Words and things, goods and services: Problems of translation between language and political economy

This paper explores two non-intersecting discourses, discourses on language and discourses on political economy, to explore the reasons for the apparent non-existence of language discipline of the political economy of language. Abortive attempts to encompass economic categories by categories of linguistics and semiology were suggested by Saussure’s only initial analogy between linguistic and economic ‘value’. Such an attempt to assimilate the economic to the linguistic order tends to dematerialize commodities. From the other perspective, the apparent exclusion of language from political economic discourse revolves around definitions of wealth and productivity. Linguistic performances were excluded from the category of wealth, the object of political economic discourse, by being assimilated to the category of perishable ‘services’ rather than durable ‘wealth’. In order to understand the possible articulations of language and exchange, we need to accept the historicity and cultural locatedness of both language and exchange: to understand whether language can be considered a form of wealth or value, we need to investigate what is considered to be wealth or value in each historical case.