Saturday, November 5, 2016

Marcuse on an Alternative to Functionalized Language


“Compared with these constructions, the non-functional substantive, the noun-subject, and the demonstrative and narrative predication are rather abstract forms; they express the transcending universality of the concept, the ‘excess’ of its intent over the term (word) in current usage: thus they retain the tension between the particular and the genus, which is greatly attenuated in the functional construction. […] The grammatical form thus retains the dialectical distinction between the subject and its functions; the proposition contains the negation of the given fact: it links that which is happening to the conditions which made it happen, and allows the reader or listener to follow and reconstruct the development.”



Herbert Marcuse, "Language and Technological Society" (Boston, MA: Beacon Press), p. 72.

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