Marx, a ‘semiotician’? On the (possible) relevance of a materialistic-semiotic approach to discourse studies

ABSTRACT

Even if a coherent Marxian theory of language does not exist, it is well known that Marx refers to the concepts of language and sign in several passages of his writings. The Italian scholar Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (1921–1985) framed Marx's outlines into a semiotic perspective. This theoretical proposal had two purposes: on the one hand, Rossi-Landi tried to demonstrate how certain analytical instruments developed by the Marxian critique of political economy can contribute to a better understanding of semiotic processes. On the other hand, he attempted to illustrate how a semiotic methodology was present at an early stage in certain fundamental parts of Marxian theory, i.e. in the analysis of ideologies, of the commodity-form, and in the critique of political economy. In this paper, I would like to illustrate how Rossi-Landi's materialistic semiotics shares certain fundamental categories and research fields with Critical Discourse Analysis (e.g. argumentation, discourse, ideology), especially in the version structured by Norman Fairclough. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these elements of convergence, I believe that the two approaches present fundamental divergences, deriving – among other things – from a different interpretation of the role of language and discourse in Marx's economic works.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse
• ideology
• value-form

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Giorgio Borrelli finished his PhD in ‘Theory of Language and Sciences of the Sign,’ in 2015, at the University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro’ (Italy). The title of his dissertation is ‘Per una semiotica materialistica. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi e dintorni’ [For a materialistic semiotics. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi and surroundings]. His research interests are focused on the general science of signs as a theoretical and methodological instrument for social research. More specifi­cally, he is interested in the relation between semiotics and the dialectical-materialistic approach to the Social Sciences. He is a teaching assistant and exam committee member in Semiotics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Bari ‘Aldo Moro.’

Notes

1 Rossi-Landi gives this example in a foot-note (note 99, 136–137) of the Italian translation (1954) of Morris’ Foundations of the Theory of Sign. Rossi-Landi is the Italian translator and editor of this work by Morris.

2 Actually, Marx affirms that ‘only a material whose every sample possesses the same uniform quality can be an adequate form of appearance of value, that is a material embodiment of abstract and therefore equal human labour’ (Marx, 2002, p. 188). But this has nothing to do with the fact that this material is determined by a social agreement. Rather, it is the latent and potential development of the Value Form which determines gold as the material for the adequate form of appearance of value (see Fineschi, 2001, pp. 111–112).

3 In his translation of Capital (Vol. 1), Ehrbar uses the expression ‘quasi-physical properties’. I prefer, in this case, Fowkes’ translation: ‘social-natural properties’. This expression seems to me to correspond more closely to the German original version.