Table Of ContentThe Politics of English
The Politics of English
A Marxist View of Language
Marnie Holborow
SAGE Publications
London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi
© Marnie Holborow 1999
First published 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
Jt
6 Bonhill Street
London EC2A 4PU
SAGE Publications Inc
2455 Teller Road
Thousand Oaks, California 91320
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd
32, M-Block Market
Greater Kailash - I
New Delhi 110 048
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0 7619 6017 1
ISBN 0 7619 6018 X (pbk)
Library of Congress catalog record available
Typeset by Mayhew Typesetting, Rhayader, Powys
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press, Gateshea
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
2 In the Beginning was Society: Marx, Volosinov and
Vygotsky on Language 13
3 Money Talks: The Politics of World English 53
4 Women, Language and the Limits of Feminism 97
5 The Politics of Standard English 149
6 Conclusion 189
Bibliography 197
Index 213
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those in the School of Applied Languages
and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University for making my
sabbatical leave possible, and particularly Dermot McMahon,
Veronica Crosbie and Maurice Scully who covered my teaching
while I was away. I am also very grateful to Deirdre Beecher in the
Library for her unstinting help with Inter-Library Loans.
I am grateful to Julia Hall and Kate Scott at Sage Publications for
their valuable assistance during the process of getting the book to
print and to Norman Fairclough for his generous encouragement.
I am indebted to many socialists, in Britain and in Ireland, who,
over the years, have set me thinking in this direction, and
particularly to Sheila McGregor for a talk that she gave at Marxism
97 in London on Language and Consciousness, to John Molyneux
for his invaluable article on the political correctness debate and to
Chris Harman and Alex Callinicos whose writings on the origins of
human society and the cul-de-sac of postmodernism provided the
starting point for this book. Particular thanks also go to Jeannie
Robinson for her detailed (and very cheering) reading of the draft
and to James Eaden for his suggestions. Thanks, too, to Paul
Holborow and Jan Nielsen for providing me with some of the
political landmarks that started me off on this route. I'd also like to
thank my father and mother, John and Cicely Holborow, who have
always encouraged me, even from afar.
Finally, most of all, I would like to thank Kate Allen for her
incredible and much appreciated patience with me and Kieran
Allen for his valuable criticisms of the drafts, and a lot of other
things besides.
1 Introduction
They declare they are only fighting against 'phrases'.
They forget, however that they are in no way combating
the real world when they are merely combating the
phrases of this world.
Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness
by life. (Karl Marx, The German Ideology)
There is little disagreement that language and politics are con-
nected. Traditionalists may claim that language itself stands free-
floating above politics but they consider attitudes to language as
intensely political. These they see as dominated by a radical leftist
current that has infected teachers, social workers and, worse still,
university professors. At the other end, postmodernists, and
others, see language as the nucleus of political life, steeped in
power and defining people's role in the world. Why has language
come to be so politically contentious? In what sense can one speak
of language being political? Why is English at the centre of the
political controversy? Does language determine people's ideas of
the world? How much can language shift political realities? These
are some of the questions that are the concern of this book.
The politics of English runs along many axes. At one level, the
sheer extent of the use of English around the world brings into
sharp linguistic focus the effects of globalization. It is by no means
an exaggeration to say that the language of capitalism at the turn of
the twenty-first century is English. Not surprisingly therefore,
reactions to English are shaped accordingly. English is either the
modernizing panacea or the ruthless oppressor, depending on
your place in the world.
At another level, because of its dominance and its social spread,
English has also been the language that has most eclectically
absorbed political changes and tensions. So it was with the
'politically correct' controversy at its height in the early 1990s with
