit. It should be noted that "concerns"for Volosinov have
little to do with speakers' and hearers' rational choices, but with the ways
in which we are already socially organized to speak and hear. For
Volosinov, there are as many meanings of an utterance as there are con-
texts (language is not a rigid signifying system), and a verbal sign is a
speech act that includes, inseparably, the active participation of speaker
and hearer. "We do not say and hear words,we say and hear what is true
or false, good or bad, important or unimportant" (70). Saussure's sign,
unlike Volosinov's is a "signal ... a fixed technical means for indicating
this or that object or ... action" (68), which has been made into the key to
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understanding language. This conception is based on the way languagesare taught in schools, rather than on the living characterof the language.
Volosinov proposes to develop a theory of utterance which will take
into account the living, changing, contextual nature of language, positing a
dialogic model of utterance involving syntactical forms that approach ac-
tual discourses of speakers and hearers. The dialogic model is based on
reported speech, for dialogue involves citation or paraphraseof the other's
or others' utterances in order for a message to be transmitted. Finally,Volosinov examines indirect discourse in literature and its variations
(directand
quasi-direct discourse), which reflect and delimit the functionof reporting and reported speech in the dialogic model. But, while
Volosinov's critique of Saussure is directed at two fundamental assump-tions of capitalist ideology-the bias against the collective and for the
individual (langue) and the bias against history (synchrony)-Volosinovdoes not really elaborate a theory of the ways in which human beings are
organized in society through language and how language is open to the
social in its "living" character.
Labov's critique of Chomsky is directed at the "SaussureanParadox"he sees operating in the field of linguistics from Saussure to Chomsky: "the
social aspect of language [langue,competence], is studied by observing anyone individual but the individual aspect [parole,utterance] only by observ-
ing language in its social context"(Sociolinguistic atterns,186).Labov "cor-
rects" this by showing, in multiple studies using a range of methods, how
the study of social interactions between actual speakers in a language
community (Black English, for example), leads to characterizations and
theories of language that undermine Saussurean and Chomskyandivisions. For example, in Black English Vernacular, the pattern of con-
sonant cluster simplification at the ends of words (where bold becomes
bol')is not just a matter of deleting the full consonant cluster present in the
underlying form of Standard English, which transformational grammar
(here, generative phonology) would assert by a variable rule when the
following word begins with a consonant rather than a vowel, relegating
Black English to a deviation from the standard rule. Rather, in everyspeaker in every group Labovstudied, the second consonant is only absent
moreoftenwhen the following word begins with a consonant rather than a
vowel. Aside from indicating that BlackEnglish is not merely a deviation
from Standard English, it also indicates that generative rules cannot applyacross the board in any systematic fashion, and that language varies con-
tinuously. It varies over time as well. This gives rise to Labov's assertion
that "social pressures are continually operating upon language [to change
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42 Therese Grisham
it], not from some remote point in the past, but as an immanent social force
acting in the living present" (3). Synchrony becomes a useless category,
linguistic change is no longer local and infrequent, nor individual and
willful (as Saussure had asserted), and the assumptions of transformational
linguistics are undermined-a non-standard language does not operate
according to rules which rely on the rules of the standard language, and
underlying forms are not systematic.Labov examines Chomsky's methodology through field study in ac-
tual communities, revealing its bias. Not only one or two individuals need
be studied in order to collect theappropriate
data on alanguage,
and
speakers do not have intuitions about their native language that can be
discovered so as to characterize their competence by a generative gram-mar. He discovers that there is no homogeneous language community in
which everyone speaks alike, and that speakers cannot make clear judg-ments about which sentences are grammatical or which sentences are re-
lated (that is, "mean" the same), which are necessary principles for the
methods used to discover speakers' so-called intuitions. But, in asserting
the study of speech over competence, Labov concludes only that whilecertain social pressures (status, for example) affect linguistic change, "it is
important not to overestimate the amount of contact or overlap between
social values and the structure of language. Linguistic and social structure
are by no means coextensive" (251).Rather,
generative rammar as madegreatprogressn workingouttheinvariantrelationswithin . . [thesynchronic spect]of languagestructure, ven
though t wholly neglects he socialcontextof language.Butnow it seems
clear hatonecannotmakeanymajor dvance owardsunderstandinghemechanism f linguistic hangewithout erious tudyof thesocialfactorswhichmotivateinguistic volution.252)
In short, Labov's critique of Chomskyan and Saussurean linguistics is
"ideological," in the sense that it challenges the rationalist consciousness
that thinks of systems as constants and that valorizes an ideal individual.
But it does not fundamentally question the notion of deep structure, the
"mentalreality" hidden from our view, the "essence"of language. Instead,it moves wholly within the dictates of the discipline, operating in that area
of linguistics that has been subordinated (speech) to what has been
dominant (competence), altering the conception of the nature of deep
structure,but not questioning its existence.
Volosinov and Labov challenged and undermined the constants of
linguistics-langue, synchrony, the system of deep structure and transfor-
mational rules. From here, there is only one move left to make, Deleuze
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and Guattariconclude, "... the external pragmatics of nonlinguistic factors
must be taken into consideration" as immanent to a study of language(ATP 91). In addition, these factors can no longer be subordinated to an
inquiry into the nature of language with all of linguistics' principles intact,
but need to be considered as part of a project to analyze how language is
inseparably permeated by political and social fields. And, in fact, "linguis-tics itself is inseparable from an internal pragmatics involving its own
factors" (91). In other words, how linguistics analyzes language should be
analyzed politically.
The constants of language do not indicate permanence as much asthey function as centers, in which the search for essences is implicated. As
Deleuze and Guattari say, the
... scientificmodeltaking anguageas an objectof studyis one with the
politicalmodel by which languageis homogenized, entralized,tand-ardized,becominga languageof power,a majoror dominant anguage.(ATP 101)
For example, Black English, while thought of by Chomskyan linguists in
terms of its own constants and unities, is still registered as a deviation from
Standard English, precisely because a Standard English has been desig-nated in the first place. While this may seem a necessary move for a social
science to make, since it guarantees the constancy of the forms under studyand is one condition for considering BlackEnglish as a unity, it cannot be
separated from the political and social processes that treat BlackEnglish as
part of a sub-standard. The operations to unify, createconstants, and essen-
tialize necessarily work to standardize. While linguistics is not the onlydiscipline in which the claim to be scientific has been used to "secure the
requirements of another order" (101), it is an example of how thought is
implicated in these state functions.
Components of Passage: Pragmatics
If theobjections leveled hat... [pragmatic]eaturespertain opolitics and not to linguistics, it must be observedhow thoroughlypoliticsworkslanguage romwithin,causingnotonlythevocabulary ut
also the structureand all of thephrasal lements o varyas the order-
wordschange.A typeofstatement an beevaluated nlyas afunctionofits pragmaticmplications,n otherwords,its relation o the implicit
presuppositions,mmanentacts, or incorporeal ransformationst ex-
pressesandwhich ntroduce ewconfigurationsfbodies.
-"Postulates ofLinguistics"ATP 3)
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44 ThereseGrisham
Wemake ut... a certainnumberofthemes hatappearo us to
benecessaryorouraccount:1) thestatuteoforder-wordsn language;
2) theimportancefindirectdiscourseand hedenunciationf metaphoras a tiresomeproceedingwithoutreal importance);) the critiqueof
linguisticconstantsas well as variables,or thebenefitofzonesofcon-
tinuousvariation.
- "Entretien ur MillePlateaux"
Inasmuch as Deleuze and Guattari'stheory of language does not positan ideal "truth"of language, with rationality as its principle of behavior,
and inasmuch as it takes thevery
historicalspecificity
of utterances, both
spoken and written, as its "object"of study, this theory is not a stand-
ardizing, centralizing model of language. Deleuze and Guattari do not ask
"Whatis language?" but rather,"inwhat cases, where and when, how ..."
does language function? (Entretien). f they reinvent terminology to define
language in terms of statements, implicit presuppositions, incorporeal
transformations, and order-words, it is to connect them to social processes(collective assemblages of enunciation and machinic assemblages of
bodies) with their respective aspect of de- and reterritorialization,and tothe agencies (abstractmachines) that interpretand select them.2
The reader of "Postulates of Linguistics" encounters several difficul-
ties. Deleuze and Guattari's terminology is borrowed from diverse lin-
guists and philosophers, but is transformedso that it hardly resembles the
original definitions. Binary oppositions turn out to be produced by non-bi-
nary sociopolitical processes; dualisms collapse; concepts vanish when
they are no longer useful, appearing again in altered form somewhere else.
Concepts are specific rather than generalizable, in the sense that the con-
ceptual tool or tools must be suited to the specificity of what is being
analyzed. In other words, to understand Deleuze and Guattari's designa-tion of minor literature as proceeding by "dryness and sobriety" and as
"non-metaphorical"is to miss the point, is to use their work as a model to
be applied rather than a conceptual tool to be used. While Kafkaopposes
metaphor (a form that pretends to illuminate essence) with metamorphosis
(a circuit of flows and breaks that eludes all forms), Virginia Woolf'smetaphors increase the impermeability of things, thereby opposingdominant conceptions of metaphor. The point is to find ways to deter-
ritorialize state functions. This is why "minor" literature, like "nomad
thought," like "pragmatics," hould never be used as a model or methodol-
ogy.
"Pragmatics"has historically designated all that is outside linguistic
study. Using a reterritorialized term in a subversive mode is typical of
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Deleuze and Guattari, for they insist that pragmatics is immanent to a
consideration of language. The meaning of "pragmatic" ies in its position
in a power relation, and not in representationor signification. To introduce
a pragmatics into language is to analyze language politically, which, ac-
cording to Deleuze and Guattari, involves evaluating the "internal vari-
ables of enunciation in relation to the aggregate of the circumstances"(ATP
83). This statement needs unravelling.
Language is neither communicational nor informational. On the one
hand, communication presupposes subjectivities prior to it, when it is lan-
guage redefined in terms of sociopolitical fields that subjectifies; on theother, language transmits messages containing orders (clearto anyone who
has been in grade school), and while information is necessary for the
transmission of an order, it is only the minimum necessary for it. Thejudgesentences the accused. "Isentence you to .. ." For Deleuze and Guattari,
this is a speech act;as a performative statement, it accomplishes the act by
speaking. But it does not do so because it refersto other statements or
external acts; it does so because it is socially and politically empowered y
them. It is empowered by what Oswald Ducrot has called "implicit ornondiscursive presuppositions," in this case, those relating to a whole
juridical apparatus that distributes subjectifications, meeting in the figureof the judge. The illocutionary (what one does in speaking; the acts ac-
complished in speech or writing), which J. L. Austin classified separatelyfrom the performative, constitutes implicit presuppositions for Deleuze
and Guattari. The performative, then, is a subset of the illocutionary, and
the illocutionary derives its power from its connection to collective as-
semblages of enunciation, in this case a whole aggregate of juridical texts,
acts, and speech acts-the law.
"I sentence you to. .. ." is a statement. Statements stand in direct
strategic opposition to the ideal abstractions of linguistics-they are actual
and material.Statements contain incorporeal transformations-in this case,
the transformationof the accused into a convict. Nothing has happened, no
one has moved, but the event of speech has been decisive. The body of the
accused is now the body of the convict, but this is by virtue of attribution-of sociopolitical configurations that make it so. The incorporeal transfor-
mation has been attributed to a social body (for an accused is a social body
just as is a biological body or the body of a convict), altering it and the
other bodies it will affect, like the body of the prison. The commission of
the crime of which the convict was accused belongs to this order (althoughto call it the "commission of a crime" is already also of the order of collec-
tive assemblages of enunciation)-the order of bodies intermingling and
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46 Therese Grisham
reacting to each other, their affects and passions, or what Deleuze and
Guattari call a "machinicassemblage of bodies."
The incorporeal transformation has at its heart the order-word, the
word that connects speech and acts by being redundant with them. The
order-word is the word or phrase that arrangessocial bodies and demands
obedience. It is the fundamental unit of the statement, connecting it to
implicit presuppositions, collective assemblages of enunciation, and
machinic assemblages of bodies. "I"is an order-word: it imposes a dis-
cipline, and a different discipline in each position and in each configurationin which it is uttered. The
conceptof the order-word ruins the old struc-
turalist dualism of the subject of the statement and the subject of the
enunciation, since the order-word simultaneously demands subjectifica-tion and accomplishes it, through incorporeal transformation.Each time I
say "I," t does not "mean" the same thing as the time before or the time to
come-it is in a different configuration of power relations, a different en-
counter of forces. Can the word "I,"then, whenever it is uttered, be said to
be the same word, even grammatically or phonologically? Politics works
language thoroughly from within.But the order-word has two modes-limitative and expansive.3As the
"expressed" of the statement, the order-word either orders death (capturein forms), or flight. In other words, it does not just reterritorialize,but can
also give a message to flee. An example from one of Deleuze and Guattari's
favorite writers, Kafka, in "A Report to An Academy," can serve to il-
lustrate this. Metaphors,as statements, contain order-words which give the
order to standardize, one type of incorporeal transformation.In "A Reportto An Academy," the men on board the ship where the ape has been
confined view the animal metaphorically:he has ape essence, bringing into
play a whole range of prior orders, texts, and speech acts (from religion,
science, colonization, etc.), and determining their treatment of the ape; as
subhuman, it can be caged, tortured,put on display. Since his confinement,
however, the "ape"has begun to metamorphose-i.e., to undergo a series
of immanent change and variation. Kafka eludes the question of essence by
indicating that freedom of movement is one of the environmental condi-tions of ape life, but not of ape essence. The ape's desperate search for
freedom of movement results in his metamorphosis:he is no longer an ape
and certainly not a man, but a series of connections and breaksbetween the
two. He seeks in the sailors' behaviors (since they are free to walk around
on board ship) any tool that might gain his release. Speech is only one of
many behaviors he imitates to this end-smoking, spitting, and drinking
alcohol are the others. When he finally says "hello,"the sailors believe this
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indicates a human essence, and they release him. "Hello" has functioned
for the "ape" as a pass-word-the other mode of the order-word. Saying
"hello" was at first only an imitation of a human behavior, but it becomes
a pass-word to further metamorphoses.The standardizing hierarchy implicit in the sailors' "detection"of the
ape's humanness (speech is both above other human behaviors and defines
humans as above animals) is implied, Kafka tells us, in notions of essence.
Because in fact, the "ape"cannot be understood metaphorically; it must be
understood as a metamorphosis, surpassing the limits of metaphor. The
"ape"is not a form (that is, man or ape), but rathersignals the break-up offorms. This is why no proper or figurative sense can be assigned to it-it
defies representation. Resemblance, then, is only an effect of "knowing" or
"seeing" through metaphor; at its heart, the metamorphosis is released
from resemblance to either man or ape.Deleuze and Guattari write that the order-word as pass-word pushes
language to its limits while bodies are in metamorphosis:
Therearepass-words
beneathorder-words.Words hatpass,
wordsthatarecomponents fpassage.... Asingle hingor wordundoubtedly as thistwofoldnature:t is necessaryo extract ne fromtheother-to transformthecompositions f order ntocomponentsfpassage. ATP110)
Within all assemblages, there is always the possibility of flight, or deter-
ritorialization. In fact, it is the continual ordering of flight, its reter-
ritorialization, that makes up power relations.
If we look at the role indirect discourse plays in language, the ongoing
nature of deterritorialization is easy to see. Indirect discourse for Deleuzeand Guattari is the "translativemovement proper to language" (ATP 77).
("Proper"here must be understood in its subversive, or minor, mode, for it
is anything but proper to the discipline of linguistics and its role in subjec-
tification proceedings.)In taking up this concept, Deleuze and Guattaritake up Volosinov, not
where he left off, but prior to his retreat into classifying literary texts.
Indirect discourse becomes the "firstdetermination of language" (ATP 76),
in place of communication or information. Accordingly, if language
... alwaysseemstopresupposetself, f we cannot ssign tanon-linguisticpointof departure,t is because anguagedoesnotoperatebetween ome-
thingseen (orfelt)and something aid,butalwaysgoes fromsayingto
saying. ATP76)
For Volosinov, the embedding of messages in indirect discourse
defined dialogue, involving citation and paraphraseof what one has heard,
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bounded by an authorial context. For Deleuze and Guattari, indirect dis-
course is more: it is the vast echo of other sayings, all the "voices in a voice,
murmurings, speaking in tongues" (ATP 77). Through the concept of in-
direct discourse, the untotalizable nature and heterogeneity of languagebecomes theoretical rather than simply factual. Like the order-word, it also
has two modes. In its limitative mode, it provides a matrix for the transmis-
sion of order-words, since "an order always and already concerns priororders" (ATP 75). In its expansive mode, it provides the force for the
continuous variation of language.
Labov's notion of linguistic variation is that forms are in flux even inthe present, destroying the notion of synchronic constants. Deleuze and
Guattari'sconception of social forces as immanent to language allows them
to go beyond Labov. They write:
Labov sees variation as a de jure component affecting each system from
within, sending it cascading or leaping on its own power and forbiddingone to close it off, to make it homogeneous in principle. (ATP93)
In otherwords, every system
is in variation and cannot be definedby
its
constants and homogeneity, but only by an open variability, whose charac-
teristics are immanent and continuous. Deleuze and Guattariturn Labov's
ultimate adherence to the principles at work in the field into the notion that
statements and subjectivities are worked from within by continuous varia-
tion:
Take as an example the statement, "I swear!" It is a different statement
depending on whether it is said by a child to his or her father,by a man in
love to his loved one, or by a witness before the court. (ATP94)
These areemphatically differentstatements, like my "I"uttered in different
situations, since the encounter of forces in each instance is unique. But, this
is not only a matter of context or situation. The principle of continuous
variation as Deleuze and Guattari use it asserts:
Not only are there as many statements as thereare effectuations,but all of
the statements arepresentin the effectuation of one among them,so thatthe
line of variation is virtual, in other words, real without being actual, andconsequentlycontinuous regardlessof the leaps the statement makes. (ATP
94)
This is another way to say that in every selective arrangement of the
human being in encounters of forces subsist also multiple lines of flight. In
this definition of language, continuous variation is not simply a matter of
setting variables against constants, but of treating what are actually vari-
ables as continuously varying, instead of freezing them into constants.
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Pragmatics must interpret language according to its state functions, but
must also be flexible enough to interpret its deterritorializing functions. In
order to see how this works, it is helpful to see how Deleuze and Guattari
make use of Louis Hjelmslev's linguistic principles.The pragmatic analysis of language can be schematized according to
planes of content and expression. Deleuze and Guattari take these terms
from Hjelmslev. They adopt ("orphan" might be a better word)
Hjelmslev's four aspects of the signifier-signified relation (instead of
Saussure's two), which cannot be considered independently of each other,
and yet standin
arbitraryrelation to each other
(that is,in
reciprocalpresupposition), as a tool for breaking out of the binary formulation of
signifier and signified. More importantly, it is a way for them to break
away from binary modes of thought in order to show how language is
implicated in nonbinary sociopolitical processes.Instead of positing the simple dichotomy content/expression,
Hjelmslev posits a four-fold sign function. According to Hjelmslev, Saus-
sure implies that content-substance (what Saussure called "the amorphous
continuum of thought") and expression-substance (the "nebulous soundchain") precede language in time hierarchically.That is, for Saussure, each
language selects from these matrices to form its signifiers and signifieds.
Hjelmslev says, instead, that substance depends on form "tosuch a degreethat it lives exclusively by its favor and can in no sense be said to have an
independent existence" (50). He supplies content-form, content-substance,
expression-form, and expression-substance as correctives. These are the
functions that thesign
function contracts, which simultaneously presup-
pose each other, although they stand in arbitraryrelation to each other in
the Saussurean sense of "arbitrary"-that is, not naturally motivated. The
notion of purport is what binds these functions together. On the plane of
content, purport can be defined simply as thought. But it is formed dif-
ferently in different languages. It remains always the substance for a form,
and has no existence outside being the substance of form. So, the content-
form operates on purport to form it into content-substance. Simply put,
each language forms its own concepts.Expression runs parallel to content, and has its own purport-in this
case, the vocalic continuum of the mouth. The expression-substance is also
formed differently in different languages, ordered by the expression-form.An example is the word "Berlin"as pronounced in English, German, and
Japanese. While Hjelmslev uses these terms to elaborate language as a
signifying system, Deleuze and Guattari use these functions to break
resolutely with this system.
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They retain Hjelmslev's notion that the functions of content and ex-
pression are in reciprocal presupposition with each other, in the sense that
they are always interconnected but are of entirely different orders. The
encounter of these orders does not signify, but is, again, the encounter of
forces in a power relation. They also retain the idea that the Saussurean
substance of the content, which if transposed to their schema would be
something like an amorphous body, and the substance of the expression,which would be the linguistic equivalent, are not extractablerealities, con-
ceptual or otherwise. To summarize, expression is the set of incorporeal
transformations,content the set of
corporealmodifications.
Corporeal:a
body is any formed content and its actions and passions; the form of
expression is order-words. This is another way to present the notion that
content and expression are variables that pass into each other continually,
arranging each other.
"Abstractmachines" are the diagrams of the "whole"assemblage, that
is, of the encounters of these orders; they are the agencies that select and
interpret these variables. Abstract machines too have their limitative and
expansive modes, based in levels of abstraction.Ultimately, since abstractmachines are built around variables, they are also singular and in flux.
It should be clear that linguistics has set up its own abstractmachine
that derives constants from variables and turns contents into simple mat-
ters of reference. Hjelmslev's notion of purport, the semantic objectives of
transformational grammar, and the Saussurean signified which points to
referents offer ample proof of this. This is where the abstract machine of
linguisticsbogs down decisively: since it interprets language as a set of
abstracted constants in the service of reference, it cannot interpret its own
selections. Critics have asserted that transformational grammar is too
abstract-it relies theoretically on logically abstracted, hidden forms.
Deleuze and Guattariemploy a different concept of abstractionwhen they
say that linguistics, far from being too abstract,is not yet abstractenough.
Abstraction can be thought of spatially as extending across a virtual sur-
face, rather than reaching to a hidden depth. As Deleuze and Guattarisay:
... if the abstractions taken urther, nenecessarilyeaches levelwherethepseudo-constantsflanguage resuperseded yvariablesfexpressioninternal o enunciationtself;these variablesof expressionare then no
longerseparableromthevariables f contentwithwhichtheyareinper-petual interaction.(ATP91)
A "true" abstract machine-one that is capable of interpreting these
variables (in addition to state functions)-"pertains to an assemblage in its
entirety: it is defined as the diagram of that assemblage" (91). Pragmatics,
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as an abstract machine, has to be linked to the assemblages on which it
depends. (In the following, Deleuze and Guattari use in a subversive waythe linguistic notions of deep and surface structure.) They say:
. . . the interpenetrationf languageand the social field and politicalproblemsies at thedeepest evel of theabstractmachine, ot at thesurface.Theabstractmachine sit relates othediagram ftheassemblages never
purelya matterof language, xcept or lackof sufficientabstraction.t is
language hatdependson the abstractmachine, ot the reverse. ATP 1)
In its major, or reterritorializing mode, language is involved in
producing subjectifications. It therefore cannot be reduced to a system thatalready presupposes a basic subjectivity. The assumption that speakersand hearers are rational actors who make particular linguistic choices
based upon how successfully they think these choices will accomplish the
"goals" of their communication, often made by American linguists, even
among feminists, is a particularly banal example of this. Or, in another
context, we can look at the Lacanian model, which takes the Saussurean
sign as its base. Lacan would say we are subjectified in language as a
signifying system from which the signified has dropped out as the unap-
proachable Real, or we are subjectified in the Symbolic Order in which we
are irremediably divided and condemned by desire to slip along the two
poles of language (metaphor-condensation and metonymy-displacement)in the chain of signification. But are we not subjectified by, rather than in,
this particular arrangementof the human being? In other words, there is no
such thing as theSymbolic Order-it is one "regime of signs," or order of
discourse, among many,and one that
assumes,still, a Saussurean
unityof
language. As a "post-signifying regime," it passes through institutions,
psychoanalysis, discourses on sexuality, and some resistance struggles as a
conception of the human being which ties us to ourselves through par-
ticular, frozen forms, what Foucault so elegantly and ironically calls "self-
knowledge" in "TheSubjectand Power."
In general, feminists have been reluctant to adapt Deleuze and
Guattari's concepts in part because of Deleuze and Guattari's own par-
ticipation in promoting (sub)standardized images of women (the siren andthe girl in the becomings-woman, for example). However, their conceptsare worth a second look. I can only outline here what I find inspiring about
Deleuze and Guattari's conception of language for a feminist linguistics,
particularly their break with the rationalist principles linked to essen-
tialism in the ways I have discussed, as well as their implicit critique of
valorized notions of subjectivity. This critique is problematic for many
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feminists, since the "loss" of subjectivity is viewed as a male privilegeunavailable to women, since we have never had a subjectivity to lose.
It seems obvious that new subjectivities for women should continue to
be articulated. But we should not ignore the observation that subjectivity
necessarily means subjectification,simply in order to formulate a theory of
agency and promote empowerment. In point of fact, feminist theories of
agency and subjectivity have functioned largely to keep those women who
were not already in near-standard positions "in their place," as Chandra
Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak, and many others before them have pointed out.
These notions again need reevaluation. Is it necessary to have a theory ofagency in order to act?Is it essential to promote a feminist subjectivity (and
not merely develop a sense of self), which inevitably entails its own sub-
standards?
Deleuze and Guattari offer a way to analyze the manifold role of
enunciation in subjectification proceedings that are complex, unique, and
always partial, which is to say that subjectivity, like language, is not
totalizable (unlike the totalizing theory of language and hence subjec-
tivity-no matter if split-that Lacan employed). In this scheme, the
category of gender would be one among many limitative types of incor-
poreal transformation,which is to imply that in these transformations also
always subsist lines of flight. Since pragmatics offers a broad political base
for the analysis of language in terms of the combined functions of the
"state" and their relations to collective assemblages of enunciation,
machinic assemblages of bodies, and de- and reterritorialization, it also
offersprecise
andcomplex ways
toanalyze
written orspoken
utterances to
any feminist willing to take them up and adapt them.
"Postulates of Linguistics" makes an implicit critique of the ways in
which some current feminist practices in linguistics recapitulate the politi-cal problematics in the field. Feminist linguistics thinks of itself as neces-
sarily conducted from the perspective of traditional disciplines, thoughconnected to other disciplines. As such, its commitment to "extend or
transform the conceptual frameworks and research methods of the dis-
cipline" and to "achieve the far-reachingsocial, cultural,and political chan-ges envisioned by the women's movement" (McConnell-Ginet161,163) by
changing language, is debilitated from the start. It does not recognize its
own implication in a disciplinary apparatusthat is produced and regulatedin ways having to do with hegemony and capitalism, and with the con-
straint to produce truth. Further,most American feminist linguistics has
remained tied to a positivist-seeming, fundamentally rationalist concep-tion of language, similar to that of traditionalsociolinguistics that does not
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Ligitis5
take gender as the primary construction under investigation (like Labov's).
McConnell-Ginet's argument for retaining the notion of language as an
abstract system while connecting it to the "mental states and processes,social actions and cultural values that infuse [it] .. .with life" (160) is
simply that it is
extraordinarilynlikely hatonecouldprovidea revealing ccountof lan-
guage uses and their relation o languageusers withoutdistinguishingforms ndependently f the uses theirusersput themto.Certainly o onehas.(160)
This is reminiscent of Labov's capitulation to Chomsky: the Cartesianversion of a scientific model of language remains undisturbed in both,
without question as to the positioning, or meaning, of "revealing." In the
history of ideas, "revealing"has been tied to notions of surface and depth,to what is concealed and the process of uncovering it, and to a notion of
progress and belief that the world really does present us with a legibleface-all complicit with standardizing modes of thought. These are con-
ceptions that Deleuze and Guattari challenge, and this is their value for a
linguistics that would include a feminist critique of the field.
Deleuze and Guattari deterritorialize the domain of linguistics: theysubvert the meanings of linguistic texts in the history of the field by puttingthem to work in the service of politics. They persistently avoid the ques-
tion, "Whatis language?" to which much feminine linguistics still remains
tied. They cross the boundaries of the discipline, not for the purposes of
interdisciplinarity, but to go beyond the scope of disciplines altogether.
University f Washington,eattle
NOTES
1.SeeFoucault, TheOrder fDiscourse,"nTheArchaeologyfKnowledge,rans.A.M.Sheridan mith NewYork: antheonBooks,1972), specially .227.
2. I have taken the term "selectiveand interpretiveagencies"from BrianMassumi's "ThePower of the Particular," ubjects/Objects:1985,6-23, and the
manuscript f his book,A User'sGuideoCapitalismndSchizophrenia.ora detailed
backgroundon statements, ncorporeal ransformations,nd bodies, see Gilles
Deleuze,LogiqueuSens Paris:Minuit,1969);rans.MarkLester nd CharlesStivaleas TheLogic fSenseNewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1990).
3. To callthese "limitative"nd"expansive,"ndto designate nlytwoexpres-ses theconcept n shorthand nd thereforeeductively.DeleuzeandGuattari'son-
ceptionof relativeandabsolutedeterritorializationn relation oregimesof signs,of
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which these "modes" are a part,is given in "587 B.C.-A.D.70:On SeveralRegimes of
Signs,"ATP111-148,among otherchapters.
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