Abstract
It was Jean-François Lyotard who wrote in The Postmodern Condition that ‘to speak is to fight… and speech acts fall within the domain of a general agonistics’.2 The rules of language, Lyotard points out, ‘do not carry within themselves their own legitimation, but are the object of a contract, explicit or not’.3 Before Lyotard, Benjamin Lee Whorf, in a hypothesis later modified by Edward Sapir, maintained that we dissect nature, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significance as we do ‘along lines laid down by our native languages’, because we are parties to an agreement ‘whose terms are absolutely obligatory’ (Whorf’s emphasis) codified in the patterns of language within the speech community, with the grammar of each language guiding the individual’s mental activity, analysis of his impressions and synthesis of ‘his mental stock in trade’.4
Meaning in language is not natural but conventional. Linguists say that the coding of meanings is arbitrary, by which they mean that any sounds or letters could be used to represent any concept. But what concepts come to be represented is not an arbitrary or accidental matter. Over long periods in the history of a society, a vocabulary and phrasings develop to suit the needs of the society — those ‘needs’ being the interests of the dominant, privileged groups … Language thus becomes a part of social practice, a tool for preserving the prevailing order.1
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Notes
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© 1999 Chidi Okonkwo
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Okonkwo, C. (1999). The Agonistic of Tongues. In: Decolonization Agonistics in Postcolonial Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375314_3
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