ABSTRACT
This chapter examines that reflection further by showing in more in detail how the affinities between Gramsci and communication allow elaborating out of his work what we define as dialectical translation, an 'integral' approach to crisis and communication. According to Martin Jay there are two holisms in the Gramscian system: a Hegelian-Crocian one and a communicative one. The first mainly materializes in Gramsci's telos, according to which historical manifestations provide a sense of truth to ideas, as well as the notion of an organic integration of elements into a social totality. The chapter considers the linguistic and cultural shock that affected Gramsci when moving from the insulated Sardinian linguistic landscape to mittel-European Turin. Gramsci's glottological studies at the University of Turin and his contact with Turin's pragmatists and logicians gave him plenty of occasions to reflect on language as a historically determined practice.
