ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the critique of consensus sociology in order to highlight the problems associated with contemporary sociolinguistics. Having subjected mainstream sociolinguistics to a sustained critique associated with the overriding involvement in orthodox consensus, it is hardly appropriate to conclude without considering alternative approaches which might redress what has been claimed are deficiencies in the mainstream approach. Yet, as will be clear, these alternatives are not devoid of problems, many of which they share with the orthodox consensus view of society. The two perspectives which author would briefly like to consider are Marxism and what has become known as French Discourse Analysis, which focuses upon the theoretical work of Michel Foucault. Indeed there is a considerable interest in Marxism and language even though little of this recent work has developed on the early work of the Moscow Circle, Marx, Lenin and Gramsci among others.
