Lewis Acrelius (Creel) Froman (1935-2014) was a professor of
political science at the University of
California, Irvine (UCI). He earned a B.A. in political science from Yale University
in 1957, and a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University in
1960. He became professor of
political science at UCI in 1965, and served as the Dean of the School of
Social Sciences from 1971-75. He retired in 2004. His publications include The Manuscript of Hugo Potts: An Inquiry into Meaning (1973), Congressmen and Their Constituencies (1974), The Two American Political Systems: Society, Economics, and Politics
(1984), and Language and Power (4
volumes: Books I and II, 1992; Books III, IV, and V, 1993; Books VI and VII,
1995; and Books VIII and IX, 1997).
In Language and Power, Froman argues that language is power, in the
sense that language creates power and power creates language. Language both
constructs power and is a construction of power.1 Power structures
are “languaged,” in the sense that their construction/representation in
language is controlled by those in power. Knowledge/meaning/reality is constructed/represented
in language, and whoever controls language also controls the construction/representation
of knowledge/meaning/reality.
Language may be described as a
structure of meaning and of knowledge/reality creation, while power may be
described as a structure of inequality and of positional and distributional
advantages provided to various individuals and groups within social units.
Power maintains itself through
control over descriptive and structural language. “The language of the whole”
(the language of power) treats each member of society as part of a larger
structure, but as a result of the asymmetry of positions within social
structures, some members of society are empowered, while others are
disempowered.
“Language is a product of the
powered conditions in which its construction takes place,” says Froman, and it
thus “reflects/represents/incorporates the interests of those who construct
knowledge/meaning/reality within it.”2 The language of power, which
is misleadingly promoted as “the language of the whole,” serves the interests
of power not only by ignoring/justifying the relative positional and distributional
disadvantages of the disempowered with respect to the structure of social
institutions, but also by masking/justifying the relative positional and distributional
advantages of the empowered.
“The language of the whole” consists
of both a structural language of inequality and an individual language of merit
or just desert justifying that inequality.3 In structural language,
positional and distributional inequality is seen as a matter of structural
relationships between the advantaged and disadvantaged, while in individual
language, it is seen as a matter of individual merit or just desert.
Power in individual/liberal language
is understood as being dispersed among individuals, based on a fair and equal
opportunity to participate being offered to all, rather than as concentrated in
structures of unfair and unequal positional and distributional advantages.4
Power is manifested socially as
inequality between the empowered and disempowered with respect to how any given
group or social institution is structured.5 Because the language of
the empowered (who are promoted as “the leading part” in the structure of the whole)
becomes hegemonic in its ability to define what knowledge/meaning/reality is,
alternative languages arise in response to the disempowerment of some
individuals and groups. Alternative (resistance) languages call attention to structural
inequalities that are seen as just in conventional language (“legitimate
language,” according to the empowered), but that are seen as unjust in alternative
(resistance) language.6
Conventional language (power’s
language, or “the language of the whole”) is authorized or legitimized by
those in power, while unconventional (resistance) language is discouraged or
delegitimized.
However, power is based not only on
the control of language, but also on the division of society into criterial
groups (according to race, gender, class, and age) or structural parts. This
division of society into criterial groups establishes
relations of inequality (with, for example, non-whites seen as unequal to
whites, women seen as unequal to men, and the poor seen as unequal to the
wealthy). Power/language is thus the construction of knowledge/meaning/reality on the basis of
criterial inequalities established by institutional structures.7 Criterial
groups are ways of understanding persons not as individual, unique persons, but
as raced/gendered/classed/aged “heterohumans.”8 Structural language
constructs persons "heteronomously" as being in unequal relations of power
(dominance or subordination) to one another.9
Power languagers attempt to mask/justify/ignore/deny structural inequalities by their use of individual/liberal language. Resistance
languagers, on the other hand, use the already present structural language in
power’s language to assert that reality does indeed consist of gendered/classed/raced/aged
kinds of persons, and that these “heterohuman” categories unfairly assign
unequal positional and distributional advantages or disadvantages to various
individuals within the (social, economic, and political) structures of the
social unit.10
While “the language of the whole” (power’s
language) may propose, or be based on, the unequal distribution of (social,
economic, legal, or political) advantages to various individuals within a social
unit, alternative (resistance) languages may propose alternative distributions
of advantages. While the language of power may treat (social, economic, legal,
or political) inequalities as merited and just, resistance languages may treat
them as unmerited and unjust.
Froman explains that “social units
are divisions of labor which locate their members unequally with respect to
positional and distributional advantages, based on/in a powered language of
inequality.”11 Social units include the empowered (“the leading
part”) and the disempowered (“the other part”). “The other part” includes “the
languaging class” and “the non-languaging class” (“the oppressed”). “The
languaging class” consists of those individuals who control the language of institutional
structures (structural language, or “the language of the whole”), thus acting
as agents for “the leading part.” "The non-languaging class" consists of those
individuals for whom “the language of the whole” is least suitable, since it
creates/reinforces/justifies institutional structures in which they are
positionally and distributionally disadvantaged.12
Language controllers are also
problem controllers, insofar as their control over language gives them the
power to tell the rest of society whether there are problems (in language, or
in the world), what the problems are, and how they are to be solved.13
“The languaging class” includes those
persons (such as teachers, administrative personnel, lawyers, government officials,
journalists, writers, and professionals of all kinds) who benefit, in terms of
positional and distributional advantages, by (knowingly or unknowingly) serving
the interests of those in power.14 “The languaging class” promotes
“the language of the whole,” and it discourages alternative or resistance languages.
Power’s language asserts that social
inequalities are justified, because of differences in individual merit or just
desert, but resistance language asserts that social inequalities are
unjustified, because of illegitimate structural asymmetries in the positional
and distributional advantages afforded to various individuals and groups.15
Justice as individually merited inequality (power’s morality) thus comes into conflict with justice as structural equality (resistance’s morality).16
In the language of power, justice is impossible without social inequality, but
in the language of resistance, justice is impossible without social equality.17
FOOTNOTES
1Creel Froman, Language and Power: Books VI and VII (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1996), p. 71.
2Ibid.,
p. 12.
3Ibid.,
p. 2.
4Froman, Language
and Power: Books III, IV, and V (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1993), p. 84.
5Froman, Language
and Power: Books I and II (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1992), p. 4.
6Language
and Power: Books III, IV, and V, p. 87.
7Language
and Power, Books VI and VII, p. 75.
8Language
and Power, Books III, IV, and V, p. 116.
9Ibid.,
p. 121.
10Ibid.,
p. 125.
11Ibid.,
p. 91.
12Ibid.,
p. 91.
13Language
and Power: Books I and II, p. 38.
14Language
and Power, Books III, IV, and V, p. 91.
15Language
and Power, Books VI and VII, p. 33.
16Ibid.,
p. 2.
17Ibid.,
p. 3.
