Abstract
If we accept Lyotard’s (1979) argument that the advent of postmodernism is marked by a shift from truth to fiction and narrative, by a change from the world of experience to that of language, and by the demise of the three great metanarratives of science, religion and politics with their replacement by local language-games, then the science of linguistics finds itself in an irreducible quandary, yet in a privileged position. As a science it must submit to the general fate of metanarratives, and at least change its concept of truth. On the other hand, however, it is the science whose subject matter is at the centre of the postmodern critique. It might hope therefore to survive relatively unscathed, with the result that there still could be something like a postmodern linguistics. It is my intention to explore this profoundly ambiguous situation, even though it might be said of me as a linguist, that I am attempting to have my cake and eat it too.
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© 1990 Jean-Jacques Lecercle
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Lecercle, JJ. (1990). Postmodernism and Language. In: Boyne, R., Rattansi, A. (eds) Postmodernism and Society. Communications and Culture. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20843-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20843-2_3
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