Historical comparison of monetary and linguistic systems

pp. 131-142

in: Klaus F. Riegel, Psychology of development and history, Berlin, Springer, 1976

Abstract

The relationship between goods or merchandise and the labor or activities necessary to produce them has been regarded, at least since Marx (1891), as dialectical: Labor that does not produce something is futile; goods that are not produced by labor are miracles. In the following discussions I equate labor with the acts of producing or perceiving speech; and merchandise, with speech products such as sentences, words, or speech sounds. Through acts of speech a person increases the individual and collective repertoire of linguistic products. This repertoire is comparable to capital in the economic sense. Capital is only useful for the individual and society when it is productive, i.e., when it is transformed into new labor, speech acts. Traditionally, linguists have regarded language as commodity but not as labor.