ABSTRACT
The problem of conceptualizing the role which the investigation of language-use might play in a larger process of social investigation is undoubtedly one of dialectics, and the Ferguslie study goes some way to helping to grasp the nature of the dialectics of the objective and the subjective, the material and the ideal, in social development. The specific forms of language clearly did play a key role, not only in the development of the modes of social consciousness amongst the FLAG activists, but also in the broader development of the Partnership and so too in the development of the Government’ s policy agenda for Scotland. For Mikhail Bakhtin the expropriation of the moral force of the legitimately language of dominant groups is generally ‘a difficult and complicated process’. Amongst the FLAG activists the sense of strategy and purpose which characterized the stewards engagement with their context was significantly absent.
