A Reflection on the Relationship Between Social Consciousness and Language

Samira Ghobadi

These days few people have not struggled with the present crises of society—from poverty and violence to insecurity, injustice and inequality—or suffered in every day and moment from the pains born out of those crises.
If we regard the first step in confronting any crisis as knowing it deeply and accurately, how sound is our understanding of why what is happening to us is happening?
Do we know where we stand and in which direction we are moving?

Without doubt, all of us believe that the time has come to develop a comprehensive and profound understanding of this crisis at all its social, cultural and political levels, so that the path from understanding to action can be opened for a movement—perhaps gradual, but firm, continuous and responsible—toward transformation. Such transformation must inevitably begin within us and extend outward from us.

These questions can be explored from many perspectives. This essay approaches them through the idea of “language”, and more precisely through the continuity between social transformations and the phenomenon of language, so that in transforming the existing condition we may move beyond the sphere of imaginings, hopes and dreams and draw closer to action—an action that does not simply take place in the near future, but flows through the depths of our individual and social consciousness and will play a major part in reconstruction.

Any power, intellectual current or ideology can impose itself upon us and take away our capacity for free action only when it is more powerful than we are. So long as we are emptied of independent thought and unable to express it effectively, any ideology—and the despotism that subsequently grows from it—can capture us. Even if we do not become part of it, we will lack the capacity to resist it, and passivity will be the principal manifestation of this susceptibility.

Now that the preceding lines have brought us to “language”, this essay asks how the relationship between social transformation and language becomes possible and leads to understanding and movement. In doing so I draw upon Dr Mehrayin’s reading of Bakhtin.

Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary scholar whose influential works shaped literary criticism and theory and who is regarded by many critics as one of the important thinkers of the twentieth century, interprets human life through the idea of language. His thought on “carnivalisation” and “discourse” has been highly influential. His philosophy of language is grounded in examining language throughout history and amid social transformations.
In my view, Bakhtin’s theory of “discourse” is among the important ideas on which reflection at this historical moment, and under the political and social conditions surrounding us, can enable us to develop a new and deeper understanding of our predicament. Properly understood, it has the capacity to move the motivation and ability needed for transformations that improve conditions from thought toward action.

Dr Mostafa Mehrayin, a researcher in philosophy and sociologist of culture, is presented here as one of the influential thinkers of our present era, with deep and valuable studies in philosophy, phenomenology of language and, specifically, discourse theory. In a series of lectures centred on Bakhtin’s discourse theory, Dr Mehrayin has made this theory more broadly accessible; these lectures, alongside several other sources, were the principal references used in writing this text.

Bakhtin concentrates his study of “language” on its continuity with history, and this becomes the basis for a view of meaning different from that of other thinkers—especially distinguishing him from Saussure, another major thinker of language whose approach is described here as studying the structure of language within a closed system.
According to the Bakhtinian account presented here, in every discourse that has taken shape through history—including philosophical schools, literary and artistic works, and political, cultural and social perspectives—different signifieds or associations have been attached to each word, or signifier/sign.
At different times and within different discourses, each word has evoked a particular meaning defined within struggles among social classes and groups. In other words, the interests of a group or class required that a particular semantic weight be placed upon a word, turning that word into the carrier of that meaning for a period, until another discourse became powerful. Bakhtin therefore sees signs as filled with interests and, consequently, as political.