References Burton, D. (1980) Dialogue and Discourse: a Sociolinguistic Approach to Modern Drama Dialogue

In Derridian thinking violence is perpetrated by the dominant partner in a hierarchy: the ’Original ’ is what oppresses the merely ‘Derived ’, Men traditionally oppress Women and so on. Hence the need for a deconstruction that will reverse these hierarchies. For Lecercle violence erupts from below, at least in the matter of language (though, like many others, he comes close to saying that the linguistic is the social and the cultural) and is the rcvenge of the repressed. The major tenn in his hierarchy is ’Langue ’ or Chomskyan Deep Structure and the minor term that violently subverts the rule of this oppressor he names the ’Remainder’. His book is a brilliant and timely reminder of what is left out in our various theories and models of language. The Remainder is the linguistic equivalent of the Freudian unconscious and, like the unconscious, it is not interested in rules. From Deleuze and Guattari, Lecercle picks up the idea of the potential violence of the institution of language which, as they point out, is not so much a neutral entity that can best be analysed by looking at ’normal * (i.e. delcarative) sentences as a series of other people’s slogans organised into a system of power-relations. The unconscious, slogan-filled element inside language keeps breakin