Rethinking Marxism

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Gramsci and “Global English”

Peter Ives

To cite this article: Peter Ives (2019) Gramsci and “Global English”, Rethinking Marxism, 31:1,
58-71, DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2019.1577617

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2019.1577617

Published online: 08 Apr 2019.

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RETHINKING MARXISM, 2019
Vol. 31, No. 1, 58–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2019.1577617

Gramsci and “Global English”1

Peter Ives

This essay focuses on the way Antonio Gramsci is invoked in the burgeoning research and
debates concerning the rise of “global English”—that is, the massive increase in the use of
English across the globe, especially by so-called nonnative speakers since the middle of the
twentieth century. The essay explores the way Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony” is used
within sociolinguistic, applied linguistic, and language education research as an
example of some of the downsides of too great a focus on this one concept at the
expense of a broader understanding of Gramsci’s thought and methods. As a small
counterexample, the essay ends with a discussion of Gramsci’s argument that “there is
no parthenogenesis in language … innovation occurs through the interference of
different cultures.” It uses this rather enigmatic contention in an attempt to illuminate
how a deeper engagement with Gramsci’s writings and method can produce richer results.

Key Words: Global English, Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, Language and Politics,
Language Theories

This essay provides an overview of the (often partial) ways that Antonio Gramsci’s
legacy has influenced contemporary research on “global English,” or what is
perhaps better to conceive as “English in the world”—in other words, the
massive spread of English as a language that in the middle of the twentieth
century was used frequently by about 250 million people in the world to one
that is today used on a daily basis by well over a billion (Crystal 2003, 6).2 As is
common in many academic fields, Gramsci is taken up mostly, often solely,
through his concept of “hegemony.” This can be both a blessing and a curse. I

1. This essay was initially presented at the conference Egemonia e modernità: Il pensiero di
Gramsci in Italia e nella cultura internazionale, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of
Gramsci’s death, and it will be published in Italian in the anthology coming forth from that con-
ference. Thanks to Fabio Frosini, Guido Liguori, and Giuseppe Vacca for allowing permission for
this version to be published here. I would also like to thank Alessandro Carlucci, Marnie Hol-
borow, and Christian Chun for their comments on the manuscript.
2. I use “global English” in inverted commas rather than “English in the world” or “English used
internationally” precisely because, as will be discussed, part of the debates involve if this consti-
tutes a specific “variety of English” different from others or if it references some variation of
British and American English that is dominant across the world or a set of varieties of different
Englishes. So the inverted commas are meant to question the stability of the concept but also to
flag these questions as part of the issue concerned with “global English.”

© 2019 Association for Economic and Social Analysis

 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 59

suggest that critical scholars of “global English” are drawn to the concept of “hege-
mony” because it fills the gaps in dominant liberal individualism between coercion
and consent. In this sense, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is a blessing, a potential
road into why his insights remain important in providing a more nuanced analysis
of the power structures involved in the spread of English across the globe. But “he-
gemony” is also a curse to Gramsci’s legacy to the extent that scholars stop solely
with the concept of “hegemony” and do not reach more deeply into Gramsci’s writ-
ings and concepts. This overview suggests that too great a focus on “hegemony” in
isolation from his more general theory can become an obstacle to Gramsci’s richer
insights into a more Marxist and historical-materialist understanding of the poli-
tics of language.
As is evident in Gramsci’s critique of Alessandro Manzoni’s strategy for creating
standard Italian (e.g., Q21, §1, §8; Q23, §40; Gramsci 1975, 2107–10, 2118, 2236–7; see
also Ives 2004b, 38, 106–9),3 together with Gramsci’s insistence on the need for a
truly popular, common, national language for Italy (Q29, §2; Ives 2004b; Carlucci
2013), his approach should encourage the overcoming of static frameworks that
simply present a dichotomy between the pro-English and anti-English sides
(Ives 2015 c). As Charles Taylor’s The Language Animal shows, within political
theory and philosophy there is still a fundamental debate between language un-
derstood as a mere vehicle for information, in the tradition of John Locke stretch-
ing through contemporary liberal individualism and normative political theory,
and language as constitutive of being human, advanced by Taylor (2016) with
roots in Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gramsci provides
an alternative approach to both positions. Gramsci’s alternative is, in my view,
more capable of addressing the politics of “global English” within the fluxes and
transmutations of global capitalism. To provide some indication of the possibilities,
I will conclude with a brief look at Gramsci’s (Q6, §71; 1985, 178) contention that “in
language there is no parthenogenesis” as one possibility for reorienting Gramsci’s
potential contribution to contemporary politics of “global English.”
The concept of hegemony has a long history and many layers, but it begins with
the Greek notion of a state being a hegemon, meaning the leader or dominant state,
sometimes in an informal alliance but not necessarily. Hegemony was used by
Lenin and other Russian thinkers to discuss not the relations of power among
nations but rather relations among social classes, and most specifically for
Lenin, as a positive relationship between the urban proletariat who would lead
the masses of the rural peasantry, though in a manner that was in their interests.
Thus, it has been associated in a negative way as a form of domination, or at least a
notion where weaker states accept or recognize the power of the more dominant
states (economic, military, political, or cultural), but also in the positive sense.
Gramsci then developed it in nuanced and complex ways to apply both to

3. I use the standard reference method, giving the notebook number (Q) followed by the note
number (§).
60 Ives

bourgeois hegemony of which he was critical as well as a different form of future

proletarian hegemony that he favored (see Boothman 2008). While much scholar-
ship on Gramsci begins from these initial points and extends them in various ways,
my point here is to show the limitations of such a focus on “hegemony” to the
extent that it does not serve as a mere beginning into Gramsci’s series of concepts
and analyses and more particularly his method. Below I will provide examples of
such limitations, but first it is important to define the broader set of research liter-
atures on the phenomenon of “global English.”

“Global English” Defined

I will begin with a short discussion of the concept of “global English.” Since the
middle of the twentieth century, the number of speakers and users of the
English language, or some version of it, has ballooned. David Crystal estimates
that in 1950 there were about 250 million users of English in the world, and the ma-
jority of them were native speakers of English. By 2003, there were an estimated
two billion or so with some competency in English (Crystal 2003, 6). The vast ma-
jority of this increase is not due to native speakers but nonnative speakers.
There are many ramifications and implications of this phenomenon. Not sur-
prisingly, it has spawned much new research including quite different approaches,
many of which define the phenomenon of “global English” quite differently. David
Northrup (2013, 5) makes explicit what is implicit in much mainstream scholarly
and media accounts, that “global English” is standard English defined by the
native speakers of Britain and America. These versions of English “greatly influ-
ence the global standard for intelligibility” that is necessary for nonnative users
of English.
There are at least two or three reactions against this definition of what “global
English” is, and they each have their own theory of language. There is the
“World Englishes” school, founded and led until his recent death by Braj
Kachru. Together with the journal World Englishes, a large annual conference,
and now several generations of scholars, this school studies the varieties of En-
glishes throughout the world. The sociolinguistic emphasis of this school is
placed on how native and nonnative speakers’ versions of English are influenced
by the other dominant languages in their region. For example, Spanglish (Spanish-
English) or Singlish (Singaporean English, influenced by Malay, Cantonese, Tamil,
and indigenous languages). One of Kachru’s fundamental propositions is that these
varieties of English should be seen as legitimate and as prestigious as other varie-
ties of “standard English”—including British or American English. Kachru (2005)
emphasizes this point with provocative claims, including that “English is an
Asian language.” This approach has some affinities with the linguistics of Grazia-
dio Isaia Ascoli, the nineteenth-century linguist who greatly influenced Gramsci
(see Ives 2004b, 44–6).
 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 61

Another approach, based on yet a different definition of language, is the

“English as a lingua franca” approach. The relation between these scholars and
the World Englishes and other scholars of global English has shifted and varies,
but the defining feature of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is the variety of
English that has developed at the global level among nonnative speakers of
English (Seidlhofer 2011; Jenkins 2007). Unlike World Englishes, which grounds
itself in geography and pays significant attention to how particular cultural
values are represented within specific varieties of English, the ELF approach em-
phasizes “intelligibility,” and I have argued it is grounded in a conception of lan-
guage as purely an instrument of communication—a tradition that goes back to
John Locke (Ives 2015b).
There is at least one other clearly distinguishable approach—that most influ-
enced by poststructuralism—that questions the very existence of “standard” lan-
guage and language as a system. Suresh Canagarajah (2013), Alistair Pennycook
(2010), Ofelia Garcia and Li Wei (2013), and many others offer theories of “translan-
guaging” and translingual practice.4
This is perhaps a simplified snapshot of the field of “global English,” but it shows
how contentious the very definition of language is in this scholarship. Despite the
differences, all these approaches revolve around the implications of “global
English” increasing due to the number of nonnative speakers using it. The
diverse research conducted in these areas raises crucial questions in terms of
how language is related to identity, nationalism, the state, and the economy.
The influential work of Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Étienne Balibar,
and Immanuel Wallerstein shows how the standardization of national languages
is central to the creation of modern nationalism and the nation-state system.
The current research on “global English” brings these questions to the more
recent impact of global capitalism on nation-states (Anderson 1991; Hobsbawm
1990; Balibar and Wallerstein 1991). Yet many of the Marxist debates in internation-
al relations on questions such as the existence of a transnational ruling class (e.g.,
Cox 1987; Robinson 2006) or the relationships between global capitalism and the
geopolitical power in the state system ignore these questions of language politics,
despite such a massive change since the middle of the twentieth century (Ives
2015d).
With the resurgence of xenophobic nationalism, from President Trump to
Brexit, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsinaro, and the strength of the Right Wing in
Europe and elsewhere, we are in a critical moment of flux. It is unclear how the
collapse of neoliberal cosmopolitanism will affect the transformations of global
capitalism. And it is also unclear how the liberal dream of cosmopolitan capitalism
will affect the rate, methods, and forms of English being learned and used around
the world. While beyond the scope of this essay, these issues provide the context of

4. For a Gramscian critique of this literature, see Ives (2015a).

62 Ives

how questions of “global English” relate to other central issues of Marxism, Grams-
ci’s legacy, and anticapitalist politics today.

“Hegemony” in Debates on “Global English” and Sociolinguistics

In Gramsci and Languages, Alessandro Carlucci (2013, 216–28) provides an account of

Gramsci’s ideas, especially hegemony, in linguistic disciplines. The next sections
will add to this account with a specific focus on how “hegemony” is often used
as closely related to imperialism and the dominance of English on one hand and
as the “organization of consent” on the other.
Robert Phillipson explicitly draws on Gramsci in constructing his very influen-
tial analysis of “global English” as “linguistic imperialism” in his 1992 book of that
name, Linguistic Imperialism. Phillipson’s basic argument is that the advent of
“global English” is linguistic imperialism, a dimension of cultural imperialism
that is intimately tied with economic and military imperialism. For example, he ex-
amines arguments in the U.S. Congress about funding specific programs such as
Fulbright Scholarships, but also many others. He shows that they were justified
in part by their ability to further U.S. national interests by spreading English.
Phillipson (1992, 65–77) draws on the canonical 1971 English anthology Selections
from the Prison Notebooks, but with no actual textual citations. Instead, he relies on
Raymond Williams’s rendition of Gramsci’s “hegemony” together with other sec-
ondary sources, most prominently Robert Bocock. Importantly, Phillipson uses
“hegemony” to distinguish his analysis of “global English” from a conspiracy
theory, noting that “hegemony does not imply conspiracy theory, but a competing
and complementary set of values and practices, with those in power better able to
legitimate themselves and to convert their ideas into material power” (74). In other
words, his broad historical analysis looks at how the British and U.S. governments
from the eighteenth century to the present have promoted English as part of their
colonial policy and then foreign policy. He argues that the English language teach-
ing industry, a profession he is a part of, is an important part of a political project.
Phillipson (1992, 75) emphasizes how English is hegemonic in former colonies,
giving the example of Zambia, where language teaching became synonymous
with English teaching and the values, practices, and institutions it entails. He
cites Bocock to emphasize the dimension of hegemony focused on “intellectual,
moral and philosophical leadership” and touches very briefly on how “hegemony”
entails negotiations in areas like education between the coercion and consent of
the state and civil society.
Unfortunately, his many critics still charged Phillipson with “conspiracy theory”
(e.g., Spolsky 2005, 76–91). While I appreciate much of Phillipson’s specific research
and the politics of his intervention in the early 1990s, on the whole I too am critical
of his entire framework, for many reasons. In terms of Gramsci, as Marnie Hol-
borow (1999, 76) argues, “Phillipson’s theoretical framework is inadequate to
 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 63

explain how national states are themselves enmeshed in global capitalism.” This
problem is even more evident in Phillipson’s later attempts to update his anal-
ysis and include discussions of both David Harvey’s assessments of imperialist
capitalism and also Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s analysis of Empire, in
which the autonomy of the state drops out of the equation. Thus, Phillipson
draws on two very different models of how nation-states are enmeshed in
global capitalism without even acknowledging their differences.5 With such
focus on the United States and Britain, his framework leaves little room for
the significant role of other states in the spread of English—not only of
China, but of an increasing number of countries that have been prioritizing
the teaching of English in their schooling systems: for example, Mexico and Co-
lombia. Thus, Phillipson misses the other very important dimension of Grams-
ci’s approach by not including his concept of the “historical bloc” to understand
how differing interests and perspectives within ruling classes are consolidated
and mediated.
Phillipson’s work has contributed to framing the debates in simplistic terms of it
being a forced imposition akin to a form of imperialism versus the position of his
critics, who most often adopt simplistic notions of individual “free choice” and
argue that masses of people around the world are choosing to learn and use
English. The extreme examples of this case are Abram de Swaan (2001), who
employs rational-choice theory to quantify this idea, and Barbara Seidlhofer
(2011). Seidlhofer is one of the key proponents of ELF—English as a lingua
franca—and she defines it as “any use of English among speakers of different first lan-
guages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only
option” (Siedlhofer 2011, 7). Thus, while English is the only option, it is still con-
structed as a “choice” in that classic liberal move that obscures all the structures
that suppress the other options and promote only one “choice.”
There are numerous examples where such uses of Gramsci have been produc-
tive and conducted in a manner that opens possibilities for more thorough engage-
ments with his writings. For example, political scientist Selma Sonntag uses
Gramsci in her analysis of the politics of “global English” in call centers in India
and especially Canada. She compares Gramsci’s hegemonic approach to language
with two other frameworks—Phillipson’s linguistic imperialism and more stan-
dard liberal cosmopolitan approaches—and finds that Gramsci’s is the most
nuanced in showing how call-center workers have some room for resistance and
the choices they make within a complex structure of providing a linguistic
product for mostly American consumers. This empirical work shows that seeing
English as merely the hegemonic language or the language that dominates more
through economic necessity than actual force, which all can still be incorporated
into the “linguistic imperialism” model, is not quite sufficient. Sonntag argues

5. For overviews of key differences between Hardt and Negri and Harvey, see Anievas (2010) or
Ives (2015c).
64 Ives

that even customers exhibiting xenophobic tendencies, demanding that their call-
center services are not “outsourced” to India or Bangladesh, begin adapting to the
varieties of English spoken by Indians and Bangladeshis even if they happen to live
in Canada (Sonntag 2008).

Hegemony and Gramsci in Sociolinguistics, Linguistic

Anthropology, and Ethnography

This research on “global English” is rooted in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics,

linguistic anthropology, ethnography, and language education studies. It goes
back to the 1980s at least (e.g., Woolard 1985; Laitin 1986) and in some ways
much further. The influential sociolinguist and ethnographer Dell Hymes was
aware of the significance of Gramsci’s writings as early as 1969. He edited a
book, Reinventing Anthropology that included a chapter by A. Norman Klein,
“Counter Culture and Cultural Hegemony,” on the 1960s youth protests, discuss-
ing Gramsci and citing Louis Marks’s 1957 translation of “The Modern Prince”
along with Gwynn Williams, John Cammett, and Eugene Genovese’s early
essays on Gramsci.
In the mid 1990s, while tracing the lack of critical insight into linguistics domi-
nated by Noam Chomsky, Hymes pointed out that while Gramsci’s study of philol-
ogy was known, it had not had any impact. Hymes (1996, 97; see also Carlucci 2013,
224–6) noted that the general anti-Marxism in the United States from the McCar-
thy era onward accounted for why critical linguists avoided the Marxist connec-
tions between social being, material context, and human consciousness. Hymes
used “hegemony” about a dozen times to discuss the intellectual, institutional
unity of one form of language over linguistic diversity, the ways one form of lan-
guage is presented as universal but is actually in support of particular interests, and
the role of education and language in the subordination of minority groups (28, 46,
60, 64, 79, 83–6).
David Laitin (1986, 19, 92, 104–6, 150, 182–3) uses “hegemony” in his exploration of
the Yoruba in Nigeria in his 1986 study, citing the 1971 Selections from the Prison Note-
books as well as secondary sources by Perry Anderson, Walter Adamson, and
Raymond Williams. While Laitin, a political scientist at Stanford University, has
become one of the more influential political scientists exploring language politics
(see Laitin and Reich 2003), his use of Gramsci shows absolutely no cognizance of
Gramsci’s training or interest in language politics.
Also in the mid 1980s, Kathryn Woolard published a study of language politics in
Catalonia in The American Ethnologist, invoking Gramsci and hegemony. Woolard
would go on to be a very influential linguistic anthropologist and would figure
within the field of language ideologies. None of Gramsci’s writings appear in her
bibliography, and she explicitly favors Perry Anderson’s 1976 reading of hegemony
over that of Raymond Williams. She also begins a persistent pattern of equating
 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 65

Gramsci’s hegemony with Pierre Bourdieu’s “symbolic domination” (Woolard 1995,

740).6
In 2003, the journal Pragmatics published a special issue focused on “hegemony.”
In the introduction, the editors explain, “The concept of hegemony remains vitally
necessary to critical analysis because with the rhetoric of choice, the movement
away from class-based political mobilization, the epistemological shifts, and the
ongoing ‘critique’ of traditional forms of authority, the contemporary era also pre-
sents us with a widely-acknowledged intensification of social inequality within and
across nations” (Blommaert et al. 2003, 3). The contributing editors of this special
issue include preeminent scholars in the field, such as Canadian sociolinguist
Monica Heller (past president of the American Anthropological Association),
Belgian sociolinguist Jan Blommaert, and Ben Rampton, a prominent English
applied linguist.
Summarizing the state of the concept of “hegemony,” the editors contend, “Re-
search has focused strongly on hegemony-as-consent, as the ‘soft,’ cultural aspect
of power relations. Absent from most research is attention to what in Gramsci’s
parlance would be the ‘war of manoeuvre’: Coercion and force, used as comple-
ments of persuasion and consent in the exercise of power” (Blommaert et al.
2003, 2). They describe the contributions to their special issue as both correcting
for this, showing the violence and coercion that go hand in hand with hegemony,
and also contributing to the “hegemony-as-consent” tradition.
To conclude this section, I want to point out that this oscillation between “hege-
mony-as-consent” and hegemony as linguistic imperialism or domination with a
softer edge is reminiscent of Perry Anderson’s reading of the “antinomies” or ten-
sions within Gramsci’s own writings. And many of the above works draw on
Anderson’s 1976 essay, which makes this argument.7 Rather than the thorough
philological approach followed by many Gramsci scholars today, Anderson cata-
loged Gramsci’s differing uses of “hegemony” without taking into account the spe-
cific historical context Gramsci was analyzing or the forces and phenomena he
found in need of explanation. Anderson (2017, 21) then concluded, “His notes in
prison were fragmentary and exploratory, not finished or cohesive, allowing for os-
cillations or inconsistencies in expression.” While all these individual points are
undoubtedly true to some extent, they leave the impression that this is a deep
weakness and fault in Gramsci’s thought and use of “hegemony.”8

6. I have explored the relations between Gramsci and Bourdieu, especially noting how language
scholars commonly equate the two, despite what I argue is their incompatibility (Ives 2014).
7. Anderson (1976) began this line of interpretation in his often-cited article. He has taken it up
again more recently, fleshing it out with a full history of the term in Anderson (2017). The odd
argument here is that “hegemony” has always had this legacy of being “ambiguity and euphe-
mism” (6), yet Anderson never addresses how his criticisms of Gramsci’s ambiguities in using “he-
gemony” relate to the concept’s historically ambiguous use.
8. For an excellent critique, see Thomas (2013).
66 Ives

Many language scholars seem to recognize that Gramsci’s hegemony is an at-

tractive concept through which to grapple with complex relations between coer-
cion and consent, how particular social groups define their interests, or how
subaltern groups internalize or acquiesce to the power of the ruling classes. But
this is clearly not the venue to embark on a sustained engagement with the prob-
lems of Anderson’s interpretation, so instead I will suggest that we move the dis-
cussion away from the concept of hegemony and begin with Gramsci’s other
concepts and contributions.9 Hopefully this can give us a better approach from
which to consider Gramsci’s “hegemony.”

An Alternative Starting Point: In Language There Is No

Parthenogenesis

Along with many other Gramsci scholars, such as Alessandro Carlucci, Giancarlo
Schirru, Fabio Frosini, and Tullio De Mauro, I have emphasized that language for
Gramsci is intimately related to culture, to understandings of the world, as well as
to how power and ideology operate and are institutionalized. More importantly,
Gramsci provides an approach to language focused on the tensions within languag-
es. He argues explicitly that the creation of standard national languages are polit-
ical projects that cannot merely be rooted in logic, efficiency, or some technical
attribute of one form of a language over another.
I have examined Gramsci’s concepts of “spontaneous grammar” and “normative
grammar” both as key insights into his concept of hegemony and as holding great
potential for contemporary language politics and “global English” in particular
(Ives 2004a; Ives 2010). Here, I want to focus on a different, if related, theme that
appears much earlier in the prison writings, in the very important notebook
6. This is the proposition in note 71, that “there is no parthenogenesis in language,
either; a language does not produce another language. Rather, innovation occurs
through the interference of different cultures, etc.” (Q6, §71, Gramsci 1975; 2007,
52). This analysis will show how Gramsci conceptualizes the language agency
and creative potentials of individuals as related to, but distinguishable from, the
structural relations of power in which they are embedded. This is a key and
fundamental distinction that I would argue is not well theorized in many of the
debates on “global English.” Thus, Gramsci’s point here provides a suitable
foundation for critical language scholars prior to invoking hegemony.
Earlier in notebook 6, in note 20, Gramsci made notes on a review written by
Natalino Sapegno on a book by the linguist Giulio Bertoni. Gramsci is very critical
of both the positive review and Bertoni, especially concerning the distinction
between “poetic words” and those that are “instrumental,” which Sapegno

9. Among other responses to Anderson, see Thomas (2009). I have investigated Anderson’s read-
ings in the context of Gramsci’s writings on language in Ives (2002).
 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 67

claims is original to Bertoni. Gramsci argues that this is not a new idea but is rooted
in “old prejudices” of dividing words into “ugly” and “beautiful.” Gramsci ques-
tions the division and its usefulness. He relates the history of this distinction to
other divisions, comparing it to abstracting humans as biological facts from polit-
ical history. He uses the analogy of the chemical analysis of a painting or the study
of the effort Michelangelo used in sculpting Moses (Q6, §20, Gramsci 1975, 720;
Gramsci 2007, 18–19).
After intervening notes, Gramsci returns to the discussion of poetic words. Note
64 begins with a long quotation from Croce’s Cultura e vita morale. Here Croce dis-
cusses the cycles of poetic work and how the desire for one type of art over another
is really a reflection of the desire for the type of moral reality of the period that the
art reflects rather than attributable to the individual aesthetic expressions. This
leads to a quotation from later in Croce’s work concerning cycles and schools of
poetry, where Croce states, “Poetry does not generate poetry; there is no partheno-
genesis. There must be the intervention of the male element, of that which is real,
passionate, practical, moral” (Q6, §64, Gramsci 1975, 733; Gramsci 2007, 47).
Gramsci reflects quite positively, if conditionally, on the usefulness of this idea
for historical materialism: “This observation could befit historical mat[erialism].
Literature does not generate literature, etc.; in other words ideologies do not
create ideologies, superstructures do not generate superstructures other than as
a legacy of inertia and passivity.” Gramsci repeats Croce’s sexism, although
places it in quotation marks—the “masculine” element must intervene. Gramsci
specifies that this “masculine” element is history: that is, revolutionary activity,
and this is what creates the “new man,” Gramsci clarifies—that is, “new social
relations.”
Not unlike Gramsci’s extensive engagements with Croce throughout the Prison
Notebooks, here he is drawing on, criticizing, and using Croce’s philosophy,
which incorporates cultural and aesthetic transformations with moral ones.
Gramsci also emphasizes social and political transformations. A few notes later,
Gramsci reengages these themes, making a much more concise intervention into
the nature of language itself. In note 71, Gramsci offers sustained reflection on
the nature of language, politics, and linguistic change in his assessment of Goffredo
Coppola’s review of Sommario di linguistica arioeuropea, a book published in 1930 by
Antonio Pagliaro. Gramsci begins by noting that Croce’s identification of art and
literature has opened the way for some progress. He again rejects Bertoni’s
version of following Croce’s insights and seems to endorse a close association
between language and imagination, thought, and even humanity itself. But he
rejects Pagliaro’s introduction of a framework based on the distinction between
language and nonlanguage. Gramsci argues that this framework raises many ques-
tions and obscures the ability to make crucial distinctions, like those between ar-
tificial languages or jargons and national-literary languages. And then he comes to
a very important insight that directly relates to his answer to Bertoni’s distinction
68 Ives

between instrumental and poetic words. It is here that he remobilizes Croce’s met-
aphor of parthenogenesis. I will quote it at length:

The history of languages is the history of linguistic innovations, but these in-
novations are not individual (as in art); they are the innovations of an entire
social community that has renewed its culture and “progressed” historically.
To be sure, they, too, become individual, not as in the individual-artist but
in the complete, determinate individual qua [cultural]-historical element.

There is no parthenogenesis in language, either; a language does not produce

another language. Rather, innovation occurs through the interference of dif-
ferent cultures, etc., and this takes place in very different ways, it still occurs
for whole masses of linguistic elements, and it takes place molecularly. (Q6,
§71, Gramsci 1975; 2007, 52)

Unlike Pagliaro and Coppola, Gramsci is trying to make more precise distinctions,
especially between individual artistic innovation, what we could call expression,
versus social changes in languages. Such changes “become individual” in that
they change the way individuals use language, but the changes are themselves
structural. This distinction is obviously not that of Bertoni’s poetry versus instru-
mental uses of language (which has resonance in contemporary debates on lan-
guage politics, including “global English”; see Ives 2015b). Gramsci is not just
repeating his earlier speculation that Croce’s metaphor of “parthenogenesis”
might be useful to historical materialism, that literature does not produce litera-
ture, and that ideologies do not self-generate nor do superstructures. Rather, he
is expanding the metaphor to include historical linguistics, noting not only the
embeddedness of language within culture, history, and politics but also specific ex-
amples of the different ways in which Latin affected the language of the Gauls as a
whole and the more fragmented and molecular influence of Latin on German
through individual loan words and forms. Not only has the sexist metaphor of
the masculine, active element of revolutionary history disappeared, but he is
clearer; the “interference,” for cultural, historical, and political reasons, of one lan-
guage on another is generative, produces new languages. Here he writes that lan-
guages change through the interference from different cultures, but his examples
are of the influence of different languages. This is consistent with Gramsci’s strong
emphasis on the tensions between knowing and feeling, between subaltern groups
adopting the worldviews of dominant groups, and the remaining tensions between
thought and action (Q11, §12, Gramsci 1975, 1375–95; Gramsci 1971, 323–43). Gramsci
becomes a little less precise but raises dynamics of changing social roles and the
rise of new classes and groups. He notes, “‘Molecular’ influence and interference
can take place among different strata within a nation, etc.; a new class that acquires
a leading role innovates as a ‘mass’” (Q6, §71, Gramsci 1975; Gramsci 2007, 52–3). In
other words, where Kachru and the World Englishes approach attempt to
 Gramsci and Unclear Boundaries 69

normatively pronounce that nonnative varieties of English should be understood as

valid and be legitimate providers of new linguistic norms, Gramsci’s framework
relies on an empirical analysis of the actual power relations to enable us to see
when and why certain “nonstandard” forms of speech become accepted.
Gramsci neither assumes, as does the “linguistic imperialism” approach, that the
language of the so-called native speakers of English in the core countries
(England, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) will dominate,
nor does he questionably postulate some “international standard” that is abstract-
ed from the social and power relations of speakers.
While beyond the scope of this essay, Gramsci here provides the framework for
an approach to language that transcends both the Lockean instrumentalist view of
language as predominantly a vehicle of communication as well as Herder’s view,
developed by Charles Taylor, of language constituting the subjectivity of
humans in linguistic communities. Gramsci’s historical-materialist approach to
language, in which there is no parthenogenesis but in which there are structural
power relations among nonstatic and nonsutured “standard” languages, provides
a theorization of language. In this way, along with Gramsci’s other key linguistic
concepts, especially normative and spontaneous grammar, scholars of “global
English” can avoid the pitfalls of the three basic positions I outlined at the begin-
ning: World Englishes’s focus on local diversity; English as a Lingua Franca’s as-
sumption that language (or at least ELF) can be only about communication and
separated from political relations; and the translanguaging school, in which struc-
tured power relations seem almost impossible to analyze (see Ives 2015c).
We must be a little careful since Gramsci does not pick up this metaphor of par-
thenogenesis again in the Notebooks. And Gramsci shows some concern with the bi-
ological metaphor that Marx uses of “anatomy” being constituted by the economy in
the 1859 “Preface”.10 Such concern could be a reason why Gramsci decides not to
further develop this biological metaphor of Croce’s. But Gramsci’s understanding
of language as not being parthenogenetic fits well with his development of the
concept of “spontaneous grammar,” while undermining the idea that it is truly spon-
taneous but is instead the result of sedimentations of history and the loss of historical
documentation. A key feature of hegemony is that Gramsci, as Carlucci (2013, 181; and
see Q3, §48, Gramsci 1975) puts it, “denies consent can be entirely spontaneous.”

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Q11, §50.
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