ABSTRACT
Benjamin’s Messianic framework makes Berman uncomfortable. For Benjamin, natural languages are moving, Messianically, towards ‘pure language’, but Berman argues that we do not have to approach pure language from this eschatological perspective and that Benjamin’s framework can be appropriated (or translated) into a more secular form. To this end he repositions pure language as the ‘dialectal essence of language’ (2008:181), which Berman locates in orality.
