ABSTRACT
Intellectuals who write on the postmodern consequences for linguistic communication claim some of the following: Semiotics, deconstruction, dedifferentiation, poststructuralism, and even "postlinguistics" supposedly challenge the modern, Western assumptions that language and communication are based on universal, objective, rational principles. That something new can be learned in this crowded field of postmodernist pronouncements on linguistics is attested by the observation that contemporary sociologists typically invoke Emile Durkheim's analyses of suicide, crime, and religion in discussions concerning social facts, but tend to omit language as a social fact. The ideas that thought exists in a primordial state of flux prior to language; that language represents the collective will of a people; and that language may serve as an objective indicator of that will, are distinctly German Romantic insights. In 1903, Durkheim and Fauconnet gave credit to German thinkers for the germ of the idea that language may be comprehended as a collective representation.
