Dialectical-Relational Linguistics: Toward a Unified Theory of Language as Social Process

Abstract

Dialectical-Relational Linguistics (DRL) is presented as a scientific framework grounded in dialectical materialism. Language is treated as a historically developing, socially stratified, and ideologically saturated form of human activity. DRL synthesizes insights from Marxist philosophy, Soviet cultural-historical psychology, variationist sociolinguistics, systemic-functional grammar, and materialist discourse theory. Five principles—contradiction, mediation, totality, motion, and praxis—structure the paradigm. This approach is applied across phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse, acquisition, and language change, treating each domain as a moment within a structured totality shaped by class struggle and ideological reproduction. DRL also develops a methodology emphasizing historical causality, relational depth, and scientific reflexivity. It aims to unify fragmented linguistic research traditions and reconstruct a materialist science of language, without reducing language to isolated structures or dissolving it into discourse analysis. DRL is proposed as a foundation for future empirical and theoretical inquiry within a historical-materialist framework.

Keywords

sociolinguistics critical linguistics dialectical materialism historical materialism theory of ideology

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