Overview

The Force of Language illustrates how the philosophy of Language, if differently conceived, can directly incorporate questions of political thought and of emotionality, and offers the practical case of defensive strategies against the abusive speech. This follows a broad consideration of the inner voice or inner speech as a test case for a new approach to language, in particular as a way of radically rethinking the usual contrast between inner and outer through furnishing an account of how we internalize speech. The book's core offers a substantial critique of orthodox approaches to the philosophy of language form Chomsky and others; drawing on European political thought from Marx to Deleuze, it will move beyond this inheritance to explain and demonstrate its fresh conception of language at work.

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9781403942487

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Reviews

'This is an absorbing and brilliant book, original in its form and far-reaching in its theoretical ambition. Writing in counter-point, Riley and Lecercle propose another philosophy of language, one that displaces the familiar but increasingly unproductive dichotomy between language as inner speech (subjectivity) and language as external system (langue). In erudite, witty, and cunning prose, the authors elegantly put flesh on the bones of the claim that language is a social praxis, specifically, a praxis of affect and force. The radical challenge their arguments present to the stale theoretical consensus on what language is will resonate through linguistics, the philosophy of language and cultural studies.' - Professor Ellen Rooney, Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University, USA

Author Information

Denise Riley teaches at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her most recent books are The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony and Selected Poems. Jean-Jacquies Lecercle is Professor of English in the University of Paris at Nanterre, France. He has published widely in the fields of philosophy of language and literary theory, and is the author of The Violence of Language, Philosophy of Nonsense, Interpretations of Pragmatics and Deleuze and Language.

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