6th INTERNATIONAL
COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE
STOCKHOLM, July 1999
THEME SESSION: `LANGUAGE AND IDEOLOGY'
Cognitive Linguistics and the Marxist approach to ideology
Peter E Jones, Sheffield Hallam University, Great Britain
1. Preamble: ideology and social theory
All contributors to the theme session on ideology, whatever their
theoretical allegiance, would probably accept a view of ideology
as having to do with the social function of ideas. That is, ideology
has to do with the way in which ideas, expressed in language or
some other medium, play a role in justifying and defending or,
alternatively, in challenging and opposing existing economic,
political or social structures. Assumptions and claims about the
role of ideology therefore make sense only within the framework
of a broader view of the way society as a whole works. For this
we need a social theory within which the complex interconnections
within the social whole between ideas (or `discourse', if you
will, to use a more fashionable expression) and social activity
can be identified and analysed.
Marxism is a social theory and provides one answer to the question
of how ideas and other expressions of human imagination relate
to action. It also provides a methodology for studying this relation
in concrete circumstances. But where do non-Marxist approaches
to the study of ideology, for example Cognitive Linguistics, stand
on the question of social theory? And if the general premisses
of the social theory espoused by CL conflict with those of Marxist
theory, does that mean that there is no basis for dialogue between
these two theoretical systems? This paper attempts to open a discussion
on these issues. It begins with an exposition of the main principles
of Marxist social theory and ideology, moves on to examine the
social theory implied by CL work on ideology and, finally, attempts
to explore the basis for productive engagement between the two
approaches by considering to what extent the CL conception of
`Idealized Cognitive Model' may allow insights into ideological
formations in the Marxist sense.
2. Marxism and Cognitive Linguistics
The question of the relationship of CL to the Marxist tradition
is an important one which has not, as yet, been addressed in the
relevant literature. In fact, there are no references to Marxism,
as philosophy or social theory, in the main works on the philosophy
of CL (eg Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; and now Lakoff & Johnson,
1999). Nor is there any engagement with the long tradition of
specifically materialist philosophy which was one of the contributory
sources of Marxist materialism. It is rather an extraordinary
fact that an approach which proclaims itself as `a challenge to
Western thought' (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) can overlook not
only the whole spectrum of Marxist work in philosophy, social
theory, history, the natural sciences, economics, and politics
but also ignore that immense body of neurolinguistic, psycholinguistic
and psychological work (on topics dear to the heart of contemporary
`cognitive scientists') from within the Marxist-inspired Vygotskian
and Activity Theory traditions. Mainstream western thinking, it
appears, can acknowledge and celebrate Darwin's `dangerous idea'
(to use Dennett's phrase) while Marx's idea seems to be simply
too dangerous to mention.
The situation is all the more ironic in that those issues of central
concern to the philosophy of `embodiment' have been in the forefront
of debates within Marxism and between Marxism and other scientific
currents for more than 150 years. The claim by Lakoff and Johnson
(1980: 181) that their account of truth `can be considered an
attempt to extend the realist tradition' by dealing with `social
and personal reality as well as physical reality' comes nearly
155 years after the founders of Marxism first expounded their
`materialistic conception of history', an attempt to extend their
materialist philosophical outlook to the study of human social
existence and its laws of development. The Marxist and CL solutions
to such vital issues are hardly identical, it is true. But I submit
that a dialogue between Marxism and CL would, for that very reason,
be fruitful on a number of grounds. Firstly, Marxist (`dialectical')
materialism does not share many of the features of the `objectivism'
or `external realism' which are offensive to CL theorists. Thus,
the `real premises' of historical materialism are `men, not in
any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically
perceptible process of development under definite conditions'
(Marx and Engels, `The German Ideology' in Selected Works:
25). Secondly, Marxist theory developed through protracted
polemical engagement with philosophical trends akin to CL's `experiential
realism', whose proponents claimed, as do those of CL, that their
position was a `third way' between materialism and idealism, escaping
the `defects' of both extreme positions. One such trend, calling
itself `empirio-criticism' or `empirio-monism', was taken up by
the leading figures of Russian Marxism (including Plekhanov and
Lenin) at the beginning of the century. The Marxists argued that
philosophical views which take human `experience' as their epistemological
foundation inevitably lead to idealist or anti-realist positions
in the absence of a consistently materialist (or `objectivist')
interpretation of experience. In the course of these arguments,
materialist perspectives on such contentious issues as the possibility
of objective truth, the relation between relative and absolute
truth, and the relationship between sensation and concept, were
elaborated which would repay serious study by CL philosophers.
Central to all the philosophical issues at stake between Marxism
and CL is the question of objective truth, which is also at the
heart of the Marxist treatment of ideology. On this pivotal question,
Marxist theory and CL represent different, and to some degree,
opposing philosophical orientations. In CL terms, Marxism is unacceptably
`objectivist' while, from the Marxist point of view, CL, despite
its claims to realism, occupies positions considered to be typical
of relativism and idealism. Thus, from a Marxist perspective,
the `experiential realism' of CL, like other `experience'-based
philosophies, is not a consistent and coherent philosophical system
but wavers between materialist and idealist premises, often giving
priority to the latter. On the one hand, there is a commitment
to `basic realism', ie `to the reality of a world existing independent
of human beings' (Lakoff, 1987: 266), a commitment shared with
`objectivism' (op.cit: 158-159). On the other hand, there is a
denial of the possibility of objective truth or objective knowledge
when `the mind reproduces the logical relations that exist objectively
among the entities and categories in the world' (Lakoff, op.cit:163),
a `God's eye' view' of truth. On the CL view: `Human concepts
do not correspond to inherent properties of things but only to
interactional properties [ie `experience', PEJ]' (Lakoff &
Johnson, 1980: 181). Experience, then, though `constrained at
every instant by the real world of which we are an inextricable
part' (Lakoff, 1987: 263) does not provide us with concepts and
theories which correspond to the properties and interconnections
in the external world. These ideas underlie a CL variant of conceptual
relativism (not `a total relativism', op.cit: 264) which entertains
the `existence of alternative, incompatible conceptual schemes'
(ibid) and in which `reality as we understand it is structured
by our conceptual schemes' (op.cit: 262). On this view truth is
not `absolute, objective truth' but truth `relative to understanding'
(op.cit: 294).
However, the conjunction of basic realism with a denial of objective
truth (in the above sense) involves a logical contradiction typical
of contemporary neo-Kantianism. Basic realism in fact already
presupposes a `God's eye view', since it asserts that the real
world exists independently of human beings and therefore independently
of all human experience. Who is there on the CL view - other than
God - to speak of the existence (and the properties) of a world
beyond all possible and actual human experience? The materialist
perspective, on the other hand, proceeds consistently from the
premisses of basic realism. Human experience proves to us that
material reality exists, demonstrating that the `inherent properties'
of material reality, including its existence outside of, prior
to and independently of us, are in principle knowable and can
be discovered through experience. The concept of `experience'
itself needs critical re-evaulation in this connection. By `human
experience' is meant first and foremost social practice,
the practical transformation of the external word by
the organized social collective. Experience is therefore itself
an objective, material process subordinate to the laws of material
reality existing independently of human experience.1
Such a view does not necessarily imply that there is `one true
or correct description of a system of phenomena' as no attempt
is made to prescribe a priori the form that objective knowledge
must take. But objective knowledge is possible, since knowledge
is the conscious form in which humans, as objective beings amongst
others, relate to reality. Human beings, of course, have their
own purposes and needs distinct from the natural world but these
purposes are realized in that world through activity. The matter
of nature, whose intrinsic properties are independent of and essentially
indifferent to our purposes, is the source and material of human
life-activity; in bringing this material into the service of our
own needs we begin to discover its intrinsic, objective properties,
thereby developing images, ideas, and ultimately concepts and
systems of theoretical thinking in which the objective phenomena
of material reality and their law-governed interconnections are
represented. Practice itself is the test of correspondence between
idea and reality.
Truth, however, is not a finished once-and-for-all-time state,
but a process. A particular natural scientific theory,
for example the theory of evolution, does not constitute the final
and absolute truth of the matter. The correspondence between a
scientific theory and the reality it depicts is always conditional,
approximate and relative to the system of objective interactions
revealed by historical practice. But if the theory is not absolutely
true, neither is it absolutely false; if the cupboard is not full,
neither is it bare. There is a growing kernel of truth within
the theory of evolution to do with the facts, the processes and
the mechanisms of development and differentiation of organic life
- a kernel which will never be refuted. Truth and falsehood are
dialectical `opposites' and must not be counterposed in a formal
and mechanical way. A theory may therefore be true only within
certain limits, but within those limits absolutely and objectively
true.2 From such a standpoint, the CL perspective
on relativity of knowledge and its arguments from the existence
of `alternative conceptualizations' of objects cannot be considered
convincing. Such phenomena merely provide evidence of the multiplicity
and density of interactions and interconnections between all phenomena
of nature. They demonstrate, in the terminology of `critical realism'
(Bhaskar, 1979), `ontological depth'3 as well
as the relative autonomy, the relatively independent scope for
action, of different dimensions and aspects of the material whole.4
3. Ideology in Marxist social theory
Marx and Engels referred to their approach to the understanding
of society as `the materialistic conception of history', thereby
claiming that there was a way of approaching social structure
and social change in a way consistent with materialist assumptions.
I should stress that this approach is hardly a good example of
what Lakoff and Johnson (1999) call `a priori philosophising',
since it emerged through a critical rethinking of the history
of philosophy informed by a close study of the natural sciences
and from an enormous volume of empirical work in history, in economics
and politics and, not least, from the experiences - successes
and failures - of political struggle, guided by these ideas, on
an international scale. Marx himself speaks of `the general result
[my emphasis] at which I arrived and which, once won, served
as a guiding thread for my studies' which he summarises briefly
as follows:
`In the social production of their life, men enter into definite
relations that are indispensable and independent of their will,
relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of
development of their material productive forces. The sum total
of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure
of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions
the social, political and intellectual life process in general.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being,
but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness' (Selected Works One: 503).
As Engels commented, `this apparently simple proposition, that
the consciousness of men depends on their being and not vice
versa, at once, and in its first consequences, runs directly
counter to all idealism, even the most concealed. All traditional
and customary outlooks on everything historical are negated by
it. The whole traditional mode of political reasoning falls to
the ground' (op.cit: 509).
The radical consequences of such a view for thinking in general
flow from the fact that `men, who produce their social relations
in accordance with their material productivity, also produce ideas,
categories, that is to say, the abstract, ideal expressions
of these same social relations' (op.cit: 524). And therefore:
`Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and
their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain
the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development;
but men, developing their material production and their material
intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their
thinking and the products of their thinking' (op.cit:: 25).
For Marx and Engels the principle of the primacy of the economic
within the social whole remained a fundamental tenet of their
conception, although they ridiculed `the fatuous notion of the
ideologists that because we deny an independent development to
the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we
also deny them any effect upon history' (Selected Works:
701). Thus:
`It is not the case that the economic basis is cause, is solely
active and everything else is only a passive effect. Rather,
there is an interaction which takes place upon the basis of the
economic necessity which ultimately asserts itself' (Letters:
282).
`Political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic
etc development is based upon economic development', Engels noted,
but nevertheless these `all react upon each other and also upon
the economic base' (ibid).
Essential to the Marxist treatment of ideology is the notion of
`inversion' and the associated idea of `false consciousness'.
While Marx, in line with his general theory, emphasised that the
`abstraction, or idea...is nothing more than the theoretical expression
of those material relations which are their lord and master' (Grundrisse:
164), it is not the case that this relation between ideas and
material relations is transparent to the social actors whose life
process is at issue. Rather, things appear to be quite the reverse:
social relations appear to be the consequence of ideas with ideas
as the motive force behind social development:, eg:
`the struggle beween the classes already existing and fighting
with one another is reflected in the struggle between government
and opposition, but likewise in inverted form, no longer directly
but indirectly, not as a class struggle but as a fight for political
principles, and so distorted that it has taken us thousands of
years to get behind it' (Engels, Selected Works: 696).
In this way, the real movement of the social whole is `inverted'
in ideology. Ideology `is a process accomplished by the so-called
thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness.
The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise
it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines
false or seeming motive forces' (op.cit: 700).
Ideology, as a form of social consciousness, is not merely dismissed
as deliberately concocted falsehood, although there is also plenty
of such in circulation. Instead, the source of ideological notions
is viewed as inextricably tied up with the narrow and historically
limited scope of social practice itself. An ideological view,
such as bourgeios ideology, is a view of society from the standpoint
of a particular social class acting in accordance with its own
interests. From this viewpoint, a series of categories of phenomena
are observed and abstracted, eg `wages', `profit', `capital',
`rent', etc in the region of political economy.These abstractions
are not subjective illusions or fantasy. They `are formed not
only in the consciousness of an individual of bourgeios society
but in the reality itself of the economic social relations which
he contemplates' (Ilyenkov, 1982: 127). In other words, these
phenomena are real - they are `there' on the surface of the actual
social process itself and observable to all: `The things given
in contemplation to an individual of bourgeios ("civicä)
society are superficially exactly the way they seem to him' (ibid)5. The ideological work is to be found in the
account and interpretation of these phenomena and their relationships,
specifically in their mystification where the `mechanism of mystification
consists in the collapsing of social facts into natural ones'
(Geras, 1990: 216) thereby giving them `an idealistic explanation'
(Geras, op.cit: 218). For Marx, such categories constitute merely
the `outward appearance' of the workings of the economic system.
They cannot be accepted uncritically as the categories out of
which a science of political economy should be built, even though
they may offer the starting point for analysis: `That in their
appearance things often represent themselves in inverted form
is pretty well known in every science except Political Economy'
(Marx, in Geras, op.cit: 208). Thus, `vulgar economy', as Marx
puts it, `everywhere sticks to appearances in opposition to the
law which regulates and explains them' (in Geras, op.cit: 207)
and consequently merely consitutes a theoretical apologia or rationalization
for the existing economic forms.
In the case of political economy, then, ideology is the reflection
in ideas of the material interests of a ruling class, a reflection
in which the outward appearances of the economic forms in which
its own interests are expressed are seen and presented in mystified
fashion as naturalized, as the product of `human nature' (in our
genes, perhaps), as eternally valid, universal `civilized values'.
This viewpoint `is of course consolidated, nourished and inculcated
by the ruling classes by all means available' (Grundrisse:
165), by the vulgar fetishisation of the immediate forms of appearance
of economic processes, but also by more sophisticated `philosopohical'
attacks on the very possibility of scientific knowledge capable
of penetrating appearances to get at the inner interconnections
within the system.
From the Marxian standpoint, a materialist science of society
is premissed on `the necessity of constructing reality against
appearances' (Geras, op.cit: 209), a theoretical viewpoint which
coincides with the practice of that social class exploited by
capital and therefore struggling against it. The result of Marx's
empirical economic analysis was a system of theoretical categories
expressing the `inner nature of capital' (Marx in Geras, ibid)
- use-value, exchange-value, labour power, labour, surplus value,
capital etc - through which the law-governed movement of the economic
system as a whole, including those forms in which the workings
of the system manifest themselves to immediate experience, could
be theoretically reproduced.
4. Cognitive Linguistics and social theory
What social theory informs Cognitive Linguistic treatments
of ideology? To my knowledge, no detailed exposition of a social
theory exists, but it is possible to infer one from claims made
in the CL literature. Lakoff, for example, argues:
`Governments are real. They exist. But they exist only because
human beings conceived of them and have acted according to that
conceptualization. In short, the imaginative products of the human
mind play an enormous role in the creation of reality...In the
case of social and cultural reality, epistemology precedes metaphysics,
since human beings have the power to create social institutions
and make them real by virtue of their actions' (1987: 208).
This view, in the absence of further explanation or contextualization,
implies that in the overall dynamic of the social process it is
human conceptualization which is primary: ideas (`epistemology')
guide actions which produce social structures (`metaphysics'):
social consciousness determines social being, the inverse of the
Marxist proposition. This implicit social theory appears to be
common to many CL discussions of ideology. Bruce Hawkins (`Ideology,
metaphor and iconographic reference'), arguing that `making sense
of the sociopolitical phenomenon of oppression is a task for the
historian and the political scientist' sees the role of `cognitive
scientist' in the analysis of ideology as involving `see[ing oppression
as a conceptualized social order imposed upon a particular sociopolitical
formation. That social order emerges from a belief system in the
mind of the oppressor'. The `sociopolitical phenomenon' of oppression,
he claims, `has its roots in the mind of the oppressor'. Similarly,
Willem Botha (`The deictic foundation of ideology with reference
to African Renaissance') argues that ideology `emanates from a
person's (group of persons) cognitive system', and Harry Howard
(`Does the central nervous system impose biased representations
on cognition?') sees ideological biases in the expression of gender
relations as `the result of a vector-space representation that
the central nervous system imposes on cognition'. The social theory
implicit in such claims is itself ideological, in Marxist terms,
precisely because it turns upside down the relationship between
ideas and social reality, seeing in the former the cause or source
of the latter and, furthermore, in some cases leading to an ahistorical
and naturalistic view of ideas as the product of the body or brain
independently of social circumstances. This view is in fact characteristic
of many schools of thought whose primary focus is the study of
ideology by linguistic means (eg Teun van Dijk's `Critical Discourse
Analysis').
Nevertheless, despite these clear differences, there is, arguably,
sufficient congruence and complementarity between the two traditions
to allow a productive engagement. For CL, human experience in
the world is the source and motivation for `imaging' and thinking
processes, rather than innate biological mechanisms. CL makes
the claim that cognition is not based on language, but rather,
`language is...based on cognition' and `depends upon the nature
of thought' (Lakoff, 1987: 291). It follows that language cannot
constitute a barrier, boundary or limit to human thinking (as
is the case with some idealist philosophical trends), although
the distinctive properties and processes of human language are
themselves a constituent of human cognitive activity and influence
and shape cognitive processes in many ways. These propositions
are, within limits, commensurable with a Marxist perspective in
which human cognitive activity, whether embodied in language,
artistic images or some other mode, is viewed as a form of `ideal'
(Ilyenkov, 1977) or conceptual `modelling' of the natural and
social worlds which arises from and is inseparably connected with
human activity in the world.
Similarly, there may well be common ground in the understanding
and treatment of metaphor, although there are clearly different
perspectives on the significance of metaphor for an understanding
of cognition. This is not the place for a detailed critical engagement
with CL views on this. The Marxist tradition, unlike forms of
`objectivism' attacked in Lakoff (1987) and Lakoff and Johnson
(1999), has always recognised, and emphasised, the cognitive function
of imagination and, therefore, of metaphor (eg Farman, 1994).
To acknowledge the role of imagination in the cognitive process
is not to imply that what is thought, if metaphorical or metaphorically
expressed, is ipso facto imaginary in the subjectivist
sense, or that such forms of thinking `do not mirror nature' (Lakoff,
1987: 371).
However, even within the `philosophy of embodiment' there appears
to have been a subtle shift in emphasis on the role of metaphor
as a cognitive instrument. Thus, Lakoff and Johnson (1999) repeatedly
stress that philosophy and science cannot do without metaphor
and, consequently, to `set out the defining metaphors of a philosophy
is not necessarily to critique it....Identifying philosophers'
metaphors does not belittle them. (1999: 542-543). Justification
for this attitude is based on a notion of `aptness' for metaphors
in the sense that `metaphoric theories can have literal, basic-level
entailments' (op.cit::91), `they can entail non-metaphorical
predictions that can be verified or falsified'
(ibid, my emphasis). In other words, metaphor is not simply a
relation between cognitive elements (construed in the broadest
sense) but a more complex phenomenon to do with the relationship
between theory (the cognitive) and the reality studied and transformed
by scientific practice on the other. Here the emphasis shifts
from the link between metaphorically expressed ideas and `bodily
experience' to the theoretical soundness of such ideas in relation
to `converging evidence' from as many independent domains of scientific
investigation as possible.6 This emphasis
now brings us close to the view of metaphor embraced by more conventional
forms of scientific realism as for instance, Harr_:
`The process by which originally metaphorical descriptions are
subsequently shown, by "ontological experimentä, to
constitute accurate factual accounts of how nature works is characteristic
of progress in the natural sciences' (1961, quoted in MÿhlhSusler,
1995: 281).
Furthermore, perhaps the most significant point, for our purposes,
is made in connection with such formulations as `a gene for
aggression' in science writing. In their discussion of such
cases, Lakoff and Johnson argue: (1999: 217):
`There is, of course, a difference between conceptualizing and
reasoning about the world according to this metaphor and actually
believing that the metaphor is a truth'.
If one knows that the metaphor which one is using for `conceptualizing
and reasoning' is untrue then this implies a critical distance
between the thinking process in general and the linguistic (semantic-metaphorical)
structure serving as the vehicle of thinking. From a materialist
point of view this means that one must not equate or directly
identify the semantic network, including the metaphorical structure
of concepts, with cognition, ie the reasoning process itself
through which new knowledge develops.7
It may well be the case, then, that there is more common ground
between the Marxist and CL views of cognition than is apparent
at first sight. There is some reason to believe that a collaboration
between the two might be possible in the area of analysis of ideology.
Indeed I will suggest that there is a space for productive collaboration
in investigating what Engels referred to as the `concept-material',
or in other words, the semantic structures and mechanisms, through
which ideologies are expressed and developed. Engels argued that:
`Every ideology, however, once it has arisen, develops in connection
with the given concept-material, and develops this material further;
otherwise it would not be an ideology, that is, occupation with
thoughts as with independent entities, developing independently
and subject only to their own laws' (Selected Works: 628).
And, further:
`The historical ideologist (historical is here simply meant to
comprise the political, juridical, philosophical, theological
- in short, all the spheres belonging to society and not
only to nature) thus possesses in every sphere of science material
which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous
generations and has gone through its own independent course of
development in the brains of those successive generations' (op.cit:
700).
Consequently, while Marxism and CL may well disagree on how to
explain the social function of ideas - ie the role of ideology,
properly speaking - there may be scope for dialogue about the
internal, semantic and conceptual side of this `concept-material'.
The distinction made Purvis and Hunt (1993: 476) between `discourse'
and `ideology' may also be useful here:
`If "discourseä and "ideologyä both figure
in accounts of the general field of social action mediated by
communicative practices, then "discourseä focuses upon
the internal features of those practices, in particular
their linguistic and semiotic dimensions. On the other hand, "ideology
directs attention towards the external aspects of focusing
on the way in which lived experience is connected to notions of
interest and position that are in principle distinguishable from
lived experience'.
Thus, the concepts and methodology of CL may be usefully applied
to the internal semantic systems of ideological discourse,
supplementing and concretising the Marxist analysis of ideologies
in terms of historically specific relations between social being
and social consciousness.
5. Theory and ideology in the `concept-material' of economic
discourse
From a discussion of general philosophical and theoretical positions
we move to the examination of a particular conceptual system,
specifically a theoretical model of economic processes developed
in post-modern cultural theory in Baudrillard (1981) and taken
up by proponents of `Critical Discourse Analysis' (eg Fairclough,
1997). This model, ostensibly grounded in an attempt to extend
or `correct' basic concepts and categories of Marxist economic
theory based on claims about changes in the nature of commodities,
in effect amounts to a repudiation of that theory. These alleged
changes, it is argued, involve a transformation of the relations
between economic and ideological phenomena resulting in a dynamic
of social processes incompatible with the classical Marxist insistence
on the primacy of the economic within social evolution. Within
this revised conception, the ideological realm, with discourse
as its most important vehicle, assumes a much more important,
and possibly preeminent, role as agency of social control and
social change.
Baudrillard explicity develops a critique of historical materialism,
rejecting the distinction between `base' and `superstructure'
and, with it, the primacy of material production with respect
to ideology. Criticising `the artificial distinction between the
economic and the ideological' (op.cit:143), he argues that ideology
is not something which expresses a primary, independent realm
of material economic processes but, instead, `ideology is actually
that very form that traverses both the production of signs and
material production' (ibid). Ideology, Baudrillard claims, lies
`in the logic of the commodity' and consequently:
`Ideology can no longer be understood as an infra-superstructural
relation between a material production (system and relations of
production) and a production of signs (culture, etc), which expresses
and masks the contradictions at the "baseä. Henceforth,
all of this comprises, with the same degree of objectivity, a
general political economy (its critique), which is traversed throughout
by the same form and administered by the same logic' (ibid).
The basis for this view, as Baudrillard makes explicit, is an
identification of `the logic of the commodity' with `the internal
logic of the sign', ie with `the relation of [signifier] to [signified]'
(ibid). Baudrillard's arguments are based on equating the commodity
as a unity of use-value and exchange value (in Marxian terms),
with the sign as a unity of signifier and signified. Like the
commodity, he claims, the sign `can function as exchange value
(the discourse of communication)' and `as use value (rational
decoding and distinctive social use' (op.cit:146). But it is not
just that the sign is like a commodity; the commodity works like
a sign: `Like the sign form, the commodity is a code managing
the exchange of value. It makes little difference whether the
contents of material production or the immaterial contents of
signification are involved, it is this code that is determinant:
the rules of the interplay of signifier and exchange value' (ibid).
Let us take a step back and look more closely at Marx's concept
of the commodity. This concept forms part of an entire theoretical
system or model of the inner dynamic of capitalist production
and it is, ultimately, with respect to this system that Marx's
concept of the commodity must be understood.8
Suppose we take this concept as an `Idealized Cognitive Model'
(following Lakoff, 1987). This ICM is a `propositional model'
(op.cit:: 113). Commodities are defined as things which `have
a dual nature, because they are at the same time objects of utility
and bearers of value' (Capital: 138). The commodity, then,
is a unity of use-value (UV) and exchange-value
(EV). Roughly, UV is whatever the commodity is used for, EV how
much it is worth. EV (or `value' for short) is so called because,
in its simplest form, it is realised through the actual act of
exchanging one commodity for another: person X with commodity
A exchanges A for commodity B belonging to person Y (and, of course,
vice versa). While UV is based on the actual physical properties
of the commodity, EV is determined by the socially necessary
labour time involved in its production. Exchange value is
a historically specific, concrete form of appearance of economic
relations (of relations between people). It is this form, expanded
and generalized to all the constituent elements of productive
activity, which constitutes the capitalist mode of production.
Is the relation between UV and EV a semiotic relationship as claimed
by Baudrillard? There are, certainly, implications in Marx's analysis,
and in his discussion of `the language of commodities' (Capital:143),
for a `Marxist semiotics' (cf Jones, 1991). Ilyenkov, for example,
argues that, in Capital the "dialectic of the
transformation of a thing into a symbol, and of a symbol into
a token, is...traced...on the example of the origin and evolution
of the money form of valueä (1977: 273). However, it is quite
wrong, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, to identify the relation
between UV and EV with that of signifier to signified.
When commodities are exchanged, it is the (`socially necessary')
time it took to make them which determines the proportions in
which they are exchanged. In the act of exchange, when A is exchanged
for B, one could say with justification that B represents
the value of A, and vice versa. Each commodity, at the same time,
acts as representative of the value of the other. As Marx
puts it:
`By means of the value-relation, therefore, the natural form of
commodity B becomes the value-form of commodity A, in other words
the physical body of commodity B becomes a mirror for the value
of commodity A' (Capital:144).
But this `representation' is complex. When A and B are exchanged,
then each is actually the measure of value of the other.
If, for example, one pair of boots exchanges for (`is worth')
one sack of corn (and vice versa), then the sack of corn supplies
the measure of value of the pair of boots (and vice versa). B
represents the value of A, then, only in so far as B itself embodies
an amount of socially necessary labour time which is the equivalent
of the amount contained in A. It is their value equivalence
that both makes possible and is expressed or realised in the
exchange itself. The dual nature of the commodity, as a use-value
and a value, gives it a mysterious and contradictory character
which arises not from the workings of human imagination as such
but from the very form that the social production of wealth assumes
under capitalism:
`Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities
as values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous
objectivity of commodities as physical objects. We may twist and
turn a single commodity as we wish; it remains impossible to grasp
it as a thing possessing value. However, let us remember that
commodities possess an objective character as values only in so
far as they are all expressions of an identical social substance,
human labour, that their objective character as values is therefore
purely social. From this it follows self-evidently that it can
only appear in the social relation between commodity and commodity'
(Capital: 138-139).
Marx himself likens this `social relation between commodity and
commodity' in which one appears as the measure of value of the
other not to the semiotic bond within the sign9
but to the way in which some objects are used to measure the physical
aspects, eg the weight, of others:
`A sugar-loaf, because it is a body, is heavy and therefore possesses
weight; but we can neither take a look at this weight nor touch
it. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been
determined beforehand. The bodily form of the iron, considered
for itself, is no more the form of appearance of weight than is
the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf
as a weight, we put it into a relation of weight with the iron.
In this relation, the iron counts as a body representing nothing
but weight. Quantities of iron therefore serve to measure the
weight of the sugar, and represent, in relation to the sugar-loaf,
weight in its pure form, the form of manifestation of weight.
This part is played by the iron only within this relation, i.e.
within the relation into which the sugar, or any other body whose
weight is to be found, enters with the iron. If both objects lacked
weight, they could not enter into this relation, hence the one
could not serve to express the weight of the other.' (op.cit:148-9)
At this point, however, `the analogy ceases' since in `the expression
of the weight of the sugar-loaf, the iron represents a natural
property common to both bodies, their weight' whereas in the expression
of value commodity B `represents a supra-natural property: their
value, which is something purely social' (ibid).
Marx goes on to show how the `value form' of commodities undergoes
a series of metamorphoses with the expansion and intensification
of commodity production, resulting in the money form of value
wherein one commodity, namely gold, takes on the function
of universal equivalent and acts simultaneously both as
measure and as general representative or symbol
of the value of all other commodities. Significantly, however,
Marx himself warns against spurious analogies between money and
other phenomena, including language:
`(To compare money with blood - the term circulation gave occasion
for this - is about as correct as Menenius Agrippa's comparison
between the patricians and the stomach.) (To compare money with
language is not less erroneous. Language does not transfrom ideas,
so that the peculiarity of ideas is dissolved and their social
character runs alongside them as a separate entity, like prices
alongside commodities. Ideas do not exist separately from language.
Ideas which have first to be translated out of their mother tongue
into a foreign language in order to circulate, in order to become
exchangeable, offer a somewhat better analogy; but the analogy
then lies not in language, but in the foreignness of language.)'
(Grundrisse: 162-163).
Let us now return to Baudrillard's conceptual reworking of the
commodity as a sign (and vice versa). The sign, he argues `can
function as exchange value (the discourse of communication)' and
as use value (rational decoding and distinctive social use)'.
Here the term `exchange value' expresses a metaphorical mapping
of the meaning of `exchange' within the propositional model of
the source domain to the target domain of communicative `exchange'
using signs. It is this first mapping which allows Baudrillard
to apply terms proper to economic phenomena to communication,
eg in the very title of Baudrillard (1981) - `the political economy
of the sign'. This also licences the application of the term `use
value' to the processes of understanding and interpreting signs.
Furthermore, once the metaphorical sense of `exchange' has been
applied to semiotic processes, it can then be turned back onto
the commodity itself, which is seen `like the sign form' as `a
code managing the exchange of values' (op.cit:146). In fact, the
commodity can now be presented as a particular instance of the
general field of signs with the linguistic sign, perhaps, as the
`prototypical case'. This gives us a `metonymic model' of the
category of semiotic phenomena (Lakoff, 1987: 84) where the `target'
concept (the commodity) is presented in terms of another concept
(the sign) which comes to stand for the whole category. In this
way a complex conceptual inversion has taken place: commodity
and sign have been equated via a metaphorical mapping from economics
to communication and on that basis the commodity has been re-conceptualized
as a sign. Thus, the concreteness of both phenomena (commodity
and sign) has been dissolved in a particular type of abstraction
represented by the new meaning given to the word `exchange', thus:
`A critique of general political economy (or a critical theory
of value) and a theory of symbolic exchange are one and the
same thing' (op.cit: 128, my emphasis). This semantic shift
in effect succeeds in destroying the concept of commodity.
The crucial theoretical (and real world) distinction between economic
and communicative phenomena, between material productive and semiotic
processes, is erased. Let us explore this distinction in more
detail.
Commodities are literally exchanged; they change hands (to
use a more basic, bodily metaphor). Signs, eg words, do not. When
person X exchanges a pair of boots for a sack of corn, X is no
longer in possession of the boots which now belong to person Y.
If person X `exchanges' greetings with person Y, these persons
have not given up possession or use of these forms of greeting.
In this metaphorical use of `exchange', an aspect of the form
of the concrete phenomenon - the way in which commodities mutually
`represent' to one another their common social substance in the
patterned reciprocity of the act of exchange - has been abstracted
while its specific, genuine economic content (labour-time) has
been lost. A commodity is a use-value and an exchange-value; but
its exchange-value does not stand for or represent its use-value,
nor does its use-value stand for or represent its value. Its value,
rather, represents the (abstract) socially necessary labour time
the commodity embodies. By contrast, signs in general have no
exchange value; they are not produced as commodities (but see
below). Indeed, they are not `produced' at all in the economic
sense. They `exchange' as a function of their meaning, not as
a function of the time (or physical or mental effort) involved
in their `production'. For the same reasons, signs (or their signifieds)
are not use-values, since they are not `consumed' in the economic
sense (although see below); they do not get worn out, or used
up etc. The equation of the commodity with the sign is, therefore,
entirely spurious since the metaphorical mapping of EV and UV
carries the `concept-material' expressed in those terms beyond
the legitimate bounds of the theoretical system (the source ICM)
in which they have their precise and strict application. The corollary
is that the concepts of EV and UV, by being applied to signifying
activity in general, assume a supra-historical dimension, rather
than being seen as valid only for a historically specific mode
of production.
Baudrillard's arguments also figure in the work of such Critical
Discourse Analysts as Norman Fairclough, who makes the following
claims (cf Jones,1998 for detailed discussion):
`At the heart of the turn towards language in modern social life there is, I think, a change in the relationship between language and economy which goes deeper than the colonisation of new domains by the discursive practices of the market. We might express this by saying that language has been economically penetrated, and economies have been linguistically penetrated. The point is that the economic shift towards consumption and service industries entails a shift in the nature of commodities. Commodities are increasingly cultural, semiotic, and therefore linguistic in nature; accordingly language is increasingly commodified and shaped by economic calculation and intervention' (1997: 7-8).
The specific `concept-material' (ICM) of Marxian economic theory,
and its materialist foundations, is again challenged by this claim
about `a shift in the nature of commodities' (my emphasis),
about their becoming increasingly `linguistic in nature'
(my emphasis), resulting in the `linguistic penetration' of the
economy. These arguments, stemming essentially from Baudrillard
(1981, cited by Fairclough, op.cit) mistakenly imply that a shift
in the type of commodities being produced can have an effect
on the nature of commodities in general, culminating in
the breakdown of the distinction between economic and semiotic
processes. Fairclough implies that the proliferation of commodities
which are `linguistic in nature', such as a textbook (op.cit:
8), somehow subverts the intrinsic logic of economic production
and knocks it onto a new, `semiotic' track . But this is in fact
a misconception. Whether a commodity is a `semiotic' object like
a textbook, or a non-semiotic object like a carrot is irrelevant
to its nature as a commodity. As commodities, the
textbook and the carrot are identical despite their differences
as use-values. As Marx emphasises in relation to use-value:
`its particular content...was completely irrelevant to the definition
of the commodity. The article destined to be a commodity, and
hence the incarnation of exchange-value, had to gratify some social
want or other, and had therefore to possess some useful qualities.
Voil tout' (Capital: 979).
The textbook, like any other commodity, is a unity of exchange-value
(represented in its price) and use value (it is written in order
to be read). Its value is determined by the quantity of socially
necessary labour time involved in its production and its use-value,
though `linguistic' or `semiotic', is `conditioned by the physical
properties of the commodity, and has no existence apart from the
latter' (Capital:126). Therefore, a sign or system of signs
(eg a textbook) may indeed be a commodity, but its nature
as a sign (ie the entire sum of signifier/signified relations
making up its sign nature) has to do with its distinctive use-value
as a commodity and not with its nature as a commodity.
Consequently, however much the production of textbooks, films,
TV programmes etc expands, in all this there is absolutely no
shift in the nature of commodities or in the economic logic
according to which the production of the means of life under capitalism
moves.
6. Conclusion and prospects
This paper has attempted to explore the relationship between a
Marxist and a CL approach to the study of ideology. While the
two approaches differ, arguably irreconcilably, on key philosophical
and theoretical issues having to do with the source and role of
ideas within the social process, there is, possibly, scope for
meaningful dialogue on the analysis of the `concept-material'
from which theories and conceptual models (ICMs) are constructed.
As illustration, the conceptual framework of Baudrillard's `political
economy of the sign' has been analysed in relation to that of
Marx's economic theory. The Baudrillard model relates to the Marxist
ICM through the appropriation of key elements of the terminology
of the latter but the `concept-material' of the Marxian theoretical
system is altered by the application of metaphorical and metonymic
processes to key concepts. This results in a model of a general
domain of semiosis or ideology in which the distinction between
economic and ideological production is erased and which is, therefore,
conceptually incompatible with the source ICM and with the philosophically
materialist world view within which the latter is developed. Thus,
within the limits discussed, the concepts and methods of CL, despite
differences in philosophical and theoretical orientation, can
provide useful, auxiliary conceptual tools for ideological analysis
and critique.
According to the argument presented here, the semantic `stretching'
of the Marxist concepts takes them beyond their legitimate scientific
limits. This raises important issues to do with the relationship
between the conceptual and the semantic, between cognition (in
the materialist philosophical sense) and such processes as metaphor,
metonymy etc. Clearly, in some cases metaphor may help us to achieve
crucial new insights into a phenomenon and in others it may undermine
the theoretical and scientific integrity of a conceptual system.
We have already noted the CL view that the identification of metaphors
within conceptual systems does not by itself constitute a critique
of those systems. Indeed, it would appear valid to emphasise a
more general principle: the existence of `metaphorical' concepts
within a theory tells us nothing about the adequacy of that theory.
The role of metaphor in theory construction or in cognition more
generally depends on its `aptness', which in turn depends on the
explanatory power (the truth) of the entire conceptual system
within which it functions. Where Marxism and CL obviously differ
in principle is in their understanding of the source and process
of development of such systems. On the Marxist view, these systems
develop not from bodily experience understood naturalistically,
but from social practice - the specifically human mode of life
activity based on social production.
References
Abbreviations
Selected Works: K Marx & F Engels, Selected Works,
Vol 1, Moscow: Progress, 1969
Selected Works One: K Marx & F Engels, Selected
Works in three volumes, Volume One, Moscow: Progress, 1969
Capital: K Marx, Capital Volume 1, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1976
Grundrisse: K Marx, Grundrisse, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1973
Letters: K Marx & F Engels, Letters on `Capital',
London: New Park, 1983
Baudrillard, J (1981) For a Critique of the Political Economy
of the Sign, Telos Press
Bhaskar, R (1979) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical
Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, Brighton: Harvester
Bohm, D (1957) Causality and Chance in Modern Physics,
London: Routledge
Farman, I P (1994) Imagination in the structure of cognition
[in Russian], Moscow: IFRAN
Fairclough, N (1992) Discourse and Social Change, Polity
Press
Fairclough, N (1997) `Discourse across disciplines: discourse
analysis in researching social change', AILA Review, 12:
`Applied Linguistics Across Disciplines', 3-17
Geras, N (1990) `Essence and Appearance: Aspects of Fetishism
in Marx's Capital', in B Jessop & C Malcolm-Brown (eds)
Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments,
London: Routledge
Harr_, R (1986) Varieties of Realism: A Rationale for the Natural
Sciences, Oxford: Blackwell
Harr_, R (1961) Theories and Things, London: Sheed &
Ward
Ilyenkov, E V (1977) `On the concept of the "idealä',
in Problems of Dialectical Materialism, Progress
Ilyenkov, E V (1982) The Dialectics of the Abstract and the
Concrete in Marx's `Capital', Moscow: Progress
Ilyenkov, E V (1997) The Dialectics of the Abstract and the
Concrete in Scientific-theoretical Thinking [in Russian],
Moscow: Rosspen
Jones, P E (1991) Marxism, Materialism and Language Structure:
Basic Principles, Sheffield: Pavic
Jones, P E (1998) `Critical Discourse Analysis as Social Theory',
in Future Perfect?, Proceedings of the Association of Media,
Communications, and Cultural Studies Conference, Sheffield 1997,
Sheffield Hallam University
Lektorsky, V A (1984) Subject, Object, Cognition, Moscow:
Progress
Lakoff, G (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, University
of Chicago Press
Lakoff, G & Johnson, M (1980) Metaphors We Live By,
University of Chicago Press
Lakoff, G & Johnson, M (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh:
The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New
York: Basic Books
Johnson, M (1987) The Body in the Mind, University of Chicago
Press
MÿhlhSusler, P (1995) `Metaphors others live by', Language
and Communication, 15 (3): 281-288
1
Cf Lektorsky's (1984: 94) critique of Husserlian philosophy: `The
attempt to place the subject in the "centreä of the
cosmos and to deduce the objectiveness of the world from the characteristics
of the individual subject was not a success, for the subject proves
to be included in a certain system of objective dependencies from
the very outset'.
2
Cf Bohm (1957: 31-32): `To pursue our analogy further, we may
say that with regard to the totality of natural laws we never
have enough views and cross-sections to give us a complete understanding
of this totality. But as science progresses, and new theories
are developed, we obtain more and more views from different sides,
views that are more comprehensive, views that are more detailed,
etc. Each particular theory or explanation of a given set of phenomena
will then have a limited domain of validity and will be adequate
only in a limited context and under limited conditions. This means
that any theory extrapolated to an arbitrary context and to arbitrary
conditions will (like the partial views of our object) lead to
erroneous predictions. The finding of such errors is one of
the most important means of making progress in science. A
new theory, to which the discovery of such errors will eventually
give rise, does not, however, invalidate the older theories. Rather,
by permitting the treatment of a broader domain of phenomena,
it corrects the older theories in the domain in which they are
inadequate and, in so doing, it helps define the conditions under
which they are valid (e.g. as the theory of relativity corrected
Newton's laws of motion, and thus helped to define the conditions
of validity of Newton's laws as those in which the velocity is
small compared with that of light). Thus, we do not expect that
any causal relationships will represent absolute truths;
for to do this, they would have to apply without approximation
and unconditionally.'
3
`In fact one finds in science a characteristic pattern of description,
explanation and redescription of the phenomena identified at any
one level of reality. But only a concept of ontological depth
(depending upon the concept of real strata apart from our knowledge
of strata) enables us to reconcile the twin aspects of scientific
development, viz. growth and change....Moreover, only the concept
of ontological depth can reveal the actual historical stratification
of the sciences as anything other than an accident. For this can
now be seen as grounded in the multi-tiered stratification of
reality, and the consequent logic - of discovery - that
stratification imposes on science' (Bhaskar, op.cit: 16).
4
`First of all, our basic starting-point in studying the laws of
nature was to consider the processes by which any one thing comes
from other things in the past and helps to give rise to still
other things in the future. Now this process cannot be studies
in its totality which is inexhaustible, both in its quantitative
aspects and in the complexity of its details. However, it is a
fact, verified by human experience transmitted through our general
culture since even before the beginnings of civilization, as well
as by the experience of many generations of scientists, that parts
of the processes described above can be studied approximately,
under specified conditions, and in limited contexts. This is possible
because there is an objective but approximate autonomy in the
behaviour of these various parts of the process relative to any
particular context (Bohm, op.cit: 29).
5
Compare Geras (op.cit: 217) `If then the social agents experience
capitalist society as something other than it really is, this
is fundamentally because capitalist society presents itself
as something other than it really is'.
6
The following comment by Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 89) appears
unexceptional from a materialist standpoint: `Many scientific
results are stable...This is also true of the science of the mind.
We are not likely to discover that there are no neurons or neurotransmitters...We
maintain that they deserve to be called "resultsä because
of all the converging evidence supporting them. The existence
of so many forms of convergent evidence demonstrates that what
we take as specific results are not merely the consequences of
assumptions underlying a particular method of enquiry.'
7
Thus the following comment by Lakoff and Johnson (op.cit: 104)on
the use of metaphor within `cognitive science' appears quite unproblematic
from a materialist point of view: `When we speak of "neural
circuitryä, we are, of course, using an important metaphor
to conceptualize neural structure in electronic terms. The circuitry
metaphor is used by the neuroscience community at large and is
taken as providing crucially important insights into the behaviour
of the brain. "Truthsä about the neural level are commonly
stated in terms of this metaphor. We mention this because the
neural level is seen quite properly as a "physicalä
level, and yet much of what we take as true about it is stated
in terms of the metaphor of neural circuitry, which abstracts
away from ion channels and glial cells'.
8
`One can always come to an arrangement or agreement over the sense
or meaning of a term; but things stand quite differently in relation
to the content of a concept. Although the content of a concept
is directly disclosed as the `meaning of a term', these are definitely
not one and the same thing' (Ilyenkov, 1997: 404).
9
Marx specifically comments on the relation between commodities
and symbols in the following passage (amongst others): `In this
sense every commodity is a symbol, since, as value, it is only
the material shell of the human labour expended on it. But if
it is declared that the social characteristics assumed by material
objects, or the material characteristics assumed by the social
determinations of labour on the basis of a definite mode of production,
are mere symbols, then it is also declared, at the same time,
that these characteristics are the arbitrary product of human
reflection' (Capital: 186-187).