The Advantages of Learning a Dominant Language: Addressing the Integrity of Individuals

Miguel Mantero and David Backer, US

Miguel Mantero, PhD, is Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Alabama. E-mail: mmantero@bamaed.ua.edu

David Backer is completing his Masters Degree in Secondary Education and is currently teaching abroad in Ecuador.

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Introduction
Our first language is a dominant language
The master signifier, the master discourse
Our entry into language; periphery and center
Learning a dominant language can be a good thing
Conclusion
References

Introduction

When thinking about second language learning, especially that of dominant languages (i.e. Spanish or English), there is a temptation to demonize dominance. This temptation is valid and needs little argument or exegesis to make clear. It is widely argued that dominant languages threaten the value and integrity of non-dominant languages, thereby threatening the value and integrity of the individuals that speak them. One of bilingual education's tasks, therefore, is to undermine that demon. But this is a mistake. While demonization of dominant language learning is widely argued, this is not the best approach to it. In fact, learning a dominant language, by virtue of its dominance, can be a healthy exercise for a language-learner. This is clear when one considers certain aspects of Jacques Lacan's theory of the human subject, and applies them to second language learning.

Lacan, in his interpretation of the signifier and his discourse of the master, shows us that every first language, driven metonymically into and by the human unconscious, is a dominant language. Therefore learning a second, dominant language--if done in such a way that highlights this fact--can help an individual become more aware of what it means to be a human being in society. In other words, learning a dominant language as a second language can lead to the increased value and integrity of the individual.

Our first language is a dominant language

Individuals have minds and bodies. Within our minds we have consciousness and unconsciousness. Also, we make things when we get together: like language and discourse and society. To see how learning a dominant language as a second language can be healthy according to Lacan, we have to understand how Lacan thinks these different things--particularly language, discourse, and the individual--interact with one another.

Combining Saussure's signifier with Freud's unconscious, Lacan produced a theory of the human subject. This subject, according to him, is created through language-learning. Lacan thinks our unconscious functions as the signifier relates to the signified. This is an essentially dominant relationship. Here, it will be our task to understand this idea, and what Lacan means when he writes "It is a matter, therefore, of defining the locus of... unconscious. I say that it is the very locus defined by the formula S/s." We might use the following analogy to represent his idea: Language: unconscious :: signifier : signified

To understand this analogy, we will start with its second half. As mentioned, Lacan uses Saussurian linguistics. He takes language to be "the synchronic, paradigmatic, and atemporal system of signifiers that is the condition for any speech act." These are all Saussurian terms. They mean that language is fixed. It is passed from generation to generation. It is a set of terms that exist over and above any particular community of speakers that speak it. Language is therefore different than speech. Speech is "the diachronic, syntagmatic, and temporal concatenation of signifiers." More Saussurian terms. Speech is what is in the mouths of pedestrians. It is strings of spoken terms influenced by trend and fad. Speech is the instance of language in a time and place. (These two terms differ from discourse, which will be explained in the coming sections). This difference between speech and language is important for Lacan when he describes the subjectivity of the language-learner. But, before we understand how we interact with language, we must understand its basic currency: the signifier. This is another Saussurian term, though Lacan's interpretation of its function veers from Saussure's. Saussure's signifier is a string of letters apposed with a signified. The famous articulation of this apposition is the word "tree" above a picture of a tree, a line separating one from the other. Language, for Saussure, is an interconnected, interdependent set of these appositions. For Saussure, a signifier refers to a signified. Each exists given as such. Here we depart from Saussure to Lacan's interpretation of Saussure. For Lacan, a signifier is over a signified but this term "over" is not merely a description of the Saussurian apposition. Lacan's theory of the signifier, and the resulting theory of how it functions as the unconscious in the subject, relate this term to dominance.

Each -the signifier and signified - doesn't exist as such for Lacan. Rather, the signifier asserts a kind of arbitrary force over the signified such that the signified "is a mere effect of the play of signifiers, an effect of the process of signification...not given, but created." In his eleventh seminar, Lacan distinguishes a sign from a signifier. A sign "represents something for someone." A signifier, famously "represents a subject for another signifier." Lacan's signifier therefore determines the signified to such an extent that the signified is no longer a signified, not just a tree or a bird, but rather a "subject" that is beneath the signifier. Since language is composed of these signifiers, the study of meaning is merely the study of the “correlations between signifier and signifier." Lacan has a term for this reflexive behavior of the signifier, a term that he applies to language as whole. Because signifiers only refer to other signifiers, language is metonymic. Metonymy helps to explain exactly how a signifier is "over” the signified in the sense of dominance. It also helps to explain how the unconscious relates to the signifer.

Metonymy is "the properly signifying function in language," and “word-to-word connection." This may be translated as: there is a function on a set of signifiers such that there is a congruence between two signifiers without a signified. Here in metonymy is where we find the birth of dominance in Lacan's account of language. In "The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious," Lacan writes that "it is in the chain of the signifier that the meaning 'insists'...we are forced, then, to accept the notion of an incessant sliding of the signified under the signifier." Because signifiers only refer to other signifiers, and language is constituted by this interdependent chain of signifiers, we are forced to accept what they signify because there is no reference to truth. This is why Lacan describes metonymy as the "form which lends itself to truth under oppression." Here, Lacan distinguishes between that which is true, or objects in the world, like trees, from our way of representing this world with signifiers. In this way, language has nothing to do with truth. It does not refer to things in the world but rather to itself, forcing its speakers to accept its empty meanings as opposed to what the world may actually have within it. This is why he describes metonymy as "a form of truth under oppression": language is just a series of signifiers without signifieds without grounding or justification for their meanings in any kind of truth. Rather, the truth is placed under the signifiers and given less importance. It is "repressed." This metonymic function in language is what incessantly slides the signified under the signifier. It is this sliding of the truth underneath language that represents the function of the unconscious, and the dominance language has upon the first language-learner.

As mentioned, Lacan argues that truth and language have nothing to do with one another. In fact, the former is forced beneath the latter. It is this dominance of the signifier over the signified that he refers to when he writes that

The letter killeth...We can't help but agree, having had to pay homage elsewhere to a noble victim of the error of seeking spirit in the letter; but we should like to know, also, how the spirit could live without the letter. Even so, the claims of the spirit would remain unassailable if the letter had not in fact shown us that it can produce all the effects of truth in man without invoking the spirit at all. It is none other than Freud who had this revelation, and he called his discovery the unconscious.

For Lacan, the letter is "the essentially localized structure of the signified." In this passage he expressly links the oppressive metonymy of language with the unconscious. This comes from his treatment of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams," where Freud emphasizes the fact that our seemingly non-sensical dreams are actually ordered productions of our unconscious. The images in our dreams, Freud says, have nothing to do with what they may signify in the conscious world. Lacan is not surprised by this. In fact, Lacan says, our unconscious is the function that orders signifiers in relationship to other signifiers. This is what our unconscious does: functioning in the same way as the signifier, it pushes any signified, or truth, down beneath the signifier, merely ordering signifiers. Lacan relates the image, the signifier, to our instinct and he defines this "general precondition for the functioning of dreams" as distortion, identifying it with the "sliding" of the signified under the signifier. This is why he writes "dream-work follows the laws of the signifier." This is also why Lacan calls the essay with which we've been primarily dealing "the insistence of the letter in the unconscious." What the unconscious does, its function, is to insist upon the signifier over the signified. It incorporates and lifts up the signifier but represses the signified, thereby repressing the "spirit" in the name of the "letter" as in the passage above.

Our goal in this section is to show that, according to Lacan, every first language is a dominant language. We now have the first pieces of this argument. In our unconscious repression of the signified, language and its metonymic chains of signifiers are lifted up above what is true in the manner of Saussure's formula S/s. The second pieces of this argument involve Lacan's master signifier and master discourse. It will be argued that, when we learn our first language, we enter (with our repressive unconscious) into a discourse against our will. This first language serves as a master discourse. Therefore, it is a dominant language.

The master signifier, the master discourse

In the eleventh seminar, Lacan defines the signifier as "that which represents the subject for another signifier." In that same seminar, Lacan goes on to say that "every real signifier is, as such, a signifier that signifies nothing. The more the signifier signifies nothing, the more indestructible it is." Evans, in his dictionary of Lacanian terms, writes that "it is these meaningless indestructible signifiers which determine the subject; the effects of the signifier on the subject constitute the unconscious...". This formulation of the indestructibility of the signifier indicates how the signifier has the quality of dominance, supporting what was said in the previous section about the unconscious and its lifting up of the signifier over the signified. This particular quality of dominance in the signifier, and language in general, can be better understood in conjunction with Lacan's account of the master signifier. Ellie Ragland equates the signifier with the master signifier and she goes on to give an analysis of this definition, as well as a deft description of how the master signifier functions in relation to the unconscious:

What is the function of this master signifer? Its function, as Lacan often said, is to represent the subject for another signifier... Lacan's point about the signifier's representing a subject for another signifier is that the subject is not univocal. It is both represented and not. Something remains hidden. What remains hidden?...it is something concerning the body. Lacan says 'the body is lost by the slave which becomes nothing other than the body in which all the other signifiers are inscribed.' The slave carries, allowing the master repose...'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and is a gathering threat to the United States of America,' Bush says. And the Americans go to war. This knowledge justifies itself...".

In the Bush example, it's clear that the truth, what may or may not be signified by the President's words, is repressed beneath the urgency of the words themselves. This is why the knowledge justifies itself: what matters are the Presidents signifiers, what matters is the arbitrary force of the master's words over what may or may not be true. As a result of this, the citizens of the US are deceived and US soldiers die. Here we see the signifier operating oppressively as a master signifier, separating the true from the asserted and thereby separating the slaves (those beneath the master: civilians, soldiers) from their bodies (what is true in nature or, literally, in the soldiers’ case, they surrender their bodies to the master).

In a more careful formulation, Bruce Fink relates the master signifer to the signifier in this way: "The master signifier embodies the alienating function of the signifier to which we are all subject." Zizek writes that "the master signifier is the unconscious sinthome... to which the subject was unknowingly subjected." Whether or not the master signifier differs greatly from the signifier, for present purposes, what's more important is the idea of "master" that this term provides as it relates to discourse. It gives us a clearer picture of Lacan's conception of dominance, the relationship between master and slave. It is clear from these quotations that, just as Ragland discusses the univocality of the subject, the separation of the slave from his/her body, and Fink and Zizek the alienation, the master signifier creates "alienation" both in communities and individuals. This makes sense. In the previous discussion, it was made clear that the unconscious separates the signifier from the signified, like the metonymic function in language itself, and lifts up the former while repressing the latter. Dominance, then, is this particular relationship of the signifier to the signified: the alienation of an individual community from the truth. This concept of signifier as master in the unconscious helps us understand the master discourse, which will be used to show both that our first language is a dominant language and that learning a dominant language as a second language can be healthy.

A preliminary point about discourse: it differs from language. Voruz defines Lacanian discourse as "as a mode of subjective articulation in the social bond and not merely as a linguistic construction." Dolar defines is at that which "stands in between language and speech. Language is a necessary condition for discourse, but discourse can exist without speech." Dolar goes onto say that discourse, for Lacan, "is [his] most elaborate way of formulating an alternative to the idea of 'intersubjectivity' that presupposes a relative autonomy and is independent of the subjects involved." Discourse, then, is a pervasive symbolism that runs through the veins of a society, defining it like a genotype. It is the interaction of all kinds of symbolic elements that, in combination, define the society that perpetuates them. In his seventeenth seminar, Lacan introduces four kinds of discourses: master, university, hysteric, and analyst. Each of these discourses describes the structure of a particular social connection. The master discourse "holds a privileged place among the other discourses" as the other discourses follow logically from it. We will focus primarily on this discourse.

This is Lacan's account of how a master interacts with a slave through discourse. Again, our purpose here is to show that, according to Lacan, our first languages are dominant languages. In the first section, we saw how language relates to our unconscious and, specifically, how the signifier acts as a master. In this section we see the structure of the master/slave interaction through discourse at the intersection of language and society. When we put these pieces together and observe how we enter into a language, it is clear that our first languages are dominant.

Our entry into language; periphery and center

For his definition of dominant language, Phillipson uses Calvet’s comparison of dominant and dominated languages to languages and dialects respectively. Calvet writes that “a dialect is never anything other than a defeated language.” Phillipson goes on to comment that “Calvet refuses to use the binary opposition language and dialect, because colonial discourse abused the terms which express the power relationship between competing languages. He therefore refers to the dominant language and dominated languages.” (39) A dominant language is therefore a defeating language, or a dialect imbued with more political and social significance another other dialects. A more careful way to think about a dominant language is Galtung’s distinction between Periphery and Center. Following Phillipson, we will use Galtung’s theory of imperialism in our discussion of first languages as dominant languages. This theory, according to Phillipson, operates with a division of the world into a dominant Center, and dominated Peripheries… Elites in the Centers of both Peripheries and the Center are linked by shared interests within each type of imperialism and…by language. The norms, whether economic, military, or linguistic, are dictated by the dominant Center and have been internalized by those… in the Periphery.

Dominant language, the defeating language, as Phillipson writes, is the language of the Center. All other speakers look to the Center language, having internalized its dominance, trying to achieve fluency in it. This is the definition of "dominant language" that we will work with in this section.

Through the lens of Galtung’s distinction between Periphery and Center, Lacan gives us a clear account of how our first language is a dominant language. When we learn it, it defeats us by alienating us from ourselves. This happens through the mechanisms already discussed above, though one more element of language must be mentioned: our entry into it.

Lacan writes that "language and its structure exist prior to the moment at which each individual at a certain point makes his entry into it." This prior existence of language makes us "slaves" to language and its corresponding discourse because we have no other choice but to conform to it when we come into the world. In Lacan’s thought regarding language’s effect on the developing individual, there is an interesting correlate with Galtung’s distinction between the Periphery and the Center. This correlate concept is Lacan's idea that the individual speaker's becomes "ex-centric" from his or herself when learning a language. Lacan asks, "the place I occupy as the subject of a signifier: is it, in relation to the place I occupy as subject of the signified, concentric or ex-centric?" To be concentric with the signifier, in this sense, is to be centered with the truth of one's self in relation to language. This is impossible according to Lacan. He writes of "the self's radical ex-centricity to itself" and the "the radical heteronomy which Freud's discovery shows gaping within man..." This heteronomy is the alienation that occurs within ourselves when we enter into a community speakers. (This occurs because of the metonymic structure of the language, as metonymy is a "refusal of being.") To be ex-centric to one’s self is to be separated—by language—from the truth of one’s self. Whatever thought or personality may have formed within us before learning our first language (and whatever we think or become despite it), the master discourse forces that original thought or personality down, repressing it through the functions of the signifier and the unconscious. Therefore when we learn the language of the master, the series of interconnected signifiers that constitute the definition of our culture, a Periphery and Center is constructed within us. We therefore become ex-centric to ourselves. To be ex-centric to one’s self to have a Periphery and a Center within one’s self. This is an idea that Lacan “never foreswore… namely, that human identity is 'de-centred'.

The Center is represented by the discourse of the master, the language and discourse which we are forced to learn in our early development. The Periphery is our true self, our thought or personality repressed by the first language. When we learn our first language, the truths about ourselves are repressed. We become the "pens" of the language. The first language creates a self which "thinks in my place." The first language therefore dominates us, "at the heart of my assent to my own identity it is still the language I learned that wags me..." In fact, Lacan goes so far as to claim that, when we learn this first language, we are "castrated." In order to be a functioning member of the social group, a competent and fluent speaker of the language, we must sacrifice a part of ourselves. This castration may also be thought of as a kind of death of the self in order to live in the community.

This sacrifice of the self to enter into the community of speakers can be explained more clearly using Lacan’s formula for the discourse of the master. S1, the master signifier, is the language and discourse of the society into which we enter. The barred subject is the truth of our selves, the thoughts and personalities we form despite that language, which is hidden from us through the function of our unconscious and the signifiers of our first language. S2 is our conscious self, the mind and personality that serves, is written by, is wagged by, the first language. Finally, the object is the result and product of this dominance: the alienation we feel from ourselves having been made ex-centric to ourselves, the Periphery and Center that has been structured into us.

Table 1. First language dominance

This is how first language, no matter its geopolitical standing, is a dominant language. From the way our unconscious raises the signifier, from the dominance of the signifier in language, from our enslaved entry point into language without choice, our first language cleaves a Center and Periphery within ourselves, repressing truth, thereby alienating us from ourselves.

Learning a dominant language can be a good thing

Through careful understanding of Lacan’s theory of the subject, we have shown that a first language is a dominant language. The purpose of this paper is to show that learning a dominant language can be a good thing for a second language learner by virtue of its dominance. This is because dominant L2 learning provides the student with an opportunity to be become aware of how he was first dominated by her first language. This argument will be articulated fully in this section, using what Lacan believed to be the goal or purpose of psychoanalysis, which, for him, was the healthy functioning of the individual in society.

Our first language cleaves a divide between our conscious and unconscious mind. The conscious mind is that of the dominant first language, the Center, and its corresponding discourse. The unconscious mind contains the repressed remnants of one's true self. This unconscious composes our Periphery. Again, according to Phillipson, a dominant language is one that “defeats” lesser languages. Given what has been said so far, an L2 learner has already been “defeated” by her first language. There already exists a Periphery and a Center within her. This initial Periphery and Center was structured into her as she developed into an adult. What would it mean for her to learn a dominant language? Would it be healthy or unhealthy for her?

All of the Lacanian problems associated with dominance are present in this second language: the master/slave relationship, alienation, the hiding of truth by power, etc. These are problems that exist internally, within the language learner’s mind. But Galtung’s distinction between Center and Periphery also applies in another sense: the L2 learner is attempting to approach the Center from her Peripheral place in the global social order. This problem of social hierarchy exists externally, outside her mind. Notice how this external social relationship between dominated language and dominant language, an external problem, is analogous to the internal relationship between the student's unconscious and conscious mind, the internal problem. We can see this analogous relationship more clearly with Lacan's formula for the discourse of the master.

First, we must consider the dominant language (Table 2). In this case S1 is obviously the dominant language. The barred subject is the truth that this language hides, which is the legitimacy of the first language and its culture and discourse. S2 is the language learner. “Object a” represents the products or losses that the language learner feels as a result of learning the dominant language. This may include loss of her first language, loss of her identity, or any manner of frustrations or degradations that she experiences as a result of her attempts to conform to the social hierarchy from her low place within it. These emotions result from the feelings of dominance and alienation that occur when one is in the S2 position.

Table 2. Dominant language dominance

There is symmetry between the internal structure of dominance already in place within the student (represented by Table 1) and the external structure of dominance that she experiences when learning the dominant language as her second language (represented by Table 2). This symmetry can be seen when we compare each of the formulas, internal and external. There are several interesting things that result from examining this symmetry more closely.

Table 3. Symmetry between first language dominance and dominant language dominance

The first interesting thing is the way in which this symmetry highlights the pernicious character of dominant L2 learning. This is in tune with the much-argued position, mentioned in the introduction, that dominant L2 learning is harmful to the integrity and value of individuals that speak dominated languages. This position certainly has merit, and the exposition of Lacan in this paper is testament to this. As is evident from Table 3 a dominant L2 learner must, from the psychoanalytic perspective, endure two kinds of dominance and alienation. She must endure the continued effects of the internal de-centeredness created by her first language, the initial Center and Periphery caused by her entry into her first community of speakers. Further, she must endure the effects of the external de-centeredness of her first language in the larger social hierarchy of the world. We might call this psychological state particular to the dominant L2 learner “double de-centeredness.” During double de-centeredness, the conscious self must undergo a paradigm shift. The S1, previously the student's first language, now is undermined by the dominant language she is learning. There is a change in the meaning of the term S1, though the nature of each discourse remains that of the master. The first language is defeated by the dominant language. The product of this external de-centeredness is a loss of native culture and language. Herein lies the complaint of the critics of dominant language learning, as well as the impetus for many contemporary L2 curricula. There is a loss of authentic, native culture when a dominant language is learned. This is an external complaint. Internally, though, the problem is more severe. Double de-centeredness emerges as a complicated psychological condition where the self, initially de-centered by the first language into the conscious and unconscious self, is then subsequently de-centered by the second, dominant language. The dominant L2 learner is alienated from herself twice over. This added viciousness of dominant L2 learning seems to indicate that this kind of language learning is even more pernicious than previously supposed. But this is not true. While double de-centeredness seems vile, it can actually help make dominant L2 learning a healthy exercise. This is the second interesting thing that results from the symmetry between first language learning and dominant L2 learning. This becomes clear when we examine Lacan’s thoughts about the purpose of psychoanalysis.

As a psychoanalyst, Lacan was concerned with the health of the individual in society. Given his account of the de-centered self and its repressed truths and emotions, he writes that psychoanalysis should proceed to restore order to self through reintegration, harmony, and reconciliation. To do this, he says, we should attain "that which creates our being" and pursue a reexamination of the situation of “man in the existant." Dominant L2 learning can play an important role in this process. Above, it was made clear that there is symmetry between the internal dominance of a student's first language and the external dominance of the second language. When a student learns a dominant language her conscious mind, initially structured by the first language, works to alter the initial meaning of S1 in the formula of the master's discourse. In other words: her conscious mind learns the dominant language, experiencing double de-centeredness. But it is her conscious mind that goes about this business. She is therefore aware of each step of the process of language domination, conscious of the operation of the master’s discourse. This is therefore a unique opportunity for her to become aware of the process of domination.

Lacan's domination occurs through language. When a student consciously learns a dominant language, she undergoes the same process as when her first language dominated her. But as a second language learner she is now able to consciously observe the process of domination. She is no longer vulnerable to the function of her unconscious in the same way, because her unconscious is already dominated. When learning the dominant language, she has the opportunity to become aware of the structure of the master's discourse. In this way, when learning a dominant language as a second language, she can actually prepare herself to be reintegrated, to find harmony and reconciliation with the domination that occurred when she entered her first community of speakers. This is because the process of domination that occurs by the first language is symmetrical to that of the process of domination by the second, dominant language. For Lacan, this awareness of the process of domination would be integral to attaining "that which creates our being" since it is this process of domination that does, in fact, create our being.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular arguments that demonize dominant L2 learning, aspects of Lacan’s theory of the subject provide grounds for believing that learning a dominant language as a second language can be a good thing. Certainly these arguments that demonize dominant languages have merit, but what they lack is an understanding that first languages are dominant as well. The maintenance of authenticity and the preservation of culture are positive, helpful approaches to second language learning. However, these goals might actually be best served if dominant languages are seen as opportunities for students grow as individuals. Lacan, with his theory of the unconscious, the signifier, and the master's discourse, gives educators a theoretical basis for helping second language learners become more aware of their being. It is by virtue of the dominance of dominant languages that provides this awareness. If L2 curricula were built with this mind, perhaps dominant L2 education might do more for the integrity and value of the individuals that learn them.

References

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