Towards Linguistic Competence

The dominant trend in modern linguistics has developed through attention to a single function of lang & on the basis of an abstracted, homogeneous form, cut off from concrete existence. It is in need of the kind of critique that Marx directed at Feuerbach: it must be shown that it refuses to see the constitutive role of social relationships. Although many linguists are radical, or at least liberal, in their social views, their scientific commitments make impossible an integration of the knowledge of lang with the knowledge of social life. Linguistic theory celebrates the equality in principle of all forms of lang while dismissing as superficial the inequalities due to cultural traditions & social relations between actual langs & users of lang. It should be no surprise that the 'speaker-hearer' imagined in the dominant theory resembles the worker free to sell his or her labor, or the consumer free to select according to his or her wants, of another branch of liberal science. Even a linguistic theory that claims to deal with 'pragmatics', 'conversation', & the like, projects as universal foundations of communication principles that express an American Mc conversation between friendly equals. Remedies for this situation are outlined. Modified HA.