What does language mean (the economy of language exchange)

Author: Bourdieu (French), translated by Chu Sizhen and Liu Hui
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Publishing Date: Not available
Features: In Essay on the Introduction of the Concept of Negative Grandeur in Philosophy, Kant imagined a person with extreme stinginess (ten degrees) and striving for extreme fraternal love (twelve degrees), contrasting with another person who had moderate stinginess (three degrees) but had the capacity to achieve a generous goal (seven degrees) – yet only acted with moderate generosity (four degrees). He concluded that, while measured by actions (2:4), the former was undeniably inferior to the latter, but morally, the former was more noble. We might use a similar arithmetic-based value assessment to evaluate scientific works. Social sciences are clearly in the camp of extreme stinginess, and if we knew how to incorporate the social forces they must overcome in a Kantian way, we could undoubtedly assess their value more accurately. This is even more certain when the issue under discussion is a special goal that affects all social science disciplines. This special goal, language, is holistic and indivisible. In Saussure's research, it was constructed by excluding all internal social variables; or, according to Chomsky's view, it was constructed by prioritizing the formal properties of grammar – which undermines functional constraints. Therefore, deriving all the consequences of this fact becomes necessary, yet these are forcefully suppressed by linguists and their imitators, to the extent that Introduction to General Linguistics asserts, "The social attributes of language are one of its internal characteristics," and social heterogeneity is contained within language. This issue must be resolved, while also being aware of the risks involved in this endeavor, which are not obvious crudeness, as such crudeness can be subjected to rigorous analysis. This analysis can bring the repressed back into circulation, but this is also where it faces criticism. In short, we must accept a lower profit in terms of distinction while paying a higher price for truth.