As an expression of the thing itself, language is not fully reducible to communication with others. Nor, however – and Hegel knew this – is it simply independent of communication. Otherwise it would elude all critique, even in its relationship to the matter at hand, and would reduce that relationship to an arbitrary presumption. Language as expression of the thing itself and language as communication are interwoven. The ability to name the matter at hand is developed under the compulsion to communicate it, and that element of coercion is preserved in it; conversely, it could not communicate anything that it did not have as its own intention, undistracted by other considerations. This dialectic plays itself out within the medium of language itself; it is not merely a fall from grace on the part of an inhumane social zeal that watches to make sure that no one thinks anything that cannot be communicated. Even a linguistic approach of the utmost integrity cannot do away with the antagonism between what is in itself and what is for others (105).
In communication, the subject relates to the object via language because language is needed in order to communicate views of the objective world to others. At the same time, the objective world relates to society via the individual languaging being that has an interest in parts of this objective world and appropriates the world linguistically out of personal interest, which enables the communication with others. Adorno shows that there is a dialectic of the social, the individual, and the objective world in the communication process. Communication is the symbolically expressed social relation that allows the individual A to relate to others O and other individuals O to relate to A and other individuals as their others. They together and individually relate to the objective world that consists of nature and society.
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
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