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Political Science History & Theory

Gramsci's Politics of Language

Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School

by (author) Peter Ives

Publisher
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Initial publish date
May 2006
Category
History & Theory, Semiotics & Theory, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802094445
    Publish Date
    May 2006
    List Price
    $35.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802037565
    Publish Date
    Mar 2004
    List Price
    $64.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442675490
    Publish Date
    Feb 2004
    List Price
    $84.00

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Description

Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony have permeated social and political theory, cultural studies, education studies, literary criticism, international relations, and post-colonial theory. The centrality of language and linguistics to Gramsci's thought, however, has been wholly neglected. In Gramsci's Politics of Language, Peter Ives argues that a university education in linguistics and a preoccupation with Italian language politics were integral to the theorist's thought. Ives explores how the combination of Marxism and linguistics produced a unique and intellectually powerful approach to social and political analysis.

To explicate Gramsci's writings on language, Ives compares them with other Marxist approaches to language, including those of the Bakhtin Circle, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School, including Jürgen Habermas. From these comparisons, Ives elucidates the implications of Gramsci's writings, which, he argues, retained the explanatory power of the semiotic and dialogic insights of Bakhtin and the critical perspective of the Frankfurt School, while at the same time foreshadowing the key problems with both approaches that post-structuralist critiques would later reveal. Gramsci's Politics of Language fills a crucial gap in scholarship, linking Gramsci's writings to current debates in social theory and providing a framework for a thoroughly historical-materialist approach to language.

About the author

Peter Ives is professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Gramsci’s Politics of Language and Language and Hegemony in Gramsci, and co-editor of Gramsci, Language and Translation and Language Policy and Political Theory. He has published in Rethinking Marxism, Political Studies, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy and Language Policy. He researches and writes on the politics of “global English” and bridging the disciplines of language policy and political theory. He has contributed articles to The Conversation on free speech and academic freedom, was on the editorial board of Rethinking Marxism for a decade and was on the editorial collective of Arbeiter Ring Press for many years.

Peter Ives' profile page

Awards

  • Winner, Raymond Klibansky Prize