| This dissertation explores Gramsci's writings on language and linguistics and argues that they are central to his well-known political and cultural theory. Through Gramsci, I engage in recent debates around Marxism, structuralism and poststructuralism that centre on the role of language in social theory. This entails comparing Gramsci with other significant Marxist theorists of language including chapters on the Bakhtin Circle, Walter Benjamin, the Frankfurt School and Jurgen Habermas.;The role of language in Gramsci's work has been seriously neglected in the secondary literature. I use his writings (in Italian and in translation) and secondary literature on Gramsci (in English and Italian) to address this dearth in previous scholarship. In addition, this dissertation draws on primary works by Bakhtin, Volosinov, Medvedev, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas. It also utilizes secondary literature on these figures, on translation theory, and on the history of language.;Throughout this dissertation, I illustrate how Gramsci provides the fundamental tenets of a historical materialist theory of language. For Gramsci, language is a historical human institution that does not contain a transcendental or ahistorical essence. He rejects the view of language as a medium of representation and as a collection of names for objects. Instead, he understands language as social praxis where meaning is produced in the context of previous and competing meanings. It is neither secondary to, nor independent of, other social and political activities.;This dissertation demonstrates that Gramsci's approach to language is crucial to his political theory and our current understanding of the relationship between language and politics. It enables a more clear analysis of how coercion and consent are constructed and how political ideologies operate. In this way, Gramsci shows us how language is at once a paradigm for cultural and political analysis and a topic of vital importance to political action. |
