ABSTRACT
Sociolinguistics should be a tool for the exploration of the role of human linguistic capacities in the dynamic of the world system. This chapter proposes one avenue toward such a union, using tools for the investigation of the practice of speaking developed by Mikhail Bakhtin and V. I. Voloshinov. Their work suggests the shape of a theory of the linguistic foundations of consciousness, lens that, in Marxist political economic thought, focuses the material and symbolic historical dynamic within the acting subject. The chapter illustrates this possibility through a brief study of the Mexicano usage found in peasant communities in the Malinche Volcano region of Tlaxcala and Puebla in central Mexico. The concept of "consciousness" in Marxist thought would seem to provide an analytical locus at which the material and the symbolic sides of human adaptation could be linked. The chapter shows that attention to language can shed important light on the nature of consciousness, the symbolic practice of a structural position.
