ABSTRACT
It is to be a debaser of all that is good and of value in either the human essence or, for the more philosophically circumspect, in human interaction. The arts, politics and social life, there have been movements in the past century or so that have putatively renounced humanism, often for greater or lesser rhetorical effect. In an environment where humanist positions are so entrenched that they are as taken for granted as fresh air, it may appear as though an 'anti' perspective has nothing to offer. One of the most successful branches of sociolinguistics in recent years has been Critical Discourse Analysis, which is one component of numerous successful grant applications in the humanities. If one is looking to extrapolate about wider issues from observing linguistic structure – in sum: looking for linguistic structure – as opposed to looking at how humans use communication or what language is for, then results are always going to be limited and self-perpetuating.
