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- Centre de recherches en histoire et épistémologie comparée de la linguistique d'Europe centrale et orientale (CRECLECO) / Université de Lausanne // Научно-исследовательский центр по истории и сравнительной эпистемологии языкознания центральной и восточной Европы
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-- Colloque «Ideology and Linguistic Ideas», Univ. Javakhishvili, Tbilissi, Géorgie, 6-8 octobre 2017
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Patrick Sériot :
What did Stalin have to say to Marr ? (The relationship between form and content / between language and thought)
Stalin’s « intervention » in the linguistic debate in 1950 has been thoroughly studied from the political, historical and sociological points of view. As far as linguistics is concerned, it has been usually considered as being totally devoid of any scientific value, or at best, as a pack of common sense small talk.
Nonetheless, I will try to demonstrate that, as a matter of fact, a deep philosophical and epistemological question is involved in this discussion. What is at stake is a question which had been at the core of cultural issues in Russia: the relationship between form and content, between language and thought, between sign and referent.
Stalin has a fundamental reproach to address to Marr: separating language and thought. True, Marr builds the utopia of a future universal language “freed from the sound material”, true, he was contradictorily involved both in form and function, maintaining that semantics was more important than morphology. But at the same time, thought for him was knowable only through the forms of language, first in lexicon, then in syntax.
The paradox is that Stalin and Marr are both perfectly convinced that a form without a content is not a form, as well as a content without a form is not a content. What is fascinating is that this idea of an indissoluble link between language and thought is that it is tantamount to the main principle of such different thinkers as A. Losev or R. Jakobson. Here, the shadow of Humboldt is pervasive.
The aim of this paper is to view the 1950 linguistic discussion on the background of the scientific ideas of the Stalin epoch in Soviet linguistics and to test Lotman’s and Uspenskij’s hypothesis of Russian culture as being based on expression, opposed to Western culture based on content.