The Material Word (Routledge Revivals) | Some theories of language and

Book

The Material Word (Routledge Revivals)

ABSTRACT

First published in 1980, this reissue is a study of the sociology of language, which aims to bridge the gap between textbook and monograph by alternating chapters of explication and analysis. A chapter outlining a particular theory and suggesting general criticisms is followed by a chapter offering an original application of that theory. The aim of the authors is to treat text and talk as the site of specific practices which sustain or subvert particular relations between appearance and reality.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

part |2 pages

Part I: Introduction: The language of mastery

chapter 1|14 pages

Interrupting the ‘I’

chapter 2|14 pages

Language and ideology in Althusser

part |2 pages

Part II: The limits of language

chapter 3|21 pages

Wittgenstein’s two languages

chapter 4|19 pages

Kafka: the poet of black and white Black as music; Black as sexuality; Black as value; Black as language; Methods for assembling black and white; The absence of red

part |2 pages

Part III: Language and thought

chapter 5|16 pages

Husserl’s two phenomenologies

chapter 6|17 pages

Heidegger: from letters to being, or from being to letters? Heidegger’s interpreters; Idle talk; Idealism and materialism; Talk and understanding; Appendix

part |2 pages

Part IV: Language and society

chapter 7|21 pages

The essentialism of ethnomethodology Life versus thought in Schutz; Multiple realities; The solitary scientist; Ethnomethodological sociology; Sacks and Sacksism; Structured speech; Sexism

chapter 8|20 pages

Codes in conversation: the speech of Bernstein and Labov Universalism and particularism; Interview talk as restricted speech; Interpreting restricted speech; Interrupting restricted speech; Telling the code; Interview talk as elaborated speech; Interpreting elaborated speech; Interrupting elaborated speech

part |2 pages

Part V: The practice of ordinary language

chapter 9|18 pages

What Austin does with words Austin’s interpreters; Austin as philosopher; Austin as investigator; Austin at reflection—the rule of Austin’s self

chapter 10|14 pages

Locke’s text of property The intelligibility of the text; Sophistry and mastery; Interpreting Locke; The text ‘Of Property’

part |2 pages

Part VI: Language, sign and text

chapter 11|20 pages

The significance of Barthes ‘The demon of analogy’; Saussure’s semiology; Barthes’s ‘signifiance’; Historical specifics—systems of connotation; The productivity of the text; An ‘infinite thematics’?

chapter 12|21 pages

The blood of dreams: Robbe-Grillet’s project A fiction ruptured by its narration; The collapse of the narrative voice; Writing/reading; Black and white—and red; The play of the text; Interrupting the code

part |2 pages

Part VII Conclusion: The mastery of language

chapter 13|18 pages

Textuality, sexuality, economy Volosinov’s sociology of speeches; Derrida’s ‘differance’; Interpreting morality; Interrupting textuality; Economy; Sexuality; Textual practice

chapter 14|15 pages

The competence model and its limits Culler’s circle; Foucault’s ‘clinical discourse’; Habermas’s critical theory of language; Critical practice