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Linguistics as an Indiscipline: Deleuze and Guattari's PragmaticsAuthor(s): Therese GrishamSource: SubStance, Vol. 20, No. 3, Issue 66: Special Issue: Deleuze & Guattari (1991), pp. 36-54Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685178

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Linguistics as an Indiscipline:

Deleuze and Guattari'sPragmatics

ThereseGrisham

Linguisticsngeneral s still in a kindof majormode, till hasa

sortof diatonic caleand a strange aste or dominants, onstants,and

universals.

-"Postulates of Linguistics,"A Thousand lateaus

I don'tbelieve hatwehavemuchcompetencen linguistics.But

competencetself s a rather bstruselinguisticnotion.

- "Entretien ur MillePlateaux"

GILLESDELEUZE ND FELIXGUATTARI'Slateau 4, "November 20,1923-Postulates of Linguistics"appears to be continuous with the historyof linguistics, through its citations of major figures in the field and its use

of established terms, but it is already escaping the field at the very pointsat which it uses this terminology or cites important linguists. It therefore

cannot be evaluated using the objects, issues, and methods proper to the

discipline. And, while certainly a political critique of some of linguistics'most treasured principles (thatlanguage is communicational, forexample),

it goes far beyond critique. Ultimately, it concentrates on the "indis-

ciplines" at work in linguistics, not only in terms of "minor" uses of lan-

guage, but within the history of the field itself. To understand how

Deleuze and Guattari approach twentieth-century linguistics, in order to

move beyond it, I would like to begin with an overview of the field, before

developing pragmatics in relation to Deleuze and Guattari'sreworking of

major figures in linguistics.

The State of Linguistics

Linguistics participates in established orders of discourse-whether

involving the philosophy of language or the philosophy of mind-which

are informed by the will to knowledge or truth. It does so by establishing a

constant, ideal truth of language (langueor competence) with a principle of

SubStance#66, 19916



Linguistics 37

rationality as the mode proper to the investigation of its objects, to

paraphrase Foucault. In so doing, linguistics ignores the specific reality of

language. Language only appears in it as a "certaininterjection between

speaking and thinking."' The sign is that interjection,for example.Since Saussure, this designation of language has involved a version of

the "scientific method" as applied in the human sciences. According to

Saussure, in order for linguistics to establish itself as a science, it must first

find a viewpoint on language from which a "natural order" arises, so that

language can be classified among the "categoriesof human facts" (9). This

dependson

findinga fundamental

unityor

essence of language. But sig-nificantly, Saussure distinguished linguistics from other sciences on the

basis that the object in other sciences "antedates the viewpoint," while for

the linguist, "the viewpoint antedates the object" (9). (So much for a

natural order). While this might be an arguable characterization of other

sciences (specifically the social sciences), positing this object and its essen-

tial unity (the system of langue)made Saussure's theory "scientific" and

therefore "superior"to other viewpoints, "taking precedence over them"

(8). This underlying system (which Saussure insisted was not an abstrac-tion, but a psychological and physiological reality) allowed for the rational

procedures and methods of linguistic research, including ordering func-

tions. The linguist collects and interprets data, separating what is essential

from what is accidental or extrinsic to language and determining the forces

permanently and universally at work on language. In short, Saussure gaveus a methodology and a range of objects which helped establish linguisticsas a modern discipline.

Saussure's work was carried on in Europe by Jakobson, who estab-

lished the distinctive-feature system of phonemes, and proposed that

diachronic linguistics should study language as a system of synchroniccuts. It was altered and modified by Martinet, Benveniste, and Hjelmslev,

among others. In the United States, Saussure's system has influenced

Chomsky's work. But, while Saussure still wanted to define langueas the

"whole set of linguistic habitswhich allow an individual to understand and

be understood, for which a community of speakers is necessary" (87, italicsmine), Chomsky makes a stronger claim for langue,or what he calls com-

petence. Competence, in Chomsky's model of language, is the perfect

knowledge an "ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous

speech-community" has of his or her native language (ATS3). Competencedescribes the innate cognitive capacity shared by human beings that allows

them to understand their native language and be understood in it. What

Chomsky adds to Saussure's picture, in addition to a transformational

SubStance#66, 1991

Linguistics 37



38 ThereseGrisham

grammar that reflects competence (which in turn reflects cognition), is that

syntax, rather than the sound-image or phoneme is the "true"object of

linguistics. Linguistics should give us a picture of the "mental reality"

underlying language (16), which will then give us insight into the "human

essence"-into what distinguishes us from other life-forms. (RR 92)

The objective claims that Chomskyan linguistics made for itself as a

science are descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The former asserts that

a given grammar must accurately describe its object, the linguistic com-

petence of a native speaker, corresponding to observational data. There can

be many descriptively adequate grammarsof a language.The latter makes

a much stronger claim, implying that theoreticalassertions have an empiri-

cally determinable truth-value. A given grammaris selected over others by

association with a theory that " ... constitutes an explanatory hypothesis

about the form of language as such" (ATS 27). This ultimately means that

explanatory adequacy must appeal to linguistic universals-what minimal

rules operate in all languages, and the ways childrenuniversally learn their

native languages (called a language-acquisition device). According to this

model, children should acquire their native language according to increas-

ingly complex transformationalrules that unfold as the child learns. How-

ever, as long ago as the early 1970s it was demonstrated that this notion

contained a fundamental circularity, namely that the child, in order to

determine the correctgrammarof his or her language, has already to know

that grammar. In addition, according to both "nativist" and "empiricist"

accounts, children learn language by applying certain heuristics to the

languagein their environment in order to determine the correctness of

their sentence productions.Since a transformational grammar cannot meet the criteria of ex-

planatory adequacy, it is left with the possibility of being descriptively

adequate. But, a generative grammaris only one "description"of language

among many generative and other grammars. Competence is a difficult

thing to prove, since, as William Labov observed in SociolinguisticPatterns,

"no one is aware of this competence, and there are no intuitive judgments

accessible to reveal it to us" (226). The linguist of the Chomskyan variety,supplying the necessary corrections to speakers' intuitions, curiously ends

up, by his very method, making the data conform to his model ratherthan

changing the model on the basis of the data.

Thus we can glimpse the inherent circularity in this version of the

"scientific"model of language. At the heartof Chomsky's quest for insight

into the "humanessence" lies this circularity,the a prioriassumption of the

SubStance #66, 1991

ThereseGrisham8



Linguistics 39

thing whose existence one wants to prove, a prior positing of the nature of

the thing whose nature one wants to reveal.

Yet, there remains a mania for models and systems at work in the

field. Linguists do not take seriously what Deleuze and Guattaripoint out

in "Postulates of Linguistics"-that "every language is an essentially

heterogeneous reality . .." (ATP, 93). Linguists treat this as a fact without

theoretical value. Even Saussure acknowledged that langage,the "whole"

of language, is a "heterogeneous mass of speech facts"(14).In addition, the

search for essences, buttressed by the claims of science, has a politicaldimension that remains

unexamined,even

by sociolinguists and feministlinguists.

Saussure's and Chomsky's models have been subject to politically-based criticisms, the most cogent of which came from Volosinov and

Labov. Both turn away from langueor competence s the objectof linguistic

study, and concern themselves with speech or utterance. With their dis-

courses, the possibility opened up for the objects and methods of linguis-tics to shift. But, as we will see, the shift itself is not important to Deleuze

and Guattari, since it only recapitulates the strictures and productions ofthe discipline. Deleuze and Guattari find instead those lines that carryone

away in the very discourses of those who have been used to constitute the

reterritorialized field itself. These lines, in the discourses of Labov and

Volosinov, lead away from the established domain of linguistics, in partby

de-systematizing it, and toward a much more radical connection of lan-

guage to its political and social "outside," one that offers suggestive pos-sibilities for transforming visions and approaches to language and politics.

Finding these lines is one of Deleuze and Guattari's strategies; it is the

practice of deterritorializing concepts.In Marxism and the Philosophyof Language,Volosinov calls langue a

system of "normatively identical forms" that standardizes each factually

specific and unique utterance (65). His terminology directly comments on

Saussure's statement that "langue s the norm for all other manifestations of

speech" (9), and refers to Saussure's notion of the underlying constants

(sound-images, phonemes) of individual utterances. Saussure's formula-tion is a consequence of the ideology of "abstractobjectivism," that is, a

preoccupation with the mathematical relation of sign to sign, or the inner

logic of a sign system, which is part of a rationalist project.This conception

privileges individual consciousness, even though abstract objectivists

"constantly stress . . . that the system of language is an objective fact

external to and independent of any individual consciousness" (65).

Saussure's "social fact"(13) is nothing but masked individualism:

SubStance#66, 1991

Linguistics 39



40 ThereseGrisham

Actually, representedas a systemof self-identicalsynchronically]m-mutablenorms, t can be perceived n this way only by the individual

consciousness is-l-visthe language ystem,the systemof normsncon-

testable or that consciousness.. we would discoverno inertsystemofself-identical orms. nstead,we would indourselveswitnessinghecease-lessgenerationflanguagenorms 65-6).

Volosinov's de-privileging of the individual consciousness that per-

ceives langueas constant and immutable also involves, then, destroying the

notion of synchrony:

... apart romhow... [langue]ppearsoanygiven ndividual tany givenmoment n time, anguagepresents pictureof a ceaseless lowof becom-ing .... [There]s no realmoment n time whena synchronicystemof

language ouldbe constructed.66)

A synchronic system acts merely as a conventional scale on which to

register the deviations occurring at every real instant in time (66).

Because Saussure asserts the unmediated reality and objectivity of

language as a system of normatively identical forms, the system of langue

can be seen as theproduct

of a deliberationonlanguage

that is notactuallycarried out by "the consciousness of the native speaker himself and by no

means carried out for the immediate purposes of speaking" (67). Rather,

the speaker is concerned with the particular, concrete utterance he is

making and so is concerned only with that aspect of linguistic form which

can figure in the given, concrete context and fits the conditions of the

situation. The speaker is not interested in the constants of the form but in

the form's flexibility and adaptability. So, too, the hearer is not concerned

with recognizing the form used but of understanding it in a particularcontext, its meaning in an utterance, amounting to recognizing its novelty,

not its identity (68). This shifts the ground from what operates in hidden

fashion in the unconscious to what the speaker-hearer's "concerns"are in

the speaking circuit. It should be noted that "concerns"for Volosinov have

little to do with speakers' and hearers' rational choices, but with the ways

in which we are already socially organized to speak and hear. For

Volosinov, there are as many meanings of an utterance as there are con-

texts (language is not a rigid signifying system), and a verbal sign is a

speech act that includes, inseparably, the active participation of speaker

and hearer. "We do not say and hear words,we say and hear what is true

or false, good or bad, important or unimportant" (70). Saussure's sign,

unlike Volosinov's is a "signal ... a fixed technical means for indicating

this or that object or ... action" (68), which has been made into the key to

SubStance#66, 1991

40 Therese Grisham



Linguistics 41

understanding language. This conception is based on the way languagesare taught in schools, rather than on the living characterof the language.

Volosinov proposes to develop a theory of utterance which will take

into account the living, changing, contextual nature of language, positing a

dialogic model of utterance involving syntactical forms that approach ac-

tual discourses of speakers and hearers. The dialogic model is based on

reported speech, for dialogue involves citation or paraphraseof the other's

or others' utterances in order for a message to be transmitted. Finally,Volosinov examines indirect discourse in literature and its variations

(directand

quasi-direct discourse), which reflect and delimit the functionof reporting and reported speech in the dialogic model. But, while

Volosinov's critique of Saussure is directed at two fundamental assump-tions of capitalist ideology-the bias against the collective and for the

individual (langue) and the bias against history (synchrony)-Volosinovdoes not really elaborate a theory of the ways in which human beings are

organized in society through language and how language is open to the

social in its "living" character.

Labov's critique of Chomsky is directed at the "SaussureanParadox"he sees operating in the field of linguistics from Saussure to Chomsky: "the

social aspect of language [langue,competence], is studied by observing anyone individual but the individual aspect [parole,utterance] only by observ-

ing language in its social context"(Sociolinguistic atterns,186).Labov "cor-

rects" this by showing, in multiple studies using a range of methods, how

the study of social interactions between actual speakers in a language

community (Black English, for example), leads to characterizations and

theories of language that undermine Saussurean and Chomskyandivisions. For example, in Black English Vernacular, the pattern of con-

sonant cluster simplification at the ends of words (where bold becomes

bol')is not just a matter of deleting the full consonant cluster present in the

underlying form of Standard English, which transformational grammar

(here, generative phonology) would assert by a variable rule when the

following word begins with a consonant rather than a vowel, relegating

Black English to a deviation from the standard rule. Rather, in everyspeaker in every group Labovstudied, the second consonant is only absent

moreoftenwhen the following word begins with a consonant rather than a

vowel. Aside from indicating that BlackEnglish is not merely a deviation

from Standard English, it also indicates that generative rules cannot applyacross the board in any systematic fashion, and that language varies con-

tinuously. It varies over time as well. This gives rise to Labov's assertion

that "social pressures are continually operating upon language [to change

SubStance#66, 1991

Linguistics 41



42 Therese Grisham

it], not from some remote point in the past, but as an immanent social force

acting in the living present" (3). Synchrony becomes a useless category,

linguistic change is no longer local and infrequent, nor individual and

willful (as Saussure had asserted), and the assumptions of transformational

linguistics are undermined-a non-standard language does not operate

according to rules which rely on the rules of the standard language, and

underlying forms are not systematic.Labov examines Chomsky's methodology through field study in ac-

tual communities, revealing its bias. Not only one or two individuals need

be studied in order to collect theappropriate

data on alanguage,

and

speakers do not have intuitions about their native language that can be

discovered so as to characterize their competence by a generative gram-mar. He discovers that there is no homogeneous language community in

which everyone speaks alike, and that speakers cannot make clear judg-ments about which sentences are grammatical or which sentences are re-

lated (that is, "mean" the same), which are necessary principles for the

methods used to discover speakers' so-called intuitions. But, in asserting

the study of speech over competence, Labov concludes only that whilecertain social pressures (status, for example) affect linguistic change, "it is

important not to overestimate the amount of contact or overlap between

social values and the structure of language. Linguistic and social structure

are by no means coextensive" (251).Rather,

generative rammar as madegreatprogressn workingouttheinvariantrelationswithin . . [thesynchronic spect]of languagestructure, ven

though t wholly neglects he socialcontextof language.Butnow it seems

clear hatonecannotmakeanymajor dvance owardsunderstandinghemechanism f linguistic hangewithout erious tudyof thesocialfactorswhichmotivateinguistic volution.252)

In short, Labov's critique of Chomskyan and Saussurean linguistics is

"ideological," in the sense that it challenges the rationalist consciousness

that thinks of systems as constants and that valorizes an ideal individual.

But it does not fundamentally question the notion of deep structure, the

"mentalreality" hidden from our view, the "essence"of language. Instead,it moves wholly within the dictates of the discipline, operating in that area

of linguistics that has been subordinated (speech) to what has been

dominant (competence), altering the conception of the nature of deep

structure,but not questioning its existence.

Volosinov and Labov challenged and undermined the constants of

linguistics-langue, synchrony, the system of deep structure and transfor-

mational rules. From here, there is only one move left to make, Deleuze

SubStance#66, 1991

42 ThereseGrisham



Linguistics 43

and Guattariconclude, "... the external pragmatics of nonlinguistic factors

must be taken into consideration" as immanent to a study of language(ATP 91). In addition, these factors can no longer be subordinated to an

inquiry into the nature of language with all of linguistics' principles intact,

but need to be considered as part of a project to analyze how language is

inseparably permeated by political and social fields. And, in fact, "linguis-tics itself is inseparable from an internal pragmatics involving its own

factors" (91). In other words, how linguistics analyzes language should be

analyzed politically.

The constants of language do not indicate permanence as much asthey function as centers, in which the search for essences is implicated. As

Deleuze and Guattari say, the

... scientificmodeltaking anguageas an objectof studyis one with the

politicalmodel by which languageis homogenized, entralized,tand-ardized,becominga languageof power,a majoror dominant anguage.(ATP 101)

For example, Black English, while thought of by Chomskyan linguists in

terms of its own constants and unities, is still registered as a deviation from

Standard English, precisely because a Standard English has been desig-nated in the first place. While this may seem a necessary move for a social

science to make, since it guarantees the constancy of the forms under studyand is one condition for considering BlackEnglish as a unity, it cannot be

separated from the political and social processes that treat BlackEnglish as

part of a sub-standard. The operations to unify, createconstants, and essen-

tialize necessarily work to standardize. While linguistics is not the onlydiscipline in which the claim to be scientific has been used to "secure the

requirements of another order" (101), it is an example of how thought is

implicated in these state functions.

Components of Passage: Pragmatics

If theobjections leveled hat... [pragmatic]eaturespertain opolitics and not to linguistics, it must be observedhow thoroughlypoliticsworkslanguage romwithin,causingnotonlythevocabulary ut

also the structureand all of thephrasal lements o varyas the order-

wordschange.A typeofstatement an beevaluated nlyas afunctionofits pragmaticmplications,n otherwords,its relation o the implicit

presuppositions,mmanentacts, or incorporeal ransformationst ex-

pressesandwhich ntroduce ewconfigurationsfbodies.

-"Postulates ofLinguistics"ATP 3)

SubStance#66, 1991

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44 ThereseGrisham

Wemake ut... a certainnumberofthemes hatappearo us to

benecessaryorouraccount:1) thestatuteoforder-wordsn language;

2) theimportancefindirectdiscourseand hedenunciationf metaphoras a tiresomeproceedingwithoutreal importance);) the critiqueof

linguisticconstantsas well as variables,or thebenefitofzonesofcon-

tinuousvariation.

- "Entretien ur MillePlateaux"

Inasmuch as Deleuze and Guattari'stheory of language does not positan ideal "truth"of language, with rationality as its principle of behavior,

and inasmuch as it takes thevery

historicalspecificity

of utterances, both

spoken and written, as its "object"of study, this theory is not a stand-

ardizing, centralizing model of language. Deleuze and Guattari do not ask

"Whatis language?" but rather,"inwhat cases, where and when, how ..."

does language function? (Entretien). f they reinvent terminology to define

language in terms of statements, implicit presuppositions, incorporeal

transformations, and order-words, it is to connect them to social processes(collective assemblages of enunciation and machinic assemblages of

bodies) with their respective aspect of de- and reterritorialization,and tothe agencies (abstractmachines) that interpretand select them.2

The reader of "Postulates of Linguistics" encounters several difficul-

ties. Deleuze and Guattari's terminology is borrowed from diverse lin-

guists and philosophers, but is transformedso that it hardly resembles the

original definitions. Binary oppositions turn out to be produced by non-bi-

nary sociopolitical processes; dualisms collapse; concepts vanish when

they are no longer useful, appearing again in altered form somewhere else.

Concepts are specific rather than generalizable, in the sense that the con-

ceptual tool or tools must be suited to the specificity of what is being

analyzed. In other words, to understand Deleuze and Guattari's designa-tion of minor literature as proceeding by "dryness and sobriety" and as

"non-metaphorical"is to miss the point, is to use their work as a model to

be applied rather than a conceptual tool to be used. While Kafkaopposes

metaphor (a form that pretends to illuminate essence) with metamorphosis

(a circuit of flows and breaks that eludes all forms), Virginia Woolf'smetaphors increase the impermeability of things, thereby opposingdominant conceptions of metaphor. The point is to find ways to deter-

ritorialize state functions. This is why "minor" literature, like "nomad

thought," like "pragmatics," hould never be used as a model or methodol-

ogy.

"Pragmatics"has historically designated all that is outside linguistic

study. Using a reterritorialized term in a subversive mode is typical of

SubStance #66, 1991

44 Therese Grisham



Linguistics 45

Deleuze and Guattari, for they insist that pragmatics is immanent to a

consideration of language. The meaning of "pragmatic" ies in its position

in a power relation, and not in representationor signification. To introduce

a pragmatics into language is to analyze language politically, which, ac-

cording to Deleuze and Guattari, involves evaluating the "internal vari-

ables of enunciation in relation to the aggregate of the circumstances"(ATP

83). This statement needs unravelling.

Language is neither communicational nor informational. On the one

hand, communication presupposes subjectivities prior to it, when it is lan-

guage redefined in terms of sociopolitical fields that subjectifies; on theother, language transmits messages containing orders (clearto anyone who

has been in grade school), and while information is necessary for the

transmission of an order, it is only the minimum necessary for it. Thejudgesentences the accused. "Isentence you to .. ." For Deleuze and Guattari,

this is a speech act;as a performative statement, it accomplishes the act by

speaking. But it does not do so because it refersto other statements or

external acts; it does so because it is socially and politically empowered y

them. It is empowered by what Oswald Ducrot has called "implicit ornondiscursive presuppositions," in this case, those relating to a whole

juridical apparatus that distributes subjectifications, meeting in the figureof the judge. The illocutionary (what one does in speaking; the acts ac-

complished in speech or writing), which J. L. Austin classified separatelyfrom the performative, constitutes implicit presuppositions for Deleuze

and Guattari. The performative, then, is a subset of the illocutionary, and

the illocutionary derives its power from its connection to collective as-

semblages of enunciation, in this case a whole aggregate of juridical texts,

acts, and speech acts-the law.

"I sentence you to. .. ." is a statement. Statements stand in direct

strategic opposition to the ideal abstractions of linguistics-they are actual

and material.Statements contain incorporeal transformations-in this case,

the transformationof the accused into a convict. Nothing has happened, no

one has moved, but the event of speech has been decisive. The body of the

accused is now the body of the convict, but this is by virtue of attribution-of sociopolitical configurations that make it so. The incorporeal transfor-

mation has been attributed to a social body (for an accused is a social body

just as is a biological body or the body of a convict), altering it and the

other bodies it will affect, like the body of the prison. The commission of

the crime of which the convict was accused belongs to this order (althoughto call it the "commission of a crime" is already also of the order of collec-

tive assemblages of enunciation)-the order of bodies intermingling and

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46 Therese Grisham

reacting to each other, their affects and passions, or what Deleuze and

Guattari call a "machinicassemblage of bodies."

The incorporeal transformation has at its heart the order-word, the

word that connects speech and acts by being redundant with them. The

order-word is the word or phrase that arrangessocial bodies and demands

obedience. It is the fundamental unit of the statement, connecting it to

implicit presuppositions, collective assemblages of enunciation, and

machinic assemblages of bodies. "I"is an order-word: it imposes a dis-

cipline, and a different discipline in each position and in each configurationin which it is uttered. The

conceptof the order-word ruins the old struc-

turalist dualism of the subject of the statement and the subject of the

enunciation, since the order-word simultaneously demands subjectifica-tion and accomplishes it, through incorporeal transformation.Each time I

say "I," t does not "mean" the same thing as the time before or the time to

come-it is in a different configuration of power relations, a different en-

counter of forces. Can the word "I,"then, whenever it is uttered, be said to

be the same word, even grammatically or phonologically? Politics works

language thoroughly from within.But the order-word has two modes-limitative and expansive.3As the

"expressed" of the statement, the order-word either orders death (capturein forms), or flight. In other words, it does not just reterritorialize,but can

also give a message to flee. An example from one of Deleuze and Guattari's

favorite writers, Kafka, in "A Report to An Academy," can serve to il-

lustrate this. Metaphors,as statements, contain order-words which give the

order to standardize, one type of incorporeal transformation.In "A Reportto An Academy," the men on board the ship where the ape has been

confined view the animal metaphorically:he has ape essence, bringing into

play a whole range of prior orders, texts, and speech acts (from religion,

science, colonization, etc.), and determining their treatment of the ape; as

subhuman, it can be caged, tortured,put on display. Since his confinement,

however, the "ape"has begun to metamorphose-i.e., to undergo a series

of immanent change and variation. Kafka eludes the question of essence by

indicating that freedom of movement is one of the environmental condi-tions of ape life, but not of ape essence. The ape's desperate search for

freedom of movement results in his metamorphosis:he is no longer an ape

and certainly not a man, but a series of connections and breaksbetween the

two. He seeks in the sailors' behaviors (since they are free to walk around

on board ship) any tool that might gain his release. Speech is only one of

many behaviors he imitates to this end-smoking, spitting, and drinking

alcohol are the others. When he finally says "hello,"the sailors believe this

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46 ThereseGrisham



Linguistics 47

indicates a human essence, and they release him. "Hello" has functioned

for the "ape" as a pass-word-the other mode of the order-word. Saying

"hello" was at first only an imitation of a human behavior, but it becomes

a pass-word to further metamorphoses.The standardizing hierarchy implicit in the sailors' "detection"of the

ape's humanness (speech is both above other human behaviors and defines

humans as above animals) is implied, Kafka tells us, in notions of essence.

Because in fact, the "ape"cannot be understood metaphorically; it must be

understood as a metamorphosis, surpassing the limits of metaphor. The

"ape"is not a form (that is, man or ape), but rathersignals the break-up offorms. This is why no proper or figurative sense can be assigned to it-it

defies representation. Resemblance, then, is only an effect of "knowing" or

"seeing" through metaphor; at its heart, the metamorphosis is released

from resemblance to either man or ape.Deleuze and Guattari write that the order-word as pass-word pushes

language to its limits while bodies are in metamorphosis:

Therearepass-words

beneathorder-words.Words hatpass,

wordsthatarecomponents fpassage.... Asingle hingor wordundoubtedly as thistwofoldnature:t is necessaryo extract ne fromtheother-to transformthecompositions f order ntocomponentsfpassage. ATP110)

Within all assemblages, there is always the possibility of flight, or deter-

ritorialization. In fact, it is the continual ordering of flight, its reter-

ritorialization, that makes up power relations.

If we look at the role indirect discourse plays in language, the ongoing

nature of deterritorialization is easy to see. Indirect discourse for Deleuzeand Guattari is the "translativemovement proper to language" (ATP 77).

("Proper"here must be understood in its subversive, or minor, mode, for it

is anything but proper to the discipline of linguistics and its role in subjec-

tification proceedings.)In taking up this concept, Deleuze and Guattaritake up Volosinov, not

where he left off, but prior to his retreat into classifying literary texts.

Indirect discourse becomes the "firstdetermination of language" (ATP 76),

in place of communication or information. Accordingly, if language

... alwaysseemstopresupposetself, f we cannot ssign tanon-linguisticpointof departure,t is because anguagedoesnotoperatebetween ome-

thingseen (orfelt)and something aid,butalwaysgoes fromsayingto

saying. ATP76)

For Volosinov, the embedding of messages in indirect discourse

defined dialogue, involving citation and paraphraseof what one has heard,

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48 ThereseGrisham

bounded by an authorial context. For Deleuze and Guattari, indirect dis-

course is more: it is the vast echo of other sayings, all the "voices in a voice,

murmurings, speaking in tongues" (ATP 77). Through the concept of in-

direct discourse, the untotalizable nature and heterogeneity of languagebecomes theoretical rather than simply factual. Like the order-word, it also

has two modes. In its limitative mode, it provides a matrix for the transmis-

sion of order-words, since "an order always and already concerns priororders" (ATP 75). In its expansive mode, it provides the force for the

continuous variation of language.

Labov's notion of linguistic variation is that forms are in flux even inthe present, destroying the notion of synchronic constants. Deleuze and

Guattari'sconception of social forces as immanent to language allows them

to go beyond Labov. They write:

Labov sees variation as a de jure component affecting each system from

within, sending it cascading or leaping on its own power and forbiddingone to close it off, to make it homogeneous in principle. (ATP93)

In otherwords, every system

is in variation and cannot be definedby

its

constants and homogeneity, but only by an open variability, whose charac-

teristics are immanent and continuous. Deleuze and Guattariturn Labov's

ultimate adherence to the principles at work in the field into the notion that

statements and subjectivities are worked from within by continuous varia-

tion:

Take as an example the statement, "I swear!" It is a different statement

depending on whether it is said by a child to his or her father,by a man in

love to his loved one, or by a witness before the court. (ATP94)

These areemphatically differentstatements, like my "I"uttered in different

situations, since the encounter of forces in each instance is unique. But, this

is not only a matter of context or situation. The principle of continuous

variation as Deleuze and Guattari use it asserts:

Not only are there as many statements as thereare effectuations,but all of

the statements arepresentin the effectuation of one among them,so thatthe

line of variation is virtual, in other words, real without being actual, andconsequentlycontinuous regardlessof the leaps the statement makes. (ATP

94)

This is another way to say that in every selective arrangement of the

human being in encounters of forces subsist also multiple lines of flight. In

this definition of language, continuous variation is not simply a matter of

setting variables against constants, but of treating what are actually vari-

ables as continuously varying, instead of freezing them into constants.

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Linguistics 49

Pragmatics must interpret language according to its state functions, but

must also be flexible enough to interpret its deterritorializing functions. In

order to see how this works, it is helpful to see how Deleuze and Guattari

make use of Louis Hjelmslev's linguistic principles.The pragmatic analysis of language can be schematized according to

planes of content and expression. Deleuze and Guattari take these terms

from Hjelmslev. They adopt ("orphan" might be a better word)

Hjelmslev's four aspects of the signifier-signified relation (instead of

Saussure's two), which cannot be considered independently of each other,

and yet standin

arbitraryrelation to each other

(that is,in

reciprocalpresupposition), as a tool for breaking out of the binary formulation of

signifier and signified. More importantly, it is a way for them to break

away from binary modes of thought in order to show how language is

implicated in nonbinary sociopolitical processes.Instead of positing the simple dichotomy content/expression,

Hjelmslev posits a four-fold sign function. According to Hjelmslev, Saus-

sure implies that content-substance (what Saussure called "the amorphous

continuum of thought") and expression-substance (the "nebulous soundchain") precede language in time hierarchically.That is, for Saussure, each

language selects from these matrices to form its signifiers and signifieds.

Hjelmslev says, instead, that substance depends on form "tosuch a degreethat it lives exclusively by its favor and can in no sense be said to have an

independent existence" (50). He supplies content-form, content-substance,

expression-form, and expression-substance as correctives. These are the

functions that thesign

function contracts, which simultaneously presup-

pose each other, although they stand in arbitraryrelation to each other in

the Saussurean sense of "arbitrary"-that is, not naturally motivated. The

notion of purport is what binds these functions together. On the plane of

content, purport can be defined simply as thought. But it is formed dif-

ferently in different languages. It remains always the substance for a form,

and has no existence outside being the substance of form. So, the content-

form operates on purport to form it into content-substance. Simply put,

each language forms its own concepts.Expression runs parallel to content, and has its own purport-in this

case, the vocalic continuum of the mouth. The expression-substance is also

formed differently in different languages, ordered by the expression-form.An example is the word "Berlin"as pronounced in English, German, and

Japanese. While Hjelmslev uses these terms to elaborate language as a

signifying system, Deleuze and Guattari use these functions to break

resolutely with this system.

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50 ThereseGrisham

They retain Hjelmslev's notion that the functions of content and ex-

pression are in reciprocal presupposition with each other, in the sense that

they are always interconnected but are of entirely different orders. The

encounter of these orders does not signify, but is, again, the encounter of

forces in a power relation. They also retain the idea that the Saussurean

substance of the content, which if transposed to their schema would be

something like an amorphous body, and the substance of the expression,which would be the linguistic equivalent, are not extractablerealities, con-

ceptual or otherwise. To summarize, expression is the set of incorporeal

transformations,content the set of

corporealmodifications.

Corporeal:a

body is any formed content and its actions and passions; the form of

expression is order-words. This is another way to present the notion that

content and expression are variables that pass into each other continually,

arranging each other.

"Abstractmachines" are the diagrams of the "whole"assemblage, that

is, of the encounters of these orders; they are the agencies that select and

interpret these variables. Abstract machines too have their limitative and

expansive modes, based in levels of abstraction.Ultimately, since abstractmachines are built around variables, they are also singular and in flux.

It should be clear that linguistics has set up its own abstractmachine

that derives constants from variables and turns contents into simple mat-

ters of reference. Hjelmslev's notion of purport, the semantic objectives of

transformational grammar, and the Saussurean signified which points to

referents offer ample proof of this. This is where the abstract machine of

linguisticsbogs down decisively: since it interprets language as a set of

abstracted constants in the service of reference, it cannot interpret its own

selections. Critics have asserted that transformational grammar is too

abstract-it relies theoretically on logically abstracted, hidden forms.

Deleuze and Guattariemploy a different concept of abstractionwhen they

say that linguistics, far from being too abstract,is not yet abstractenough.

Abstraction can be thought of spatially as extending across a virtual sur-

face, rather than reaching to a hidden depth. As Deleuze and Guattarisay:

... if the abstractions taken urther, nenecessarilyeaches levelwherethepseudo-constantsflanguage resuperseded yvariablesfexpressioninternal o enunciationtself;these variablesof expressionare then no

longerseparableromthevariables f contentwithwhichtheyareinper-petual interaction.(ATP91)

A "true" abstract machine-one that is capable of interpreting these

variables (in addition to state functions)-"pertains to an assemblage in its

entirety: it is defined as the diagram of that assemblage" (91). Pragmatics,

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Linguistics 51

as an abstract machine, has to be linked to the assemblages on which it

depends. (In the following, Deleuze and Guattari use in a subversive waythe linguistic notions of deep and surface structure.) They say:

. . . the interpenetrationf languageand the social field and politicalproblemsies at thedeepest evel of theabstractmachine, ot at thesurface.Theabstractmachine sit relates othediagram ftheassemblages never

purelya matterof language, xcept or lackof sufficientabstraction.t is

language hatdependson the abstractmachine, ot the reverse. ATP 1)

In its major, or reterritorializing mode, language is involved in

producing subjectifications. It therefore cannot be reduced to a system thatalready presupposes a basic subjectivity. The assumption that speakersand hearers are rational actors who make particular linguistic choices

based upon how successfully they think these choices will accomplish the

"goals" of their communication, often made by American linguists, even

among feminists, is a particularly banal example of this. Or, in another

context, we can look at the Lacanian model, which takes the Saussurean

sign as its base. Lacan would say we are subjectified in language as a

signifying system from which the signified has dropped out as the unap-

proachable Real, or we are subjectified in the Symbolic Order in which we

are irremediably divided and condemned by desire to slip along the two

poles of language (metaphor-condensation and metonymy-displacement)in the chain of signification. But are we not subjectified by, rather than in,

this particular arrangementof the human being? In other words, there is no

such thing as theSymbolic Order-it is one "regime of signs," or order of

discourse, among many,and one that

assumes,still, a Saussurean

unityof

language. As a "post-signifying regime," it passes through institutions,

psychoanalysis, discourses on sexuality, and some resistance struggles as a

conception of the human being which ties us to ourselves through par-

ticular, frozen forms, what Foucault so elegantly and ironically calls "self-

knowledge" in "TheSubjectand Power."

In general, feminists have been reluctant to adapt Deleuze and

Guattari's concepts in part because of Deleuze and Guattari's own par-

ticipation in promoting (sub)standardized images of women (the siren andthe girl in the becomings-woman, for example). However, their conceptsare worth a second look. I can only outline here what I find inspiring about

Deleuze and Guattari's conception of language for a feminist linguistics,

particularly their break with the rationalist principles linked to essen-

tialism in the ways I have discussed, as well as their implicit critique of

valorized notions of subjectivity. This critique is problematic for many

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52 ThereseGrisham

feminists, since the "loss" of subjectivity is viewed as a male privilegeunavailable to women, since we have never had a subjectivity to lose.

It seems obvious that new subjectivities for women should continue to

be articulated. But we should not ignore the observation that subjectivity

necessarily means subjectification,simply in order to formulate a theory of

agency and promote empowerment. In point of fact, feminist theories of

agency and subjectivity have functioned largely to keep those women who

were not already in near-standard positions "in their place," as Chandra

Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak, and many others before them have pointed out.

These notions again need reevaluation. Is it necessary to have a theory ofagency in order to act?Is it essential to promote a feminist subjectivity (and

not merely develop a sense of self), which inevitably entails its own sub-

standards?

Deleuze and Guattari offer a way to analyze the manifold role of

enunciation in subjectification proceedings that are complex, unique, and

always partial, which is to say that subjectivity, like language, is not

totalizable (unlike the totalizing theory of language and hence subjec-

tivity-no matter if split-that Lacan employed). In this scheme, the

category of gender would be one among many limitative types of incor-

poreal transformation,which is to imply that in these transformations also

always subsist lines of flight. Since pragmatics offers a broad political base

for the analysis of language in terms of the combined functions of the

"state" and their relations to collective assemblages of enunciation,

machinic assemblages of bodies, and de- and reterritorialization, it also

offersprecise

andcomplex ways

toanalyze

written orspoken

utterances to

any feminist willing to take them up and adapt them.

"Postulates of Linguistics" makes an implicit critique of the ways in

which some current feminist practices in linguistics recapitulate the politi-cal problematics in the field. Feminist linguistics thinks of itself as neces-

sarily conducted from the perspective of traditional disciplines, thoughconnected to other disciplines. As such, its commitment to "extend or

transform the conceptual frameworks and research methods of the dis-

cipline" and to "achieve the far-reachingsocial, cultural,and political chan-ges envisioned by the women's movement" (McConnell-Ginet161,163) by

changing language, is debilitated from the start. It does not recognize its

own implication in a disciplinary apparatusthat is produced and regulatedin ways having to do with hegemony and capitalism, and with the con-

straint to produce truth. Further,most American feminist linguistics has

remained tied to a positivist-seeming, fundamentally rationalist concep-tion of language, similar to that of traditionalsociolinguistics that does not

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Ligitis5

take gender as the primary construction under investigation (like Labov's).

McConnell-Ginet's argument for retaining the notion of language as an

abstract system while connecting it to the "mental states and processes,social actions and cultural values that infuse [it] .. .with life" (160) is

simply that it is

extraordinarilynlikely hatonecouldprovidea revealing ccountof lan-

guage uses and their relation o languageusers withoutdistinguishingforms ndependently f the uses theirusersput themto.Certainly o onehas.(160)

This is reminiscent of Labov's capitulation to Chomsky: the Cartesianversion of a scientific model of language remains undisturbed in both,

without question as to the positioning, or meaning, of "revealing." In the

history of ideas, "revealing"has been tied to notions of surface and depth,to what is concealed and the process of uncovering it, and to a notion of

progress and belief that the world really does present us with a legibleface-all complicit with standardizing modes of thought. These are con-

ceptions that Deleuze and Guattari challenge, and this is their value for a

linguistics that would include a feminist critique of the field.

Deleuze and Guattari deterritorialize the domain of linguistics: theysubvert the meanings of linguistic texts in the history of the field by puttingthem to work in the service of politics. They persistently avoid the ques-

tion, "Whatis language?" to which much feminine linguistics still remains

tied. They cross the boundaries of the discipline, not for the purposes of

interdisciplinarity, but to go beyond the scope of disciplines altogether.

University f Washington,eattle

NOTES

1.SeeFoucault, TheOrder fDiscourse,"nTheArchaeologyfKnowledge,rans.A.M.Sheridan mith NewYork: antheonBooks,1972), specially .227.

2. I have taken the term "selectiveand interpretiveagencies"from BrianMassumi's "ThePower of the Particular," ubjects/Objects:1985,6-23, and the

manuscript f his book,A User'sGuideoCapitalismndSchizophrenia.ora detailed

backgroundon statements, ncorporeal ransformations,nd bodies, see Gilles

Deleuze,LogiqueuSens Paris:Minuit,1969);rans.MarkLester nd CharlesStivaleas TheLogic fSenseNewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1990).

3. To callthese "limitative"nd"expansive,"ndto designate nlytwoexpres-ses theconcept n shorthand nd thereforeeductively.DeleuzeandGuattari'son-

ceptionof relativeandabsolutedeterritorializationn relation oregimesof signs,of

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54 Therese Grisham

which these "modes" are a part,is given in "587 B.C.-A.D.70:On SeveralRegimes of

Signs,"ATP111-148,among otherchapters.

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Chomsky, Noam. AspectsoftheTheory f Syntax.Cambridge:M.I.T.Press, 1965.

-. RulesandRepresentations.ew York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1980.

Deleuze, Gilles. "Entretien ur MillePlateaux." ourparlers,972-1990.Paris:Minuit,1990,39-52. (translationsmine)

Deleuze, Gilles and FelixGuattari.A Thousand lateaus:CapitalismndSchizophrenia.Trans.BrianMassumi.Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress,1987.(Ab-breviatedas ATP)

Foucault,Michel. TheArchaeologyfKnowledge. rans.A.M.Sheridan Smith. NewYork:PantheonBooks,1972.

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Labov,William.Sociolinguistics atterns.Philadelphia:Universityof PennsylvaniaPress, 1984,1972.

McConnell-Ginet,Sally. "Feminism n Linguistics."For AlmaMater:Theory ndPrac-tice in FeministScholarship. d.Treichler,PaulaA., CherisKramerae,and Beth Staf-ford. Urbana and Chicago:University of IllinoisPress, 1985.

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