Introduction

Abstract

The aim of this introduction is to give a brief sketch of the sort of theoretical work that has helped me with this project. The work was drawn principally from the work of three writers: Foucault, Vološinov and Bakhtin. Their investigations were of interest not in the fact that they mapped out a certain field that could then be taken over and the details filled in, but in that they offered a direction in which to proceed. In fact their texts are very dissimilar and often contradictory in terms of the aims and methods of their studies. However, I found that there were sufficient similarities to suggest that a number of fairly basic points could be drawn together in order to provide a theoretical starting point. Those similarities and that starting point are my concern in this introduction.

In appearance, speech may well be of little account, but the prohibitions surrounding it soon reveal its links with desire and power.

(M. Foucault, ‘The Discourse on Language’)