Date: 	Fri, 31 Jan 1997 23:53:48 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: General Question



> Ken writes:
> >a question - how does one come to understanding that language = power?  if
> >this is
> >true then it presupposes that understanding is possible - because we could all
> >understand that language is strategic.  and if understanding doesn't lie
> >beneath the
> > idea that language = power then we really don't know if language = power.
> >either
> >way the idea is contradictory.
> >
> >ken
> 
> We don't have to know or understand that lang equals power.  All we have to
> do is use it that way.  If our social practices are designed in such a way
> that what we use lang for is power, then no understanding needs enter in.
> I suppose I should have been more careful before.
> 
> Anyway, so what if understanding that lang = power implies that
> understanding is possible.  IO ahve not anywhere said that understanding is
> not possible.  Understanding may have arisen, and probably did so, as a
> subsidiary function of lang after we progressed to a certain point.  This
> does not mean that lang is essentially about understanding- which again
> HAbermas must presuppose.  Rather, it means that lang developed a s a means
> to survive in the world, and later we constructed a use for it- i.e.
> reaching understanding.  All I need do is assert this, and Habermas use of
> lang is defeated because for him. lang must be essentially about
> understanding.
> 
> Jeffery
> 
If language has evolved as a means of self-preservation and it can be used 
strategically or communicatively then habermas is correct to assert a theory of 
communicative action - aware that language is not in itself purely strategic.  
langauge may always be used strategically but it harbours within it the 
constitutive elements that make understanding posisble.  the dialectic of 
enlightenment is reinvoked in this way.  if understanding via language is possible 
then language is, in at least some aspects, the medium of understanding.  one 
doesn't have to use it this way but regardless of what an individual actor chooses - 
 langauge still holds the potential to be used this way.  I think that one would have 
to maintain that understanding is not possible through language in order to keep 
the position consistent (this is derrida's strategy i think).  language for habermas 
doesn't need to be strictly about understanding - it only needs to be a potential 
(projected by the language itself).

ken