Vološinov’s theory of language is not a mechanic theory of reflection, in which thought is part of the superstructure and a linear reflection and copy of material reality that is communicated from A to B. Lenin, for example, wrote: ‘Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them’ (Lenin 1908, 130). In such an understanding, language and communication are separate from material reality and matter in a linear way determines the content of thought and speech.
Vološinov in a at a first glance rather counterintuitive manner says that a sign is part and not-part of reality. He thereby wants to express that the world of signs is its own world that is part of material reality and is mediated dialectically with other realities through cognition and communication. Symbolic interaction of humans with the outside social and physical reality is non-linear (‘refracted’), which means that it is not calculable, but shaped in a complex way by social and societal contexts. With the notion of linguistic creativity (98), Vološinov points out the fact that communication is a form of production, the production of signs in human interaction. But he leaves open the question how communication and signs relate to work and labour. The term ‘labour’ is in fact only used twice in his book Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. So although Vološinov provided some foundations for a dialectical-materialist theory of communication, he never clarified the relationship of communication and signs to labour.
6.5.3. Ferruccio Rossi-Landi’s Marxist Semiotics
Ferruccio Rossi-Landi13 (1921–1985) was an Italian Marxist semiotician. His main theoretical insight is that language and communication are not just semiotic production processes, but specific forms of work.
Rossi-Landi’s semiotic theory is partly problematic (see Fuchs 2016, 61–63), but at the same time helps to clarify the dialectic of work and communication: language-use and communication are work that produce words, sentences, interconnected sentences, arguments, speeches, essays, lectures, books, codes, artworks, literature, science, groups, civilisation and the linguistic world as totality (Rossi-Landi 1983, 133–136). As ‘words and messages do not exist in nature’ (Rossi-Landi 1983, 36), they must be the products of human work that generates use-values. They are use-values because they satisfy the human needs of expression, communication and social relations (Rossi-Landi 1983, 37). ‘Like the other products of human work, words, expressions and messages have a use-value or utility insofar as they satisfy needs, in this case, the basic needs for expression and communication with all the changing stratifications that have historically grown up around them (Rossi-Landi 1983, 50).
Wulf D. Hund14 is a professor of sociology at the University of Hamburg. He specialises in the critical theory of racism and in the 1970s was among those
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