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22 Michael J. Slrapiro

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... is preordained and it is a structural kind since it foIlows fromthe principIe that the TUles are the same for both sides. Asyrnmetryis engendered; it follows inevitably from the contingent nature ofevents, themselves due to intervention, chance or talent. The re-verse is true of ritual. There is an asymrnetry which is postulatedin advance between profane and sacred, faithful and officia ting,dead and living, initiated and uninitiated, etc .. and the 'game' con-sists in making all the participants pass to the winning side by rneansof events, the nature and ordering of which is genuinely structuraJ.

What Levi-Strauss's analysis hcre demonstrates, at a mnimum, is theintelligibility we enjoy when we introduce a level of abstraction;we are able to "read" two seerningly disparate social processes withinthe same linguistic/conceptual currency. If we take this episternologicalinsight and add it to Levis-Strauss's substantive focus on garnes andrituals, we have an entree to an initial political problema tic we canlend to language purisrn movernents. Recognizinr that we must in-terpret language purisrn movernents as events by contextualizingthem within a broader, on-going social process, we ask about theirconstituting motivations. These are motivations understood not asindividual/causal or psychological phenomena but as social levelphenomena, for such a movernent has a collective significance; it hasthe effect of identifying certain mernbers of the community withinan inherited linguistic social caste while placing others outside of th ismembership. It thus involves both identification and differentia tion.Language purification movernents also have a marked, ideationalmp etu s which relates, among other things, to the tcrrn "purification."lf we look at the history of the terrnjpurification and view it from thepoint of view of its metaphoricity, "purification" loses its innocence,for its most powerful historical role has been its use as a representationfor overcoming sin. Inasmuch as sin has been represented or figuredas a kind of "stain," which Ricoeur (1967:46) had identified as "thefirst 'scherna' of evl," it is c lea. that purification has Iunctioned ipart as a moral ter m appliecl to actions aimed at overcoming eviJ.

When a tenn with a pointedly moral valence is put into play isocial processes, it cannot wholly lose that valence, even when efforare made to neut ralizo its moral forcc! Every society is involved tosome dcgree with iclentity politics, with scparating people into groupswith identities which form a hierarchy of worthiness, and one's languagegroup membership is an impoi tant part of many of these identitypolitics processes. Clearly, then, attempts to "purify" a languag

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A political approach (9 language purism 23implicitly promotes those who can most c\osely identify themselveas belonging to the language base toward which the change is aimedto a position of moral superiority. And because purification impliesgetting rid of stain and thus evil, purification movernents imply at somelevel that the impure language elernents belong to impure persons.his impurity ascription makes it then possible to put people who

cannot c\aim affil iation with the priviJeged language in a lesser moralspace.In the first instance, then, we can develop a political perspective onlanguage purification movernents by both placing the movement asa whole within the power and authority-related process of the interplayof identity and difference, which creates solidarity within cer+aingroups and differences between those groups and others, and by notingthe symbolic charge placed on such movements when the explicitactivity is "purification" of a language.

The next instance involved in developing a political understandingof language purification requires us to adopt a particular approach tolanguage, one which rejects the traditional idea that language is aneutral mdium of communication and treats language as "discourse."In the more familiar approaches lo pol it ical phenomena, language istreated as a transparent tool; it is to serve as an unobtrusive conduitbetween thoughts or concepts and things. A discourse approach, on thecontrary, t reats language as opaque. As a result, it encourages an in-spection of both linguistic practices wit hin which various phenomena -political, economic, social, biological, etc. - are embedded (in fact,from a discourse point of view various disciplines are linguisticpractices) and also enables us to raise questions about the po lticaimplications of discursive practices'The inspection of those practicescan be either atemporal, emphasizing the grarnma tical, rhetorical, andnarrative mechanisms responsible for recognition of those phenomenatreated as the referents of statements in various disciplines, or historical,emphasizing the process by which various phenomena find their wayinto language. In either case , it can be shown that discursive economies,whieh priv ilege various linguist ic operators are associated with thecircula tion of persons in connection with relations of power, authorityand control.

In short, once the transparency metaphor for language is exchangedfor the opacity rnetaphor, analysis becornes linguistically reflcctive.What this implies can be dernonstrated if we take a simple example,the phenomenon of the, "a ttitude,1 which has found its way into the

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speech/writing practices and analyses of the political science pro-fession (indeed, it is one of the most highly funded "objects" ofattention in the discipline). father than asking the question aboutwhy it is that this or that person holds this or that attitude, the typical'quistion posed by analysts, one can ask about what dimensions ofpower and authority are implicated in the attitude's ernergence in theOOtguage of the social sciencesr Undoubtedly the attitude's emergenceas an attribute of ~ersons has coincided with the development of theuse of mass mcdia to sell public policy7and those who perpetra te it.When legit imation processes were more indirect, in that they involvedthe control over the individual through the control over group andoccupational or religious mernbership, there was no question of in-Ouencing anything as unmediatcd as an individual, mental orientation(e.g., Spain sold a docile self-consciousness in the Phil ippines bylaundering it through Christianity. lt was the institution of the Churchthat mediated the Filipino's relationship to Spanish authority) (cf.Rafael 1984).1 In addition, important political events, e.g., the riseto power of Hitler, motivated studies of the phenomenon of obedienceto rigid systems of authority. Accordingly, a land mark study (Adornoel al. 1950) of the attitude was explicitly directed toward the cognitivedimension of the acceptance o f fascist appeals, and even thc less overtlyanxius studies (e.g. Campbell el al. 19FO) that helped to Iound thephenomenon known as the political a ttitude of ex t rcme positions.

In many ways, the discursively orlentcd quest ion is more pol iti caJlyacute than the empirically orientecl Cine becausc it recognizes adomain of polit ical rclat ionships that is [ugit ive within the transparencyunclerstanding of the language of inqll iry{The volubility of r~lation-ships immanent in speech practices is silencecl in the non-discursiveapproaches.

What, then, is discoursej' There is l familiar version that containsa misleading bias. Traditionally there is a strong bond between theidea of discourse anel the concept of communication. Wi thin this. tradition, discourse emerges from thc clistinction between viewinglanguage as a system of signs and as an instrument of communication.For example, Emile Benveniste nou-d that once we leavc the individualsign or word and (Ira l with the sentcnce. we are concerning ourselveswith discourse, for discourse involves ernpioying language in orderto comrnunicate. But Bcnvcniste privileged only one dim ensin ofdiscoursc, for the comrnunicatio n fuiction assurncs a speaker andlistener whose presence and intentional consciousness governs the

meanings of the discourse. There is, however, a dimension of meaningthat is not generated in the interlocutory relationship. This is themeaning that is already resident in the linguistc practices to whichindividual speakers resort in making their utterances and listenersresor t in their interpretat ions (cf . Eas thope 1983 :40-42).

Thus an utterance such as "we now know more about sexual per-versions than ever before," operates on at least two levels. As cornmuni-cation, it is c\ear what is conveyed, namely those already constitutedphenomena, which have come to be regarded as sexual perversionsare now more firrnly connected to ruedes of knowing, e.g., there areprobably more "case histories" of persons who have been recruited intothe role of the sexually perverse. But what remains silent and thusunthought within such a communica tive perspective are the processeswherein "sexual perversions" are constituted and incorporated intoa form of authority and control. To take such a view, we have toovercome the disabling view of discourse as transparent cornmuni-cation between subjects about things, a view within which the valueof the staternents of a discourse is wholly absorbed in a statement'struth value. Michel Foucault who stresses the silcnt and unthoughtdimensions of discursive practices, suggested (1972: 120) a politicizedalternative to the traditional preoccupation with the truth value ofindividual statements and discur sive formations as a whole:

To analyze a discursive formation is to weigh the "value" of state-ments, a value that is not defined by their truth, that is not gaugedby a secret con ten t but which character izes their place, their capacityfor circulation and exchange, their possibility of transformation,not only in the economy of discourse, but more generally in theadministration of scarce resources.( This view of discourse alerts us to the political content sequestered

in the subjects (kinds of persons), objects and relationships aboutwhich we speak. It shows that staternents can be evaluated as politicalresources, for discourse is, in Foucauit's terms, an "asset. ,. For ex-ample, the creation of the phenomenon of the "sexual perver=ion"is understood, within Foucaults perspective, as a "perverse implanta-tion," representing a step in the processes whereby medicine tookcharge of explaining the increasing number of kinds of sexual ab-nonnalities that were constituted and adrninistct cd by a society in-creasingly interested in rcndering conduct 1110repredictablc (Foucault1978:48). From a Foucauldian perspc ctive on discourse, thc invention

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and medicalization of sexual perversions represents the creation ofa kind of medicalized subject whose sexual modes of conduct arepenetrated by a discipline engaging in a Iorm of surveillance supportingprevailing modes of power and authority. For exarnple, as Foucaultpoints out, in the oleler coeles, soelomy was a forbidden act. Aftermedicine's penetration into the fielel of such acts a wholly new, morecomplex sexual actor/subject was contrived. "The nineteenth-centuryhomosexual becarne a personage, a past, a case history, ami a childhood,in addition to being a type of life, a life Iorrn, a rnorphology, with anindiscrete anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology (Foucault1978:43).

Foucault thus demonstrates how the "homosexual" was constituted.To the extent that we merely communicate about such things weengage in a discourse that simply reproduces an existing structure ofpower and authority. Thi s alternative approach to discourse, one thatstresses its constitutive rather than its communicative dimensin alertsus to the process wherein things come into speech and the mechanismsor elements of a discourse in which thcy reside, For this purpose, oneneeds a focus lhat is almost wholly unfamiliar to conternporary po-litical science, which predicates its approaches to inquiry on the viewthat language is transparent and thus on the apprehension of phenomenathat have already made their way into speech. Within the traditionallanguage conceits of political scicnce, language purism movementshave political significance only to the ex tent that those with recognized"political" posit ions get involved. Bu t if one Iocusses on the politicsof discourse, the political dim ensin of language puri sm inheres in theprivileging of various phenomena which are allowed to come intolanguage.

Much of this discursive approach to languaze is based on a particularconception of language and meaninu, that mtroduced by Ferdinandde Saussure, which predicates meaning not on the relationship betweena word and object but on the relational structure of signifiers. For thoseinfluenced by the Saussurean linguistic traelition, in which meaningis predicated on the structure of difference among signifiers ratherthan the word-objcct relationship, the signiier precedes the signifieel.This implies that those phenornena (signifieds) about which we haveunderstandings arise as a result of our signifying practices. ChristianMetz has represen ted this preceelence of the signifier with a rernarkon how the love experienced by sorne men is pr-dicated 011 a mentalprojection about its enelurance. He savs (\ 982: 11), " ... far from the

strength of their love guaranteeing it a real future, the psychical re-presentation of that future is the prior condition for the full arnorouspotency in the present."Whatever credence one might give to this particular view - thatit is the network of signifiers in which love and an imag ined futureparticipa te that produces the phenomenon we :dentify as "love" -the epistemological implication is clear; an understanding of thephenomena about which we speak is to be gained not by formulatingprecise, technical rules to translate ideas into observations or to trans-late observations into the conscious intentions of an actor. What isto be recovered, rather, is a non-conscious set of linguistic practices,which are constitutive of the things one is conscious of. Moreover,insofar as we recognize how things are constituted, we are in a positionto regard the "things" in the world: the unities, equivalences, andcoherences represented by prevailing speech practices, not as naturalor transcenelental but as things contrived and produced by humanpractices. We are then licensed to move in a different direction frommainstrearn polit ical understanding. Rather than privileging scientificcommunication with its cornn ilment to clarity and precision aboutthings poltical, we can question the authority of the certainties thatoperate within consensual speech about the political world and aboutthe world that is thought of as being other than polit ica\.

There is yet another aspect of language that lends itself to a po-liticizing of languaze purif icat ion movernents. This is the perspectiveoffered by Bakhtin, who spoke of the degree of pluralism or, in histerms, heteroglossia wi thin a society. In speaking about the way languagefunctions in various genres of writing, Bakhtin (198 1:271) sets upa tension between centripedal forces, those "forces that serve to unifyand centralize the verbal-ideological world," anel the centrifugal forceswhich operate against this unifying tendency. There is, in any society,what Bakhtin (1981 :271-272) ealis "heteroglossia" (rna ny voices):

At any given moment of its evolution, lahguage is stratified not onlyinto linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word ... but al so ...into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups,"professional" and "generic" languages, languages of generationsand so forth.

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Bakhtin identifies the novel as that fonn of writing which exemplifiesthe intemal stratification of language (hctercglossia), which managesto be maintained in the rnidst of the unifying, centripedal tendcncies

'" '

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o f a so cie ty . H e po in ts o u t (1981 :272-273) that while vario us po e ticg enr es o f writing ,

dev elo ped un der th e in f lue nce o f un ify in g , cen traliz in g , centripe dalfo rce s o f v erb al-id eo l o g ical lif e, th c no ve l - and tho se artisti c- pr o seg enr es that g ravita te to ward it - w as bein g shape d by the curr ento f dec ent rali zi ng , ce ntrifug al Io rce s.

While Bakhtin 's e rnphas is here is 011 th e n o vel as a g enr e which co un te rsvar ious ce nt rali zin g tendencies within a so ciety's verbal-id eo l o g ica lsystem , th e in sig ht ca n be trans f 'e rr ed use fully to the pro blem o flan g ua g e puri smo A purifi catio n m o ve rn ent is repr ese ntative o f a cen -tripedal tend ency . Di versity is under att ac k, and the di sc ur sive eco -norn ies that resul t can o nly enhance a cent rali zin g tend ency w ith inth e so cie ty 's sys tern o f power and aut ho rity .

In g en era l, then , a po litica l understan di ng o f lang uag e pu rifi ca ti o nm o vem ent s is po ssib le evc n when th at m o vern ent is enco ded w ith indepoli t icizing - e .g .. Iechr ica lly o rient ed - discourses, What is required ,at a g eneral lev e l, is an appreciati o n that lan g ua g e is a reso ur ce . Th elo ca ti o n s it crea tes fo r kinds o f perso n/spcak ers parta kes o f th e m o reg en eral ec o n o rny o f place and sta tu s within a so cie ty, and its g rarn -rn ati cal , rh e to rical, a nd narrative stru crur es deplo y resp o nsi biJitiesa nd a ut ho ri ta ti ve Io rrn s o f con t ro l. And po li cy aim ed at unifyin g asoc iety 's lang uag e sys cm is it se lf a pol i tica l g es tu re in asmuch as itdeni es and deleg itim atcs var io r. l o rm s o f di f fc ren ce o r o therness.

A t rnany leve ls, a so cie ty 's app ro ac h to th e Ot hr-r is co nstitutiveo f the brea dt h o f m eanin g and valuc :t i~ pr epa red to to le rat e . Lang uag epurism is a m o ve in th e di rec ti o n 01 ' nar rowin g lcg itim ate fo rm s o fm eani n g and thereby dec larin g o ut-o f- bo und s ce rta in d im ensio n so f o th ern es s. It is no t as dram a ti c an d easily po li ticized as th e exter-m in atio n o f an ethnic m in o rit y o r evcn so cas ily m ad e co nt en t iousas th e proscriptio n o f vario us f o rms o f so cial deviance , But the O th er islo ca ted rn o st funda rn ent ally in lan g uag c, th e m ed iu rn fo r repr esen tingse lves an d o th er. Th erefo re, an y m o ve th at alt e rs lang uag e by cen-tr ali zin g and pruning o r clece nt ra lizin g and diversify in g al te rs theeco lo g y o f Se lf -O th er re latio ns am i thereby th e id entities that co nt ai nan d an m ate re latio n s o f power am i aut ho rit y,

Adorno, TW., E .Frenkel-Brunswick, DJ. Lcvinson, and R.N. Sanford1950 T7e Authoritarian Pers onality . New York: Harper & Row.Bakhtin, M.M.1981 T71e Dialogic Imagination, (Caryl Emerson and Michacl Holquist,

trans.). Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.Carnpbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes)960 Th e Am erical1 Vote r. New York: Wey.

Easthope, Anthony1983 Poetry as Discourse . New York: Methuen.Foucault, Michel1972 T71e Archeo logy of Knowledge. (A.M. Sheridan Smith, trans.). New

York: Pantheon.1978 The History of Sex ua lit y (Robert Hurley , trans.). Ncw York: Pantheon.Levi-Strauss, Claude1966 T7 1eSavage Mind. Chicago: Unversity of Chicago Press.Metz, Christian1982 Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben

Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti, trans.). London: MacMillan Prcss.Rafael, Vicente L.1984 Contracting Christianity: Convcrsions and Translations in Early Tagalog

Colonia l Society. Ph .D . Di s s ertation . Cornell Univcsity.Ricoeur, Paul19 67 771e Symbolism of Ev il . Boston: Bcacon Press.

Notel. Rafael's analysis is an exemplar of a discourse oriented approach. He shows,among other things, how the meaning of Christian encounters, e.g., lh,. con-

fessional, we re a ff ec ted when refracled through a translation from the Spanishinto the Tagalog Janguage.

References