Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

cial languages,” now as “jargons,” definitely says in thispamphlet that “the artificial language which distinguished thearistocracy . . . arose out of the language common to thewhole people, which was spoken both by bourgeois and artisan,by town and country.”Consequently, Lafargue recognizes the existence and necessityof a common language of the whole people, and fullyrealizes that the “aristocratic language” and other dialectsand jargons are subordinate to and dependent on the languagecommon to the whole people.It follows that the reference to Lafargue is wide of themark.References are made to the fact that at one time inEngland the feudal lords spoke “for centuries” in French,while the English people spoke English, and this is alleged tobe an argument in favour of the “class character” of languageand against the necessity of a language common to the wholepeople. But this is not an argument, it is rather an anecdote.Firstly, not all the feudal lords spoke French at that time, butonly a small upper stratum of English feudal lords attachedto the court and at county seats. Secondly, it was not some“class language” they spoke, but the ordinary language commonto all the French people. Thirdly, we know that in thecourse of time this French language fad disappeared withouta trace, yielding place to the English language common tothe whole people. Do these comrades think that the Englishfeudal lords “for centuries” held intercourse with the Englishpeople through interpreters, that they did not use the Englishlanguage, that there was no language common to all theEnglish at that time, and that the French language in Englandwas then anything more than the language of high society,current only in the restricted circle of the upper English15